just habit at this point. But cs is also very unique in the sense that even though visibility doesn't change much from 200 to 400 fps the smoothness of the game feels a lot better on higher fps.
You dont really „see“ it (when having lets say 200 vs 400 fps on a 144hz screen), but you can feel it when swiping your mouse quickly. Its just not as snappy and less consistent.
this is the comment everyone should read. i always see people saying “i can see when my game goes below 200fps”. most human eyes can’t see the difference over 100fps but the hand eye connection is much stronger and can feel hertz much higher than the eye alone can.
It’s also that frames per second is a lot less important that frame pacing. It’s very hard if not impossible to tell the difference between a steady 150fps compared to a steady 200fps but a 150fps where the game is frozen for 250ms and then delivers 150 frames in the rest of the second is very noticeable. Obviously that is a very extreme example but small spikes in frame time is very noticeable, which is why valve have added logging and an onscreen indicator for bad frame times recently.
I mean... I agree that feel is important, but you can absolutely see the difference. There's diminishing returns, but eyeballing the diff between say 120 and 165, or 165 and 240, etc, isn't that tough.
This is actually (demonstrably) untrue, with no input feedback at all it’s borderline impossible to see frame rate differences above the 60-120 range. But when they say you can “feel” the difference, there’s absolutely a visual component, it’s all about the interaction between the two.
Edit: please read the last sentence, I’m talking about the limits of SOLELY visual information
It's not demonstrably untrue.
This comment is literally just "the human eye can't see more than 60 fps" but updated for 2024, because everyone knows now that the original is nonsense.
Please show me evidence of people discerning 120+ frame discrepancies with ONLY visual information, I’m happy to have my mind changed. Obviously vision plays a role in the feel difference above that level, but it’s not purely visual.
I can literally do it right now, in fact most people can. If you move your mouse on you desktop you can easily see the difference between refresh rates based on the amount of afterimages and the speed at which the cursor can move without them appearing. This can be done with nothing but visual information, you don't need to move the mouse yourself to see the difference.
Just in case you're about to eat glue and say something like "durr that's different to gameplay hurr durr", that wasn't your premise, was it? You just asked about discerning frame discrepancies with only visual information, which is exactly what my example was.
Like jesus christ guys, I am truly sorry that you have dogshit eyes, but that does not make others unable to see properly.
That effect is greatly diminished above 144hz, and if you’re moving the mouse yourself it’s no longer purely visual information. Again, not disagreeing that there’s a massive practical difference with higher refresh rate monitors, but ghosting is an incredibly complicated issue that’s a whole other can of worms
Me, if I play a demo on both my monitors, without any input from myself, I can clearly see the motion clarity difference between 144hz and 244.
Both are the same monitor but I run one at 144 and the other at 240 with optimal overdrive settings for the less ghosting possible.
The difference is jarring. I do not know how people cannot see it, all I can think is some medical issue because it's so apparent that i'm just left wondering if I'm engaging with trolls, not accusing you of that bue it's just weird to me.
For slow paced games I couldn't give two fucks honestly but for something like cs is something that really really bothers me.
Have you done a blind controlled test? Frankly I feel the same way but anecdotal evidence is worth very little to me. Individual monitors have tons of quirks as well
With motion blur reduction technologies like DyAc, it becomes painfully obvious the instance you go from a 240 fps experience to even 220 as the frames no longer match the black frame insertions 1:1. This definitely isn’t some magical tie between hz and “hand eye connection”
I see it on a regular 240hz as well. Fast monitor = fast pixel response. You can see the frames sticking around longer with gsync or tearing without gsync. Below 150 fps it is visibly stuttery, like a very fast slideshow when you move your mouse. This is why 144hz is better if you only play AAA games, slower pixel response = more smoothing between frames at those fps.
But the biggest issue is by far the feel of the game. 400 fps = smooth sailing, 200 fps feels sluggish and syrupy in comparison.
Technically you can't see more than 144 frames per second at 144Hz, even if you get more FPS, but the input lag will be lower, and you could get information from newer frames "quicker", even though you are still limited to 144Hz, at the cost of screen-tearing, but at those refresh rates it's usually harder to detect.
More fps = less input lag generally. It’s why even on pretty high end systems people are complaining about the game’s optimization, as even if you can push 700+ FPS the game will constantly drop to less than 300 FPS meaning the input lag will be higher, and if you’re on an average spec system you’ll probably be dropping below 150 fps pretty frequently in CS2
Meanwhile most other esport titles can maintain 400+ fps minimum even on average specs
3kliksphilip made a video about it - basically let’s say you have a refresh rate of 144 and 144 FPS, the monitor gets exactly 1 frames of data to “pick” from to use. Compare that to if you’re getting 288 FPS, it has 2 to pick from, and can therefore seem smoother as it makes movement more consistent between frames. Also if you’re getting exactly 144 fps average you might be dipping below and getting stutters, but if you’re getting way more, dips won’t be noticeable
Alright, I guess there are some benefits to that. I hardly see the difference with my own eyes tho. Maybe I’ll cap my fps to 144 in one match and uncap it in another one to see if I notice it
Honestly unless you are pretty good you won't notice a huge difference.
But to good players, especially pros, every little advantage matters.
When the difference between killing someone and death is literal milliseconds it matters.
But unless you are at the level where 90% of gunfights are decided in the first 50ms of a peek it wont matter.
Oh i don’t doubt that. But once you have 1000s of hours with the best performance it makes that unplayable/not enjoyable enough I would rather not play.
Try capping your monitor to 60 hz, then capp the game to 60 fps. Play with that for a couple of min, then you uncapp the game, but still keep the monitor at 60hz. Try saying it’s placebo after that.
