The COMPLETE CS:GO Settings Guide 2023 (Resolution, Crosshair, FPS, Keybinds, More)

people have literally requsted this for years but I felt I didn't have anything interesting/new to add so I didn't make it. This time around I did as much research as I could into what are the actual best CSGO Settings and some things that other videos didn't touch on in regards to visibility settings, keybinds, fps optimization, resolution, and that type of thing. hopefully this tells you something you didn't already know.
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As far as sensitivity, the edpi you're comfortable with may depend on the mouse you use as well. I went from a heavier mouse to a Viper Ultimate (one of the lightest around), and although I could never get used to low sens arm aiming on the old mouse, I find it much easier with this lighter one. I assume it's down to inertia; it's easier to control something precisely when it requires less force to move it.
So, don't be afraid to adjust your sens to account for your hardware; you might be built for low sens, but if your mouse makes it hard, then just bump it up a little until you replace it by desire or necessity.

Few more points about resolution: 4x3 runs better across the board, since FoV matters a fair bit. Objects outside your FoV won't be rendered. Also, 4:3 stretched misrepresents sound direction, since sounds stay unaffected even if your low FoV is stretched.

Thanks for everything you provide bro. The videos and tips are actually getting better and better. Just managed to climb to Supreme after 7 months from MG1 after weeks of practice and dedication.

The input scaling should generally be done on the display instead of gpu since it beside the input lag also make the scaling a lot better, better clear image :=)

I grew up playing 4:3 from old versions of CS. But till about a year ago I went with 16:9 because on 4:3 the player models just moved way to quickly for me. So after switching 16:9, i could see an improvement to my reaction time when it came to players peeking. Now I do sometimes switch to 16:10, more specifically 1650x1080. But that's only if I want slightly wider player models, compared to 16:9.

To prevent the accidental mousewheel jumping, I use an alias script. When I hold down the alt key, mwheeldown is bound to jump. When I let go, it's bound to something else (but you could choose to have it unbound also).

Sensitivity is a weird topic. I was playing on 1.2 for a week but noticed that I don't hit heads like I used to do. Then I went to 1.00 (with 800 dpi) it was too slow. In the end I ended up using 1.05 which doesn't seem significant but it did help quite a lot

-frequency 165 -language banagaming are great launch options as well if you have a variable refreshrates monitor and run a secondary screen. And the custom language cleans up a lot of the UI and you see stuff like based thrown in chat easier.

Thanks Voo. I never knew 16x AF added input lag.
I never lower this on any game as it has a

You don't actually need to have your autoexec in the launch options as long as you type exec autoexec in console in the game menu once (not everytime you open the game, just the first after you've added the autoexec or added anything in it)
Another bind I think is quite useful at times is a toggle for voice_scale 0, so in case you get very loud teammates and you need silence for a bit you press it. The advantage of voice scale over voice enable is that you still see their names as they speak, which is a quick reminder in case you don't listen to them.

Another Bind I would recommend is increasing the game audio by ~15-25% when you hold shift:
alias +incvol "incrementvar volume 0 2 0.25; +speed"
alias -incvol "incrementvar volume 0 2 -0.25; -speed"
bind SHIFT "+incvol"

I went from 8000 dpi to 4500 and I saw a huge difference in my aim. I tried to go lower but it just seems so slow. At 4500 dpi I just sort of know how much to move it feels much more intuitive then any other dpi for me higher or lower. My mouse goes up to 16000 dpi

Great video. Just to add, there is a difference if a player has an amd cpu or an intel cpu. This changes some of the settings.
The only one i know is that you should have multicore rendering when using amd. But there are absolutly! more differences :)

I play on 16:9 with 2k resolution and I got used to that. Tryed to switch to 4:3 but it makes the game feel alot faster and i don't have time to react accordingly. Does it make any difference for me to lower the resolution to 1080p for example ? I am asking that because my game runs at 320-400 fps with my go to settings and my monitors has only 144hz.

I personally use the radial menu for nade changing, I think it's quite fast and I don't need a bunch of different keys binded by doing so.

