With Valve hinting something for this Wednesday, the official release feels ever closer, and more players are expected to rush in for their own experience of the long-awaited Counter Strike 2 after months of gluing their eyes on their favorite content creators.

“What are you doing next Wednesday?” was used by Valve before dropping CS:GO’s biggest update back in 2019, when they introduced the Panorama UI and the Danger Zone mode.

So far, nothing has been confirmed, but the community is leaning towards a potential open beta and new game content.

Regardless of what’s coming, having the best CS2 settings is vital to have a smooth gaming experience, considering the game is an upgrade with a complete overhaul of the previous game, including upgraded graphics, lighting and more.

Join us in this guide to learn about the best CS2 settings and get ready for the game's release!

Best CS2 Settings

Video settings:

Color mode: Computer Monitor
Brightness: 110%
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Resolution: 1920×1080
Display mode: Fullscreen
Refresh rate: Max
Laptop power savings: Disabled

Best CS2 Settings: In-game, graphics and system

Advanced video settings:

Boost player contrast: Disabled - Improves the visibility of players in low-contrast situations
Wait for Vertical Sync: Disabled Current video values preset: Custom
Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: 2X MSAA - Objects have a smooth appearance at the edges
Global Shadow Quality: High
Model / Texture Detail: Medium - Controls the resolution of textures
Texture Filtering Mode: Bilinear - Improves the texture appearance
Shader Detail: Low - Controls the sophistication of the lighting and shading effects on surfaces
Particle Detail: Low - Particle effects to cast shadows
Ambient Occlusion: Disabled - Calculates lighting
High Dynamic Range: Quality - Controls the range of brightness
FidelityFX Super Resolution: Disabled (Highest Quality) - Rendering at reduced resolution and upscaling
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: Enabled - use Boost if you’re using a limited CPU - Reduces system latency

Game settings

Game:

Max Acceptable Matchmaking Ping: 100
Max Acceptable Game Traffic Bandwidth: Unrestricted
Community Notification location: Top right
Enable Developer Console: Yes
Install Counter-Strike Workshop tools: No

Team:

Show Team Positions in hud: Show location and equipment
Show teammate colors in competitive: Show colors
Use teammate colors on ID: No
Friends lobby default permissions: Friends need invites
Looking to play when Counter-Strike starts: Remember last state

Communication:

Player pings: Display and sound
Mute enemy team: No
Mute all but friends: No
Hide Avatar Images: Preference
Clean player names: Preference

Radar:

Radar centers the player: Yes
Radar is rotating: yes
Radar Hud size: 1
Radar Map zoom: 0.60
Toggle shape with scoreboard: Yes

Best CS2 mouse settings:

Although mouse settings are relatively straightforward, sensitivity, raw input, and mouse acceleration are important things you need to get just right. Outside of these, there's one crucial number you should pay attention to and it's eDPI.

eDPI is all about how fast your mouse moves on the screen. It's a combination of your mouse's DPI, which measures how sensitive it is, and your in-game sensitivity setting.

When it comes to sensitivity and DPI, it comes down to your personal preference. However, there's a widely accepted guideline in the Counter-Strike community, and this remains true in CS2: it's usually better to keep your DPI low as making it higher can be more difficult to be precise.

Best NVIDIA settings for CS2:

Image Scaling: Off
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Anisotropic filtering: Off
Antialiasing – FXAA: Off
Antialiasing – Gamma correction: On
Antialiasing – Mode: Application-controlled
Background application Max Frame Rate: Off
CUDA – GPUs: All
DSR – Factors: Off
Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
Preferred refresh rate: Application-controlled
Shader Cache Size: Driver Default
Texture Filtering – Anisotropic sample option: On
Texture Filtering – Negative COD bias: Allow
Texture Filtering – Quality: High performance
Texture Filtering – Trilinear optimization: On
Threaded optimization: Auto
Triple buffering: Off
Vertical sync: Off
Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 1
Virtual Reality – Variable Rate Super Sample: Off

Optimized system settings for CS2

1: Turn on gaming mode:

This is a setting that manages system resources for better performance when playing.

Press the Start button on your keyboard and type Game
Click Game Mode Settings when it appears at the top of the Start menu
Click the button to turn on Game mode

2: Turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling:

Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling allows your system to optimize performance and reduce latency.

Press the Start button and search for Graphics Settings
Then click to turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling
Scroll down and view the settings for "graphics performance preference." From there, you can choose the app to set your preference. For Nvidia, this is the Nvidia Control panel. You can select this as a desktop app or Microsoft Store app via the dropdown
Click on the app, click options and select high performance

3: Adjust settings for best performance:

By default, Windows is designed to prioritize the best visual aesthetics, making everything look fancy with smooth animations and polished edges. However, these high-quality settings can harm your gaming performance. It's a good idea to consider turning them off or tweaking them to favor performance over appearance if you're into gaming.

Press the Windows start button on your PC or keyboard and type appearance and performance
Click on "Adjust the performance and appearance of Windows" when it appears
Look for the setting that says "adjust for the best performance"
Select that and click apply
On the advanced tab, click to check that best performance is set for programs and not background tasks