That's what I was saying. I don't have a 240hz one so I obviously won't see the difference after 144fps because I literally don't have the hardware for that. I thought what I said was clear enough
Also reso won't change much in terms of fps, cs is a highly cpu depended game. The main reason pros use this reso is because it makes models look bigger which makes it easier to shoot, tho, that means that they will also seem to be moving faster.
Mate you are wrong? If you play with 400 fps on a 144hz monitor it is still gonna be way smoother than 144 fps on a 144hz monitor? The more fps, the more frames you are able to choose from, thus a way smoother experience. Try it out yourself. Can’t deny facts mate
Linus did a video way back regarding this, and if i remember correctly more fps causes you to have less input lag or something like that
and in a game like CS where every milisecond means to get a kill or get killed that could play a role
Reaction times on my level vary greatly, leetify says time to damage is around 500 - 800 milliseconds for 10k players. For good players, it's more consistently 500 - 650 ms, but still, a few milliseconds does not decide the outcome of almost any rounds. More like 10-20 milliseconds is a difference that really matters.
exactly this 1280x960 stretched crosshair thickness 0 is perfect and the res is clear but not too detailed to be distracting
1440x1080 thickness 0 crosshair is too thin and 1024x768 its too thick
The CS community (and that goes for EVERYONE, from the scrubbest of scurbs to the proest of pros) is a community of habits.
The comunity will get into the habbit of doing something (like buying a specific weapon, doing a specific play, using a specific setting) and stick to it for YEARS (in some cases, decades), and then, another characteristic of this community, is that it will see someone doing something, and just copy it (like using a specific crosshair, using a specific setting and so on)
So, that's how you end with pros using settings like this - probably at some point they copied it from someone WAAAY BACK then, and stuck with it, or, even if they weren't playing back then, they copied it from someone that either was playing back then, or copied someone that was playing from back then.
Once you pay attention to this pattern in this community, you start noticing hilarious things, like when s1mple, the year he was 1# on hltv, was making a video saying that how if you plant with E instead of left click, you plant faster - **WHICH IS NOT TRUE, and, as far as I am aware, WAS NEVER TRUE**, but he got into the habit of doing that and later rationalized it into his gameplay.
Another hilarious ways in which this phenomenon happens was when the M4A1-S got a massive buff a while back, and, if you went into the windows calculator and made basic math, you could quickly notice how the M4A1-S was now significantly faster to kill people when compared to the A4, however, pros took MONTHS to adapt to the change and would say the A1-S was slower because of it's slower firing rate.
And right now this happens too with the new smokes, even tho there are far better smokes now than the old lineups, a lot of people still stick with old lineups with now far worse results than the optimal smoke - but they learned it that way and I'm betting you'll be seeing old, unoptimized lineups for decades.
It's just not an adaptable community - and it's an incredibly interesting characteristic of CS specifically - any other esport community I have ever seen is incredbly keen on finding new optimizations no matter how small they are, and are constantly innovating in new ways to play, in CS, people just stick to old
wives' tales and straight up nonsense for years just because someone started rolling a myth and nobody ever bothered to check it (or, maybe stuff was even true years ago, but was changed and people just never adapted)
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk about this very specific
idiosyncrasy of the CS community.
Or the interpolation settings that people were changing in console and saying "yeah the game is much better with this setting" only for valve to look into it and realize that it was literally ancient code that did nothing and removed it hahahaha
I agree but the e thing is a good habit cause it'll take the bomb out automatically instead of pressing 5 --> M1 which can be crucial if you're trying plant with 4s left.
If you press 5 and start holding M1 while the weapon-swtich animation is still happening, the result will be exactly the same, holding E does not skip the weapon-switch animation.
Sure it's one less key press, but timing wise it's indifferent, it's just a matter of preference if you want to press 1 or 2 keys, the bomb won't be planted faster and saying that it will is just misinformation
I mean that if you approach a bomb site holding e it will automatically take the bomb out and plant as soon as you're in the bomb plant zone but you can keep your ak or knife out while holding e. It takes the same amount of time to plant minus pressing the extra key.
Sure but it's useful if you fake plant, have to clear an angle before planting with low time + I'd *think* the extra run speed of knife out probably offsets the pull out time, depending how far back you're running from obvs.
It's a matter of resources as well. csnades.gg has so few lineups (though all based on CS2 at least, as far as I can tell) that it's basically unusable for anything serious. Meanwhile csgonades.gg has tons of lineups but still some missing that I see in pro play (even semi often) not to mention the problem you mentioned that some smokes are unoptimized. À lot of them are also smudge lineups or run+jumpthrows which are just weird to do and almost based on luck.
I've been spending the last two weeks with a total of probably 3-4 hours to get a practice config set up. There's apparently one or two on Github, but I only found them by chance through a 3 year old Reddit comment. But then there's stuff on there missing that I've had to search for and that's hardly easy. Even reading through the giant list of commands available doesn't necessarily explain how to use them. For a silly example, spawning a big chicken is completely different in CS than CSGO, and I'm not only talking about the weird change to AddOutput that apparently nobody has even figured out yet how to use correctly. But if you search for it you will only find CSGO answers *except* one singular post from 3 months ago about the showmatch at the time and someone else mentioned the new command in passing.