Regarding the dpi thing, you should definitely try out some "standard" settings first and then evolve from there, when I first started I used 400 dpi and 2.2 sens, and even after like 2 years almost I decided to change it because it never felt right for me, and currently I am using 800 dpi and 1.5 sens and I feel so much more comfortable, it is fast (1200 edpi) but it's not ridiculously fast, but I am much more consistent than I was with lower sensitivity. So yeah it's definitely something that you should take your time to figure out, it may take weeks, months or even like in my case some years lol.

One thing I think that isnt mentioned about 4:3 is it actually makes angles easier to peek because 16;9 condense everything it makes a lot of the peek zones smaller. so for example when you are covering 2 angles at once back and fourth it requires more precision where as the stretch makes the angles a lot more broad the textures are more square and its easy to centre yourself with larger objects to reference yourself from// and you aim in that general area and your still covering the angle. its kind of hard to explain I just feel like its a bit more then how you perceive it to be just (being frames and less clutter.)

I've tried playing lower resolutions, and low settings for everything but I find it really hard to see enemies at a distance and consistently aim at their heads, so i stick to 1080p and put 2x antialiasing to help with that as well as the digital vibrance/brightness

just a lil side note. for higher visibility and game awareness add the bananagaming language pack. makes all nades have diffrent colors in the chat and overall more streamlined text. been using it since 2016 and i have always felt like i play the wrong game without it.

Warning! The CPU0 thing is very old now from what it seems, because from my testing it drastically LOWERS FPS, from benchmarks to static scenes (When CPU0 is unchecked FPS drops from ~330 to ~260 on mirage mid for example). Do check how it works on your system before you commit to making it permanent!

Thanks so much for the sensitivity, i had 400 dpi and 5 sensitivitet and when i lowerd it to 2 even though i had never tried such a low sense i instantly got better aim

Nice vid, 1 more importent setting to change its default, pull out the picked weapon must be on "NO".
and about the crosshair its a personal prefernce at the end, but it also depend on what kind of aimer u r, like if u r that kind of player who plays with high sen and depend more on spraying and transfering a lot i recommend to use a bit big crosshair, and if you like to tap more or shoot by a small bursts then better to go with a small crosshair.

Using MSAA xn (n can be 2,4, etc) can and will use your GPU more on higher resolutions. So if you have play at 1080p, 1440p, and especially 2k, assuming you have at least around a GTX 1080/ti level of GPU you should enable at least MSAA x2. This will net you higher FPS and use your GPU more and make the game less CPU bound. However, be careful at 4k especially with RTX 3xxx cards as they can output super high framerates causing your video card to get extremely hot. Much hotter than any stress test. I find that capping the FPS is 100% necessary if you run the game at 4k and I am not alone in this. If I leave the framerate uncapped, I get 300-350w usage on my GPU with big transient spikes that can and will crash your computer.
This is a common issue on RTX 3xxx cards. Halo MCC was killing GPUs similarly.
Furmark, Doom Eternal, Cyberpunk 2077, etc are nothing compared to how hard CSGO pushes my GPU.

If you would like a radar zoom toggle bind, here's one that works good:
bind "h" "incrementvar cl_radar_scale 0 1 0.25"
where if you press h each time it zooms more in or more out. Helpful for when you want to locate the bomb on your radar.

Just a note for the crosshair - I recommend new players to use dynamic crosshair and switch to static later.
Reason for dynamic is that they can see their movement and impact of it on their aim (they will miss more because they are moving and not because their crosshair is not perfect).

As an ex-patreon and long time viewer, I have to say your content is getting better and better and I am loving it!

3:38 actually if u turn FXAA anti-aliasing at 8x u can see for example the crack on B site Mirate balcony towards underpass more clear , at Disabled setting u can see the crack at certain position and every other position u see a black spot , which can be fixed with 8x FXAA

Speaking of settings, ever thought of uploading at 1440p/60 for that higher bitrate? Would be interesting to see hit reg better when you're doing more aiming-orientated/smoke lineup vids.

