Best In-Game Video Settings for CS2

Video Settings

Playing CS2 with the best video settings can definitely make huge difference in your performance.

If you find it hard to see your opponents then it won't be easy to win the fire fights against them. Luckily for you, there are some settings you can play with to improve the visibility.

In this guide, we are going to show you how to finally get over the video settings problem and get you the best video settings you can find up to date.

The first thing we are going to show you is the "Video" tab. The 130% Brightness gives you a huge advantage to see your enemies if they are playing behind a molotov or even standing in a dark spot. The Resolution 1280x960, is the most played Resolution by CS2 Pros, basically this resolution makes the characters wider, so with this resolution hitting shots should be easier.

Then we move to the "Advanced Video Settings" - We recommend leaving this as we show you in the image below to secure the best experience you can get.

We can guarantee you with these settings you'll get the best gaming experience possible if you follow it properly.

How to see through Molotovs

Since molotov grenades are one of the most used utilities in Counter Strike, seeing through the molotov is a big advantage for every individual. To achieve that, you must follow the settings we have provided. Here is the difference of a molotov in high settings and in low settings.

Boost Player Contrast

We must say that a lot of players turn off the "Boost Player Contrast" setting, this is quite wrong because this setting increases the character's contrast against the background at far distances, strengthens edge pixels for characters at far distances, creates a small blur around a character to reduce background noise and finally creates a small contrasting halo around a character when there is no color difference between the character and the environment so turning it off will make you lose all these advantages, so make sure to it always keep it on.

Stretched vs Native resolution

The stretched vs Native argument has always been famous in Counter-Strike, to know which aspect ratio is better for you, you have to open your eyes about some points and ask yourself which one offers the best visibility? 16:9 or 4:3 Stretched? Even though that's a difficult question to answer let us make it easier for you, each one of them has their up and down sides so it's hard to make one side a winner.

16:9 has a massive perk and makes you be able to see more of the size of your screen meaning that you will be able to spot players that you otherwise wouldn't, even though that's an advantage, 4:3 also offers a big advantage which is that you can see your opponents bigger and wider especially at longer ranges.

16:9 has a lot more pixels to render than 4:3, fewer pixels means less graphical performance needed to render frames and therefore higher FPS, that means that 4:3 will be able to give you more FPS than 16:9 but that will make your game more snappy.

Here how characters would like in both aspect ratios:

With that being said we must say that FPS is super important, the more frames you have, the better. More FPS equals smoothest animations and low latency. CS2 is a processor based game so if you're looking to upgrade your hard ware, you should aim at the processor.

Vibrance

In some streams, you may notice that the game is very vibrant, that's because of the NVIDIA Control Panel vibrance settings, make sure to check out our topic about it: Best NVIDIA Settings for CS2.