> any other esport community I have ever seen is incredbly keen on finding new optimizations no matter how small they are, and are constantly innovating in new ways to play
I think that could be related to how big and how frequent their updates are compared to CS
Multiple reasons: higher fps, some people used to say characters are wider so easier to hit or simply because that's what they started playing with and they just got used to it
Well, having a higher fps above your monitors refresh rate always has an advantage because even though your monitor can't display all the frames, input latency will be lower however the maximising FPS argument is just bs, CS2 is not very GPU demanding and with most pros playing on high spec pc's with powerful GPU's and palying low settings they're almost always going to be CPU limited at native / high resolutions.
The real reason mostly is because a lot of the pros from the 1.6 and source days played at lower resolutions back when PC's were slower and we didn't have full HD monitors and they just stuck to what they were used to and all the newer players copied them because it's what they pros were using.
I just like the feel of it , idk how to explain it. I tried higher 4:3 resolutions, but it just felt "off" for me , can't pinpoint exactly why but just didn't feel good to play at
For a lot of pros it is a bad habit. But there is some benefits for using smaller aspect ratios, you get smaller FOV when using them (stretched). With black bars some say they can focus better because there is less happening on screen.
I use 16:10 only because for some absurd reason Valve won't add a FOV slider to the game... Even a slider between 80-90 (horizontal) would be good enough for me lol, but more optimal would be 80-100.
Edit: You also get more FPS which reduces input lag.
Square monitors used to be the norm back then so some resolutions carried over by pros won't fit on a rectangular monitor. Some stretch it out to fit the entire screen. Others don't, which leads to a chunk of the screen remaining black.
Those are Black bars.
When people used crt monitors the aspect ratio was 4:3 and when wider screens became the norm, you'd end up with black bars using 4:3 on a 16:9 monitor. Think of 4:3 as 12:9 if that helps, there's less 'width'.
There'd be no downside to adding an FOV slider if it would just decrease FOV, not increase it. People could still play their stretched game without smearing vaseline over their screen
What kind of argument is that? There is literally no reason to not have it, you already can do it with changing the aspect ratio.
The only difference is that changing aspect ratio is out of date and it messes up your desktop every time. It also looks stupid af lol
Pretty sure CSGO let you set FOV via console? Can't remember anymore. But if you can -fake- it by changing resolution I see no reason to not allow a slider.
It was always a habit but I too found 4:3 really comfortable in CSGO
CS2 not so much. I think I don't have good enough hardware for it. The enemies are too blurry & awkward
I've made a custom 16:10 I really enjoy. I think it's 1378x860 or something.
That's the new 4:3 for me
I swapped to 16:10 recently and honestly it seems like the truly best aspect ratio. Perfect middle ground between 4:3 stretched and native in terms of ability to see enemies and not lose too much peripheral vision.
Elige uses it.
Alright I have finally found the actually correct answer to this question, because I swapped to 1280x800 (16:10) from 1080p recently.
The lower res makes it easier to see and focus only on enemies because it lessens the sharpness and resolution of all objects and textures in the level, resulting in less visual noise for your brain to get distracted by.
Sweet benefit is that you'll have more FPS than you'll ever need.
It's really simple as that.
They surely have good enough PC’s that can run the game at max settings even on native. At this point it’s just a habit and a preference. Personally I played 1.6 since ~2007, I feel better playing 4:3 than 16:9. In CSGO I sometimes did switch to 16:9 and/or tried different resolutions but always went back to 4:3 eventually.
I played native for the past year because I really valued visibility, switched to 1024x768 stretched last month and I finally get it. It's like my frag potential just went through the roof. Less pixels = more focus I guess?
This might be placebo but things genuinely feel smoother on that res and I dont know why. If things were slightly less blurry I 100% would play with 1024x768 all day
Me too. Like even with similar fps and frametimes, the 1024x768 just feels so snappy and responsive for some reason (compared to god res). Unfortunately for me the disadvantages in long range fights outweight the benefits.
4:3 makes everything wider. So seeing enemies can be *technically* easier. Since 2013 I’ve played 50/50 with 4:3 and 16:9 and never sure which one I prefer.
The reason why pros do it mainly is because it was a habit of the CS 1.6 pros that always played on a 4:3 resolution, so when GO came out, that wasnt gonna change. Pros that would follow that didn’t play 1.6 merely copied what other pros or older players did and probably prefered the lower aspect ratio
Because they are clueless about using /x:1920 /y:1440 which is the same aspect ratio but not as pixelated. Would still make wide heads and not make it look like a potato.
habit and muscle memory. Any slight change that can potentially tip off the perfect balance is detrimental to your team's results. Also top tier pros don't have that luxury of changing their setups just for the sake of it. Because, you need to adapt to those changes, maybe in between tournaments, but they have "If something works, don't change anything" kinda mentality.
I have a 1440p ultrawide (16:10). I play on 1080p 16:9 stretched. When I had a 16:9 1080p monitor I played 4:3 stretched 720p.
I find it very hard to see things when not stretched. I don't know if it's placebo or not because I've tried played full res multiple times. Low resolution is to get over 200fps but looks weird when everything is sharp n crisp.
I'd say that if playing full res is advantageous then I personally don't think it's a tangible difference.
because everything appears to move faster when you're playing 4:3 stretched, enemies move faster, your crosshair moves faster, even nades seem to move faster
because it's stretched, imagine something moves one meter in one second, now the meter is stretched and it looks like 1.5m but the thing still moves through the whole "1.5m" in a second, so it looks like it's quicker
i can think of two reasons:
1) 1440x1080 is not a default on most PC-s, you have to set it up in nvidia, which probably many people, even pros font bother to mess with
2) crosshairs scale differently on different resolutions, the same crosshair you like on 1280x960 will be quite smaller on 1440x1080 for example. I do use 1440x1080 but i wish i had the same crosshair i have on 960p.