My 2 cents to key binds:
[1] = flash
[2] = smoke
[3] = HE
[4] = fire
[5] = c4
[Q] = primary weapon
[E] = secondary weapon
mouse4 and mouse5 (mouse buttons on the side, if you have it) for knife and last weapon equipped
I've been playing with this key mapping since CS 1.6 (no fire obv).

for the jump bind you can also type
bind „key you want“ „+jump; -attack“
When you do this you dont need a autoexec.

Thank you for such a comprehensive video Voo! I do have a question. I recently did one of those "perfect sensitivity" video things and found that my "perfect" sensitivity is 1.21 (using 400dpi); thus, my eDPI would be 484. Is this a realistic sensitivity to use or should I raise it?

9:53 If you have the problem that sometimes you jump accidentaly while shooting you can use this bind to prevent that from happening:
alias +shoot "+attack; unbind mwheelup"; alias -shoot "-attack; bind mwheelup +jump"; bind mouse1 "+shoot"
(Change mwheelup with mwheeldown if you have boundit to mousewheeldown instead).

I would really like to try out 4:3 streched
But unfortunately Borderless only works with 16:9 which is a no go for me because I really hate tabbing out to do something on my second monitor while playing

Beautiful video, skilled commentary and overall video construction.

Linus Tech Tips did a video on the competitive advantage of 800 dpi over 400 so I would recomend if you run 400 switch to 800 but half your ingame sens. The higher dpi will give the mouse slightly less latency

if you want a crosshair nade lineup bind, try this:
bind "UPARROW" "toggle cl_crosshairsize 3 1000"
where cl_crosshairsize 3 can be replaced by your crosshair size value aka "length" in the in-game crosshair settings menu. If you press it once more it toggles back to your regular crosshair.

Tbh multisample anti-aliasing is the one setting you can increase sometimes if you have a bottleneck because it gets the game to use more GPU, because of this sometimes you get more fps

Bomb drop bind isnt for terrible teammates only. I use it when I have to pass a high risk location on the map. Dust2 long or inferno B site entry for instance. I throw the bomb, so when i get killed, the bomb can be picked up on the safe side. Also sometimes we have a bomb carrier or someone whosimply requests the bomb. This bind can really be a time saver, as you dont have to perform multiple actions on the keyboard.
Last but not least, you dont need an extra bind to deploy the bomb. When on a bombsite, simply press “use” button. It will select the bomb automatically.

What setting makes you be able to see objects ourside of the play area on maps, like the chimneys over A-main on cache. For smoke lineups and stuff.

Yay, that yearly video that will always have success :)
Also thanks for doing the boring stuff, it's great for newcomers and people who're coming back to CS!

I wholeheartedly disagree about your comments regarding antialiasing. The jagged edges that you get without any kind of AA can be extremely irritating, not just for your eyes in general,
but when trying to spot even the tiniest bit of movement on your screen. DEFINITELY enable AA.

Mr. Voo, at 5:56 the keybind you have mentioned for radar toggle is Bind "v" "cl_radar_scale 1.0 0.4" but it should be Bind "v" "toggle cl_radar_scale 1.0 0.4". Please edit it for the greater good :)

I kinda wish you talked about audio. I often miss footsteps others hear, but I don't want the game so loud that I can't hear my teammates while I'm firing. I don't know what settings to use to balance this out. Kinda wish the video mentioned it.

I went from 800/2.0 to 800/1.75 to now 800/1.5 and I am not sure it's an improvement.
It turns out my mouse has an LED indicator for the DPI using RGB. So it's like Red, Purple, Blue, Green. For 400,800,1600 and 3200. But if the blue LED is dead you get Red, Red, off, Green.
And I was on the 2nd red(800) when I followed the suggestion a long time ago.
I still overflick a bit so I might go even less. Will see what my aim is like in 2 months with higher end games and daily aim practice.

Space bar for flash, 4 for smoke, V for molly, 6 for decoy, B for HE nade trust.

hey voo at the end of every video you should do a sort of "so what did we learn?" thing and then you quickly list off things you learn in like a quickfire sort of gig. i think the "so what did we learn?" would fit really well with the personality you show on your youtube channel and it would help me and probably other players gain more from the videos.

