Valve dev gives tip on how to make CSGO run better

Improving the performance of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s is important when it comes to improving your own performance in the game. Even Michael “shroud” Grzesiek says so. But how can players do it without dropping money on new hardware?

Valve developer John McDonald gave a simple tip to Astralis player Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen: Close everything else that’s running in the background.

You definitely will not get VAC banned for those, but there is a great reason to close most other than programs:

Many other apps stealth use the GPU—so they can cause your game to feel wrong by causing inconsistent frame times.

Even though CSGO usually isn’t gpu limited!

— John McDonald (@basisspace) August 21, 2021

Bubzkji discussed closing everything on his computer, down to Google Chrome and Spotify, for fear of triggering a random VAC ban. McDonald insisted that these programs wouldn’t have garnered a reaction from VAC regardless but he did note that closing all these down has likely inadvertently improved CSGO’s performance on his PC for a surprising reason.

According to McDonald, many programs quietly sap horsepower out of a computer’s GPU. Even if a user disables hardware acceleration in a program’s settings menu, it still might actually be sucking some of the life out of a graphics card. If this is the case, it can cause “inconsistent frame times” that can make the game feel different.

A long list of programs use hardware acceleration that add stress to GPUs. The biggest culprits when it comes to hardware acceleration are internet browsers including Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox but many audio and video rendering programs can also do this. While closing programs when gaming has long been part of the best practices, the increasing encroachment of programs onto graphics cards makes it more necessary than ever.

How to improve performance in CSGO

CSGO is designed to run fairly well even on weak, older hardware but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a number of different ways to get some extra FPS out of your PC. Alongside closing all programs to ensure they aren’t bogging down GPU and CPU performance, here are some other things to do.

Fix the CSGO FPS bug

Did you know that there’s a longstanding bug in CSGO that inexplicably lowers FPS when playing? Luckily there’s a simple console command that can fix it. Unfortunately this is only a treatment for the bug and not a proper cure, so players are still waiting on Valve to fix this.

Optimize your GPU settings

Those programs specifically designed for graphics cards aren’t just there to slow down launching Windows. They typically have a lot of options and features that can help improve how a game looks and runs, as well. Here’s a guide on how to optimize with an Nvidia GPU but the tenets hold up for any manufacturer.

Change some settings in Windows 10

Windows Vista famously made a lot of computers run a lot worse than they did on Windows XP and while Windows 10 is much better than Vista or Millenium Edition back in the day, it’s still not quite perfect. There are a few different settings that can be changed to help games, including CSGO, run more smoothly. Here’s how to do it.