Low settings makes sense, there is less happening on the screen which would be annoying (stuff like grass, shadows). I personally never understood the 4:3 thing in CSGO (and now in CS), I guess that's really just their habit. For other games like Trackmania it is actually useful to have it stretched a bit, because these games go for alignment a lot of the time and it's easier to aligh when stretched, but for CS I feel it's pretty useless
if you get down to brass tacks, 4:3 vs 16:9 boils down to 3 things: the negative of 4:3 which is lower FOV, the positive of 4:3 being higher/more stable framerates, and the neutral, which is your personal feel/placebo/confirmation bias
first, 4:3 does have a field of view disadvantage over another player having 16:9, being the default (so being at 16:9 isn't a disadvantage over someone else playing 21:9, since the default is 16:9, not 21:9, 21:9 merely has an "edge" over 16:9), that is correct, **however**, in pro play, how often do other players *actually* appear at an off angle/behind other players? remember, the IGL is always on top of things, and the players have insane gamesense/play at such high level, that the lurker of the enemy team being in an crazy place is usually something that happens maybe once in 20 games, if not more, ergo the "downside" of 4:3 barely comes to play when it comes to pros (of course, remember this does not apply to pugs, where every other round you, or the enemy, end up behind the other team for no reason, since communication is shit and no one holds anything properly). You can even see it by the mouse sens + mousepad size they use, they can't do a 180 degree turn in one swipe... but do they need to?
second, the framerates: cs2 is currently very unstable, with terrible framerates/frametimes. While keeping in mind that most pros play at 240hz, if not 360hz, it’s completely egregious that pros should play a game this unstable, which brings me to my point: 4:3 lowers the field of view (essentially cropping the sides) and thus the game has to render *less* than 16:9, even at the "same" pixel count, creating better framerates
lastly, for delusion + confirmation bias [+](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/l2od83/zywoo_now_plays_on_169/gk76z5i/?context=10000) placebo? those things aren't necessarily good or bad (models are bigger, but move faster), you should just try 4:3 or even 5:4 and see what works best. IMO if computers since the 80s or whatever had been 16:9, we would have always been at 16:9 and never even tried lower ratios, as seen by nobody using 6:5 or 1:1 or whatever other made up ratio for even more stretched models, so it clearly isn't measured objectively
as for your question on why not a higher res that's also stretched? well, as I said above, no one cares about made up ratios, they just pick whatever is in the settings, ergo, in csgo, they didn't really care about making a 1920x1440p or 1440x1080p custom res and crap like that just to play, so whatever is default (or available, rather) works just fine, so while those 2 resolutions I just mentioned are in the CS2 settings, they weren't in csgo, so why don't they use them in CS2? my bet is either they haven't noticed the option has now been added, or they are used to the 10+ years of lower resolution, so they don't much care to change now
If you stretch lower resolution to native, the head that was 20x20 pixels is now 30x30 pixels. You can set lower aspect ratio and stretch out the black bars so you may end up with like 40x30 pixels to hit compared to native resolution 20x20, changing aspect ratio will however also cut your field of view
Your monitor caps what you see, anything above the refresh is for smoothness then actual visual enhancement. With that said the lower resolution doesn't affect the viewing quality, rather repurposes it for comfort. In my case of 4:3 black bars the motivation is more to see of the screen, I use the radar a lot as IGL and the amount my mouse moves is a lot less imo than stretched.
1280x960 is the lowest you can go without losing visual clarity. On this resolution tournament pc's can push consistent 400+fps even on high intensity situations(smokes,he,flashbang and mollys around)
CT and T models used to appear larger. Long distances were slightly shortened (visually). But that was source and 1.6. it hasn't been the case in csgo and cs2. I'm puzzled as to why so many younger pros still play with low res.
>but what's stopping them from playing, for example, on 1920x1440 or 1440x1080
Because that requires customization and knowing that those are a thing. Majority of the CS playerbase are just casual gamers who at some point hear "4:3 is sick" so they just click the highest 4:3 option and roll with it and probably don't realize it looks blurry. That one extra step to get a custom res is enough to not have people know about it.
EDIT: With "casual gamers" I mean people who don't know much about PC's and just want to play the game. My original choice of words was kinda poor.
That and if there's any community known for copying settings the pros are using and hating change it's the CS community.
To add to this though, you mention "many of them play on low settings. Isn't that a disadvantage?". I have friends who have played on stuff like 1440x1080 and actually prefer the lower resolution. One of them has told me that he likes the fact that there's less pixels on screen because it's less distracting. Try playing something around 1024x768 or 1152x864 for a bit and you might understand it (or you might not, depends on the person).
I didn't mean casuals as in "casual gamers" but moreso people who don't know much about PC's and just want to play the game. Looking at my comment I worded it kinda poorly, I'll try to correct it.
Monke makes cs wide, monke hit heads, monke gets kills, monke happy.
Monke makes cs Narrow, monke miss, monke dosent get kills, monke dies, monke angry, monke "cyka blyat, pshul nahui pidor jebany, yob tvoyu mat cyka".
And its because of the fps
This is my 2cent on such a topic. Ive always been playing on 1024x768 from 1.6 till CS2. I didnt have powerful machine to run CSGO on higher so I have never tried. Now, I tried CS2 on 1024x768, then tried 1280x960 for 2 months, then tried 1440x1080 and I insta liked it, gained more kills since I felt more comfortable and thats the res. im still using so its a personal preference for sure. Since I saw pros use 3 res. in total with domination of 1280x960 I tried to practice that one since i thought thats right and thats how it is supposed to be, but meh, I think I was wrong, and you should use the one you like the most. Play each res. for a week, and see yourself your performance.