Wow, this is just what I needed. I can actually play the game now that I'm not getting 40 fps. Thanks!

"-high" setting might be usefull if you got many processes running at once, then the computer will know that CS:GO is more important than them, so for example it might suspend other processes like Discord when there are not enough resources

interesting to note higher DPI has less input lag with a polling rate of 1000hz 1600 DPI has the least amount of deviation with input lag and is basically the sweat spot whereas 400DPI gives the most deviation and is just generally bad so really the pros just happen to play on that because of personal preference from source or 1.6 moral of the story play on 1600 DPI and change your in-game sense to match the pro players EDPI without those downsides
Heres a video that actually goes over this; uaclips.com/video/mwf_F2VboFQ/відео.html

Sensetivity is and i mean IS a personal preference. It comes down to muscle memory. If u have a low sens u just have to move your mouse longer, u csn do that just as fast as with the "pro" settings. What u should say is, very low sens where u have to move your mouse from one side of the table to the other is not good, but if u can do 180 with the space u have on the mouse pad or table, then u have same reaction as "pro" settings. Settings dont make u pro. I agree with the video settings ur spot on there, but the sens it is personal preferwnce as long as u can do 180 without the mouse running of the table.

unrelated to most of this video, but an idea i got while watching:
wouldn't it be awesome to be able to play 4:3 for extra fps but have ui elements like radar and money and inventory be displayed on what would otherwise be black bars?

If you want 4:3 and not a pixelated mess, you can create a custom res of 1440x1080 (if your monitor is 1080p) and you get full range on the Y axis but you stretch the game anyway, better viewing experience, same fat characters uwu

fun fact, you don't need the exec file for jump bind. use bind "F" "+jump; -attack; -jump" and all you have to do is pull the pin before pressing the jump bind

FXAA should be on! The antialisasing makes fences and things flicker less when moving, which can take your focus off the real enemies

Hi, I have trouble understanding how it can be possible to play between 600 to 1000 EDPI. I was re-activating my steam after more than 15 years and I checked this for first settings - back in the day I played Logitech mx518 ( I think it had 800dpi back then) with 1.6 as ingame sensitivity which should result above 1200. With an EDPI in the mentioned range I need about 4 controlled swipes with the mouse to turn 180. As EDPI is a combination of ingame- sense and DPI it totally makes sense that it would be comparable between any person playing the game. Is the "quick turn" mentioned in the section connected to "quickly turn using a humongously sized mousepad by traveling like 30 centimeters across the pad " ? :-) That could work :) Thanks!

i play with g-syc and v-sync on and also i capped my fps to 236. Low latency mod on also. Now it's briliant. Smooth as a butter :)

Anyone have an opinion about the -high command? Does it really make a difference or it doesn't?

Higher fps isn't always better (this is one of those old gamer trends like High sense/fov back in the day), you generally don't want your fps to outrun your monitor refresh rate. This is not only good to prevent screen tear without using software like G-Sync or vSync, but this also helps with input lag and frame quality. I highly recommend watching videos about frame time and frame pacing. FPS and refresh rate don't tell the whole story.

I've always had trouble with sensitivity, I have unsteady hands so need to use low sens m, I tried 400dpi x 1.4 sens for 2 months and felt good, I could finally hit headshots easier, overall smoother aim, more consistent and less shaky! But I couldn't get the hang of constantly dragging the mouse to turn, so now I'm trying out 1.6 sens instead (640edpi) I can comfortably turn around quickly and still have decent aim, just have to get used to it now and see if I can aim at heads with my shaky aim 😄

Would really appreciate if you explained the ping binds, like point with mouse and ping

Just going to say that G-Sync does not limit FPS, although you can limit FPS and enable G-Sync. Simply run G-Sync with an unlimited FPS.