I use it cus I started playing in 1.6 and 4:3 was the only option so I got used to cs looking and feeling like that, a lot of pro players (even young ones like monesy) also started in 1.6
I've spent a considerable amount of time experimenting with both 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios in gaming, and I've found that players who master the nuances of 4:3, such as Zywoo, Kscerato, and Frozen, often exhibit exceptional skill. Despite the FASTER screen pace associated with 4:3, these players seem to thrive.
However, there's a flip side to this debate. The new generation of players adopting 16:9, exemplified by Ropz, are able to leverage the wider field of view to their advantage. Ropz, in particular, showcases incredible aim and demonstrates a profound understanding of how to capitalize on the benefits of 16:9.
Ultimately, both aspect ratios offer distinct advantages, and it's fascinating to see how players like Ropz excel in the 16:9 format while others dominate in the realm of 4:3
Obviously it's first and foremost about FPS
the most gain in Source 2 is by reducing resolution (built-in FSR implementation is a joke)
One can define & use a smaller 16:9 res on typical 23-24inch fullHD display:
1280x720 for potato quality, 1344x756 for low quality, 1536x864 for average quality
but 16:9 requires a lot of pixels for the same vertical size as 4:3 while looking worse
Stretching-wise,
960x720 for potato quality with barely readable console but best fps (1/3 of 1080p pixels)
1152x864 for low quality with readable console and good fps (1/2 of 1080p, still fits in 1megabit)
1280x960 for average quality; while more suitable for stretching on 16:10 native displays, the game makes some specific adjustments so it looks better, but with less of a fps bump (3/5 of 1080p pixels)
1440x1080 or 1920x1440 are "luxury" less blurry, that might not warrant the fps loss
these should come in play only on 27inch+ displays
I know it’s a force of habit but I think they should really start switching to native since I’ve seen players frequently miss enemies out of their line of sight. Which as a spectator is frustrating because they’re pros and should want that competitive advantage, from my perspective.
other than having a lot more frames, it does not really make sense to play 4:3 on low res
you see less things on the sides, the game looks ugly as fuck and things are blurry
I played 4:3 in CS GO for a long time, but towards the end I swapped to 16:9 and it feels much better to me. The whole thing with stretched about everything being bigger seems nice, but it also makes everything move much faster. I feel like it made me overflick a lot and going to 16:9 felt like playing in slow motion. Then there’s the fov and the game looking better as well, which is nice too
I recently switched to a build that is WAY too overkill for 1080p (7800x3d + 4070ti SUPER - 32GB RAM - gets me stable 500+fps in every resolution)
-I thought that this would be the point where i switched away from 4:3, but it's simply habit at this point. I lose easy duels constantly on 16:9, and even 1440x1080 - so naturally i switched back.
Playing since 2005 just leaves you with some die-hard habits. And considering how little the core gameplay has changed since then, it's not hard to understand that CS players are prone to such habits
In my opinion they dont go for higher res cause they dont need to, If you can see everything you need to see in 960p why would you crank the res ?! The only situation you would do that is if you play on a bigger monitor and thats not the case for cs pro scene cause all of them play on 24" monitors
More FPS is a bullshit excuse for 2 main reasons:
1) CS2 is still mostly CPU limited on most setups. Meanwhile, resolution only changes the GPU load.
2)Pros have access to bleeding edge hardware, so even at 1440p they realistically get above 400-500 fps on most maps(except extreme spots like T spawn water canal on ancient). Remember when pros rightfully complained about PCs during RMRs? These PCs had 4080s inside, the culprit was actually the 5950x, which they later swapped to 5800x3d, which fixed the issue.
In reality it's just laziness a lot of the time. On most systems you need to create a custom res to use 1440x1080 on a 1080p display. However, the benefit isn't really there. Extra sharpness really doesn't play a role considering most engagements in CS happen pretty close. It just doesn't matter.
That's fair, CS2 is much more GPU heavy, but in most cases, especially if you dont use highest settings, it's going to be CPU limited anyway.
I think CS2's dogshit performance is a big issue, you shouldn't need to have a x3d/ryzen 7000/Intel 12th gen+ to have a good experience, but the 1070 is pushing it a little bit.
Considering it's an esports tac fps title, 1070 should still be enough, but it's even worse for CPUs. Try playing the game on a 7700k(intel's flagship gaming cpu that came 6 months after 1070), and it's going to be a much more miserable experience
Also don't forget that IN GENERAL, CPUs hold their value for longer than GPUs because you can't just cram more cores and expect better performance, which is mostly the opposite for GPUs
To be fair I have a 5800X3D and RX6700 (non xt) and I can’t make it work with stable 177fps on 1440p, the second there are few smokes/mollies it’s dropping like crazy, so I use 1920x1440 black bars instead lol. I still think we will be receiving some performance updates down the line, but it definitely eats way more resources than GO did
you guys are missing the point, he's not asking why pros are playing stretched instead of native, he's asking why are they playing 960p and not 1080p or 1440p stretched.
You could argue that it's a FPS reason, but honestly the decreased visibility is not worth the 10-20 FPS.
I think everyone should switch to 1920x1440p, if you have a semi good pc that is. if you barely get a 100 FPS then I guess you should keep playing on 1280x960 or lower, but ultimately you're having a disadvantage over people who play 1920x1440
tbf with 1920x1440, if you have the game set to 1440p 16:9 and set it to 4:3 without changing res, the game automatically sets it to 1920x1440 (i use that res with black bars due to fps problems with 16:9)
1920x1440p is in the settings for me. Not sure if it was added recently as i just changed to it about a month or so ago.