Im supreme at the moment and have over 2000 hours in game. I still have all my nades bound to the same key ("4"). If I want to flash I need to spam this key a few times to get the right grenade. I know it makes much more sense to bind each nade to a specific key but it would take too much time for me to unlearn and learn this. Something as sensitivity is easy to lower a fraction each time you get used to it but changing nadebinds would really suck muscle-memory wise

I'm playing at 2560x1600, 16:10 stretched and I love it.
Had to manually configure that res tho, and somehow I can't use my 165hz, but just use 144hz

im over here with 9k dpi
I've been slowly lowering it, down to around 4k and it seems to work for me.
with 9k I would miss a lot of shots because I either moved my mouse 1-50 pixels too far left/right and can't move my mouse onto their head as i can't nudge my mouse soft enough to move it onto their head. On the other hand, I got really good at flicks. It almost looks like aimbot because I just see an enemy and move and click onto their head/awp them so fast. and when it happens its very satisfying. (some days I can hit every shot and others I can't hit the broad side of a barn)
lowering my dpi did seem to help with consistency. I wont be disabling core 0 but I will try -high.

2:00 Actually if I use it, it locks my refresh rates at 170 FPS and keeps me constant 170 FPS, this only applies to PCs with old graphics cards

I just want to correct you that MSAA costs you a shitload of FPS, comparing x8 vs OFF. But, if you have a decent GPU, for example 1060/RX580 and upwards then definitely set MSAA at x2, x4 is the sweet spot. Unless you want the game to look jagged on the edges, which in terms makes the smoke lineup very difficult. Also makes the game extremely unpleasant to peek into since every edge just moves around.

As far as sensitivity goes I tell any new player I run across if they're running 800 DPI then they don't need a sensitivity any higher than 2 and try to keep it below 2 at all costs.

Some thoughts, I bind my mouse wheel both ways to fire, as well as my left mouse, this way if I find myself in a pistol spray fight I can just spin that thing. I picked that up in source.
I also bind my crouch to space and my jump to my mouse side button. not sure why exactly but its much more comfortable for me

I do not agree that 16:9 gives you an advantage: you rarely need that extra width. Wider models is superior than the wider POV, IMHO

Well you dont need to copy entire config into autexec. Its just messy, any empty text file will do.
Core 0 is where most your system stuff runs, so its not terrible idea switch csgo to different cores, but csgo is 64bit application thatutilize more cores(Multicore rendering in video setting section), so its not big help. Can cause more problems as you said.

do you know how to keep a bind command from unbinding every time you relaunch cs:go? I like to hear myself speak in the mic, so I have to use voice_loopback 1 to hear myself speak while using the mic, but when i exit and relaunch it returns back to where I can no longer hear myself speak when using the mic, so I had to bind a key bind l "video_loopback 1" and I have to press it at least once after every relaunch, it's annoying tho cuz if I don't press it I can't hear myself speak at all.. do most people use the mic and not hear themselves speak? that's just weird to me. I wish it would keep it turned on tho.

Most important key bind in MM is definetly a nice and friendly middle finger to show how superior u are to everyone else on the server

Wow I did everything in the video and now I have walls, bunny hop, and aim lock! You're the best!

BEST BIND FOR ME IS THE JUMPDUCK BIND where u press a key and it does the perfect duck and jump to reach some boxes in a single key.i bind it on spacebar.

I use:
F for Flash
G for Smoke
V for Molotov
C for HE
X for Decoy

i have played cs for over 10 years on and off with my jump always bound to scroll wheel up so i can bhop everywhere (space is also on jump) and i've never, NEVER accidentally jumped in a gun fight or had my scroll wheel randomly click over and do it itself

MSAA is NOT entirely graphical.. If you play a lower resolution like 1024x768 it's good to use 4x MSAA.
If you're peeking ramp on mirage as a ct for example, especially with a deagle and you can see their heads much more clearly. Or if you're holding palace and it's a very tight gap. Without msaa it looks weird, gap gets bigger and smaller just by moving your mouse slightly, cause the resolution is so low. So the gap may go from 3 to 6 pixels wide even though it should look the same. And their heads may do the same thing.

A keybind I've used for a while that really helps me is Spacebar walk. I jump with scroll wheel and when pressing shift I feel less comfortable.