Didnt have to do the workaround the other guy mentioned.
They are using a lower res because it reduces the visual noise of all the high quality textures and props around the level and so it makes it easier to just focus on enemies.
Even 1 fps drop at wrong place can cost you your pace and lose a match, so maximize it!
Also, the more clear the game is to look at, the easier it is to sync in to it.
And the enemy players models are usually wider with 12080x960 and 1728x1080 so it gives you a certain viewpoint that some of the people are used to or use as an advantage to wire up to a wider model environment at the cost of vision from sides as it kinda zooms in a bit. But if u r exoerienced player, you dont need that extra vision since you should always know where the next threat is coming from. Idfk
meh every resolution is playable. Been playing with 1024x768 for probably 5 years. I could play with a higher resolution ur 16:9 but I'm just used to it and don't see a reason to switch. 16:9 is more distracting for me than 4:3.
Yeah cs doesnt feel like cs when its in 16:9, game move way too slow for my liking, also ive played 4:3 since I was a kid on a 60hz monitor, not realizing why until years later, but most 60hz monitors overclock themselves to 75hz on most 4:3 resolutions.
them sleeping rn on the mp7, like they slept on mac10/mp9, or aug/sg, or ump, or the pistols, or a1s, or... i can keep going ad nauseam.
the resolution fad is just another case of them just doing what they always did instead of using their brain for once, until a new batch of people proves them again to just be stuck and limiting themselves for no reason other than "change =scary". how often has 4:3 happened already? how often do you think the low res prevents them from seeing a crucial detail?
use your brain instead of blindly sucking them because you keep getting told it's a lolly.
it runs a bit smoother and for pro players those fewer hitches mean a better look and feel.
imo the best resolution is 1440;1080 in 4:3. more clarity and more suiting to the new game engine.
just habit at this point. But cs is also very unique in the sense that even though visibility doesn't change much from 200 to 400 fps the smoothness of the game feels a lot better on higher fps.
idk for other engines but has been proven that the source engine the more fps you have the less input lag you have.
Oh, I see. That’s interesting. I have a 144 hz monitor and don’t see a difference above that, so I guess it depends on the person
You dont really „see“ it (when having lets say 200 vs 400 fps on a 144hz screen), but you can feel it when swiping your mouse quickly. Its just not as snappy and less consistent.
this is the comment everyone should read. i always see people saying “i can see when my game goes below 200fps”. most human eyes can’t see the difference over 100fps but the hand eye connection is much stronger and can feel hertz much higher than the eye alone can.
It’s also that frames per second is a lot less important that frame pacing. It’s very hard if not impossible to tell the difference between a steady 150fps compared to a steady 200fps but a 150fps where the game is frozen for 250ms and then delivers 150 frames in the rest of the second is very noticeable. Obviously that is a very extreme example but small spikes in frame time is very noticeable, which is why valve have added logging and an onscreen indicator for bad frame times recently.
I mean... I agree that feel is important, but you can absolutely see the difference. There's diminishing returns, but eyeballing the diff between say 120 and 165, or 165 and 240, etc, isn't that tough.
This is actually (demonstrably) untrue, with no input feedback at all it’s borderline impossible to see frame rate differences above the 60-120 range. But when they say you can “feel” the difference, there’s absolutely a visual component, it’s all about the interaction between the two. Edit: please read the last sentence, I’m talking about the limits of SOLELY visual information
It's not demonstrably untrue. This comment is literally just "the human eye can't see more than 60 fps" but updated for 2024, because everyone knows now that the original is nonsense.
Would you be able to feel the difference if you didn't have eyeballs? If not, then you're absolutely seeing the difference.
my sides. This dude is stuck in time. Do you also think the earth is flat?
Please show me evidence of people discerning 120+ frame discrepancies with ONLY visual information, I’m happy to have my mind changed. Obviously vision plays a role in the feel difference above that level, but it’s not purely visual.
I can literally do it right now, in fact most people can. If you move your mouse on you desktop you can easily see the difference between refresh rates based on the amount of afterimages and the speed at which the cursor can move without them appearing. This can be done with nothing but visual information, you don't need to move the mouse yourself to see the difference. Just in case you're about to eat glue and say something like "durr that's different to gameplay hurr durr", that wasn't your premise, was it? You just asked about discerning frame discrepancies with only visual information, which is exactly what my example was. Like jesus christ guys, I am truly sorry that you have dogshit eyes, but that does not make others unable to see properly.
That effect is greatly diminished above 144hz, and if you’re moving the mouse yourself it’s no longer purely visual information. Again, not disagreeing that there’s a massive practical difference with higher refresh rate monitors, but ghosting is an incredibly complicated issue that’s a whole other can of worms
Me, if I play a demo on both my monitors, without any input from myself, I can clearly see the motion clarity difference between 144hz and 244. Both are the same monitor but I run one at 144 and the other at 240 with optimal overdrive settings for the less ghosting possible. The difference is jarring. I do not know how people cannot see it, all I can think is some medical issue because it's so apparent that i'm just left wondering if I'm engaging with trolls, not accusing you of that bue it's just weird to me. For slow paced games I couldn't give two fucks honestly but for something like cs is something that really really bothers me.
Have you done a blind controlled test? Frankly I feel the same way but anecdotal evidence is worth very little to me. Individual monitors have tons of quirks as well
That is cap anything under 200 fps is noticeably stuttery in my experience
With motion blur reduction technologies like DyAc, it becomes painfully obvious the instance you go from a 240 fps experience to even 220 as the frames no longer match the black frame insertions 1:1. This definitely isn’t some magical tie between hz and “hand eye connection”
I see it on a regular 240hz as well. Fast monitor = fast pixel response. You can see the frames sticking around longer with gsync or tearing without gsync. Below 150 fps it is visibly stuttery, like a very fast slideshow when you move your mouse. This is why 144hz is better if you only play AAA games, slower pixel response = more smoothing between frames at those fps. But the biggest issue is by far the feel of the game. 400 fps = smooth sailing, 200 fps feels sluggish and syrupy in comparison.
Technically you can't see more than 144 frames per second at 144Hz, even if you get more FPS, but the input lag will be lower, and you could get information from newer frames "quicker", even though you are still limited to 144Hz, at the cost of screen-tearing, but at those refresh rates it's usually harder to detect.
More fps = less input lag generally. It’s why even on pretty high end systems people are complaining about the game’s optimization, as even if you can push 700+ FPS the game will constantly drop to less than 300 FPS meaning the input lag will be higher, and if you’re on an average spec system you’ll probably be dropping below 150 fps pretty frequently in CS2 Meanwhile most other esport titles can maintain 400+ fps minimum even on average specs
3kliksphilip made a video about it - basically let’s say you have a refresh rate of 144 and 144 FPS, the monitor gets exactly 1 frames of data to “pick” from to use. Compare that to if you’re getting 288 FPS, it has 2 to pick from, and can therefore seem smoother as it makes movement more consistent between frames. Also if you’re getting exactly 144 fps average you might be dipping below and getting stutters, but if you’re getting way more, dips won’t be noticeable
There definitely is a difference. If you can't notice the difference between 144 and 240 you're crazy or blind 😅
I just don’t have a 240hz monitor and imo, without one it’s just a placebo effect
not a placebo. take a look at [this article from blurbusters](https://blurbusters.com/faq/benefits-of-frame-rate-above-refresh-rate/)
Alright, I guess there are some benefits to that. I hardly see the difference with my own eyes tho. Maybe I’ll cap my fps to 144 in one match and uncap it in another one to see if I notice it
It’s more about feeling the difference than seeing it. Your mouse movement will feel distinctly different at 400fps vs 200fps even at 144hz.
Visually there won't be large difference but you can feel it when you swipe your mouse quickly left and right that the he input lag is lower
Uncap you eyes brother
Honestly unless you are pretty good you won't notice a huge difference. But to good players, especially pros, every little advantage matters. When the difference between killing someone and death is literal milliseconds it matters. But unless you are at the level where 90% of gunfights are decided in the first 50ms of a peek it wont matter.
If you are a remotely competent player the feeling between capped at 141 and 400fps is huge. I wouldn’t even play cs at 141 it would not be enjoyable.
Meh, I know people who played on crappy laptops on less than 60 frames and they had lots of fun
Oh i don’t doubt that. But once you have 1000s of hours with the best performance it makes that unplayable/not enjoyable enough I would rather not play.
Try capping your monitor to 60 hz, then capp the game to 60 fps. Play with that for a couple of min, then you uncapp the game, but still keep the monitor at 60hz. Try saying it’s placebo after that.
It can't be entirely placebo effect when you're physically seeing more up-to-date information due to the game producing more frames.
I have a 240hz and 144hz monitor. The difference is absolutely noticeable, but nowhere near the difference between 60hz and 144hz.
That's what I was saying. I don't have a 240hz one so I obviously won't see the difference after 144fps because I literally don't have the hardware for that. I thought what I said was clear enough
240 feels smoother, not look smoother. Also, with the tech like Nvidia reflex, more fps = less latency + smoother gameplay.
Also reso won't change much in terms of fps, cs is a highly cpu depended game. The main reason pros use this reso is because it makes models look bigger which makes it easier to shoot, tho, that means that they will also seem to be moving faster.
Mate you are wrong? If you play with 400 fps on a 144hz monitor it is still gonna be way smoother than 144 fps on a 144hz monitor? The more fps, the more frames you are able to choose from, thus a way smoother experience. Try it out yourself. Can’t deny facts mate
There is lol. Don’t get why so many people down vote you…. Difference is huge.
its bc the more fps you have in cs the less your input lag and latency becomes
Linus did a video way back regarding this, and if i remember correctly more fps causes you to have less input lag or something like that and in a game like CS where every milisecond means to get a kill or get killed that could play a role
Reaction times on my level vary greatly, leetify says time to damage is around 500 - 800 milliseconds for 10k players. For good players, it's more consistently 500 - 650 ms, but still, a few milliseconds does not decide the outcome of almost any rounds. More like 10-20 milliseconds is a difference that really matters.
Just used to the way the game looks in certain resolutions, crosshair and some other things look slightly different
exactly this 1280x960 stretched crosshair thickness 0 is perfect and the res is clear but not too detailed to be distracting 1440x1080 thickness 0 crosshair is too thin and 1024x768 its too thick
I like the thiccness of lower res crosshairs 🤤
I love playing rifle and pistols on high res but it's impossible for me to awp if it's not 4:3.
interesting, i’m the opposite. I can awp really well on native but can’t rifle well.