3:00 this setting in most of the maps like dust an inferno make changes so smoke line ups will be different

I never get why so many still use the terrible jumpthrow alias command when you can use a simple bind for it which clears up your config by a lot. Don't use alias command, just this one:
bind "v" "+jump; -attack;"

4:3 makes heads wider that’s why pros use it. It basically zooms in your field of view

I have felt the experience of having a high end computer as before the pandemic i went to lan cafes to play my games and was always MG than after i went to my home PC which is rather old and even with the low aspects and resolutions i have around 70 fps at best i went down to nova 1 but when restrictions got loose and i started going to lan cafes which had around 120 fps i had a 12 game win streak with my friends all the way up to nova 4 but than got quarantined again. So i believe for lesser PCs these settings will really play a big role as from 1-100 fps really makes a big difference .

PLEASE HELP: If I use the crosshair toggle, it removes my own crosshair and replaces it with a standard one

I have found a very useful keybind; voice_enable 0. I use this always when I don't need any more information from my Russian teammates when they have died. Then of course voice_enable 1 for the start of the next round.

I've got more than 5k hours of playtime in csgo and use the scroll wheel to go thru my weapons. I know it sounds stupid but I got so used to it that I'm insanely good at it. My mouse has really nice and pronounced steps on the scroll wheel so I can feel exactly how many steps I need to do to get to my nades and everything else fast and without thinking. Scrolling up from the primary weapon gets you to the bottom as well so I pull out my knife by scrolling up one step.

Also I play wmat 1920x1440! I've always used 4:3 stretched, 1280x980 and then 1440x1080 but it was still pixelated/blurry at longer distance and I hate it, but at 1920x1080 it's stretched ofcourse and a pretty damn clear image! I have an okay pc so my fps still sits around 250-300,if I lower my res to 1280x980 I get closer to 200 fps 😆

I am using currently 1000 dpi and 4.27 sens in game)) I reached out to global rank and making 25 kills on average each game, but sometimes I fill inconsistent and gonna try low sens))

Hi, i have a problem with cs go.Every time i open it, it just minimizes and i have to use alt+tab several times to keep the game in fullscreen.Do you have a solution for this?
Great video btw!

As far as jumping with the mousewheel i ended up creating this little command line that rebinds my mousewheel to jump if i hold down my O key and binds it back to my default (pistol and main weapon) when O isn't pressed down. Also I rebound O to one of my side mousebuttons in the logitech drivers.
alias +makestandard1 "bind mwheelup +jump;bind mwheeldown +jump"
alias -makestandard1 "Bind mwheelup slot2;bind mwheeldown slot1"
bind "o" "+makestandard1"

I actually keep anti aliasing on because it's easier to distinguish some mangled pixels of an actual enemy, and it looks _s m o o t h_

for my jump bind i just bind everything to one key using ; to space out each command and it works fine

I play CS for more than 15 years and I dont fully agree with some of the video options you have there, this because people tendency is just focus one variable at a time, but in fact using different combinations affect a lot and its very different than just test one by one and for example for people that run 4:3 res, anti-aliasing combined with texture filtering will help you a lot so see long range players and to get that headshot, just an example I'm not saying what setting its better or worst and it's just my personal opinion, it is what it is.

I cant stress this enough, when 10 second defuse sound is off, you will know theres 10 seconds left due to the disappearance of sound. This is better because there are no sound distractions.

For anyone looking for quality of life changes, adding to the launch options. Use bananagamings language pack. Why? Becuause very grenade thrown by you and your teammate will show in different colors in chat. I had many situation where i set up my pc again, install cs, play and try to look for nades thrown(flashbangs for example, a great way to tell if your teammate wasted a flash orif the enemy tried to support an upcoming push). Its easy and the thing i install everytime i reinstall cs and my configs.

I tried 4:3 and it looks horrible，but enemies seem wider

+jump; +duck; bind let's you jump consistently higher and it.makes climbing on the mirage a site boxes and some other map obstacles a lot easier.

I woke up to this after going mental about should I stick with my resolution change or go back to what I used for the last year. This was perfect timing

You dont need that autoexe thing for jumpthrow just find workshop map called config generator and then you just click which button you want it to be in

Nice video, for jumpthrow i use:
bind "key" "+jump; -attack; -jump"