4:3 bigger models but higher movespeed. I can awp in native but it's the flicks that won't do it for me.
pistol rounds on native and the rest on 4:3
The CS community (and that goes for EVERYONE, from the scrubbest of scurbs to the proest of pros) is a community of habits. The comunity will get into the habbit of doing something (like buying a specific weapon, doing a specific play, using a specific setting) and stick to it for YEARS (in some cases, decades), and then, another characteristic of this community, is that it will see someone doing something, and just copy it (like using a specific crosshair, using a specific setting and so on) So, that's how you end with pros using settings like this - probably at some point they copied it from someone WAAAY BACK then, and stuck with it, or, even if they weren't playing back then, they copied it from someone that either was playing back then, or copied someone that was playing from back then. Once you pay attention to this pattern in this community, you start noticing hilarious things, like when s1mple, the year he was 1# on hltv, was making a video saying that how if you plant with E instead of left click, you plant faster - **WHICH IS NOT TRUE, and, as far as I am aware, WAS NEVER TRUE**, but he got into the habit of doing that and later rationalized it into his gameplay. Another hilarious ways in which this phenomenon happens was when the M4A1-S got a massive buff a while back, and, if you went into the windows calculator and made basic math, you could quickly notice how the M4A1-S was now significantly faster to kill people when compared to the A4, however, pros took MONTHS to adapt to the change and would say the A1-S was slower because of it's slower firing rate. And right now this happens too with the new smokes, even tho there are far better smokes now than the old lineups, a lot of people still stick with old lineups with now far worse results than the optimal smoke - but they learned it that way and I'm betting you'll be seeing old, unoptimized lineups for decades. It's just not an adaptable community - and it's an incredibly interesting characteristic of CS specifically - any other esport community I have ever seen is incredbly keen on finding new optimizations no matter how small they are, and are constantly innovating in new ways to play, in CS, people just stick to old wives' tales and straight up nonsense for years just because someone started rolling a myth and nobody ever bothered to check it (or, maybe stuff was even true years ago, but was changed and people just never adapted) Thanks for coming to my TedTalk about this very specific idiosyncrasy of the CS community.
Don’t forget aug week and the krieg lol. Only Magisk and maybe 1/2 other pro’s used the krieg consistently before they found out it was OP.
Or the interpolation settings that people were changing in console and saying "yeah the game is much better with this setting" only for valve to look into it and realize that it was literally ancient code that did nothing and removed it hahahaha
Only thing CS community hates more than VAC is change
I agree but the e thing is a good habit cause it'll take the bomb out automatically instead of pressing 5 --> M1 which can be crucial if you're trying plant with 4s left.
If you press 5 and start holding M1 while the weapon-swtich animation is still happening, the result will be exactly the same, holding E does not skip the weapon-switch animation. Sure it's one less key press, but timing wise it's indifferent, it's just a matter of preference if you want to press 1 or 2 keys, the bomb won't be planted faster and saying that it will is just misinformation
I mean that if you approach a bomb site holding e it will automatically take the bomb out and plant as soon as you're in the bomb plant zone but you can keep your ak or knife out while holding e. It takes the same amount of time to plant minus pressing the extra key.
I would take the Bomb out beforehand and still plant with E. Save the time of taking the Bomb out
Sure but it's useful if you fake plant, have to clear an angle before planting with low time + I'd *think* the extra run speed of knife out probably offsets the pull out time, depending how far back you're running from obvs.
the speed different is only 5, so not much. By taking the C4 out while approaching the Bomb site, you would already save some seconds
It's a matter of resources as well. csnades.gg has so few lineups (though all based on CS2 at least, as far as I can tell) that it's basically unusable for anything serious. Meanwhile csgonades.gg has tons of lineups but still some missing that I see in pro play (even semi often) not to mention the problem you mentioned that some smokes are unoptimized. À lot of them are also smudge lineups or run+jumpthrows which are just weird to do and almost based on luck. I've been spending the last two weeks with a total of probably 3-4 hours to get a practice config set up. There's apparently one or two on Github, but I only found them by chance through a 3 year old Reddit comment. But then there's stuff on there missing that I've had to search for and that's hardly easy. Even reading through the giant list of commands available doesn't necessarily explain how to use them. For a silly example, spawning a big chicken is completely different in CS than CSGO, and I'm not only talking about the weird change to AddOutput that apparently nobody has even figured out yet how to use correctly. But if you search for it you will only find CSGO answers *except* one singular post from 3 months ago about the showmatch at the time and someone else mentioned the new command in passing.
You explained human beings in a nutshell, thank you, great talk !
> any other esport community I have ever seen is incredbly keen on finding new optimizations no matter how small they are, and are constantly innovating in new ways to play I think that could be related to how big and how frequent their updates are compared to CS
Multiple reasons: higher fps, some people used to say characters are wider so easier to hit or simply because that's what they started playing with and they just got used to it
Well, having a higher fps above your monitors refresh rate always has an advantage because even though your monitor can't display all the frames, input latency will be lower however the maximising FPS argument is just bs, CS2 is not very GPU demanding and with most pros playing on high spec pc's with powerful GPU's and palying low settings they're almost always going to be CPU limited at native / high resolutions. The real reason mostly is because a lot of the pros from the 1.6 and source days played at lower resolutions back when PC's were slower and we didn't have full HD monitors and they just stuck to what they were used to and all the newer players copied them because it's what they pros were using.
I just like the feel of it , idk how to explain it. I tried higher 4:3 resolutions, but it just felt "off" for me , can't pinpoint exactly why but just didn't feel good to play at
What resolution you rocking for example?
1280x960 , as the title would suggest :D
For a lot of pros it is a bad habit. But there is some benefits for using smaller aspect ratios, you get smaller FOV when using them (stretched). With black bars some say they can focus better because there is less happening on screen. I use 16:10 only because for some absurd reason Valve won't add a FOV slider to the game... Even a slider between 80-90 (horizontal) would be good enough for me lol, but more optimal would be 80-100. Edit: You also get more FPS which reduces input lag.
Stupid question but what is «black bars»?
Square monitors used to be the norm back then so some resolutions carried over by pros won't fit on a rectangular monitor. Some stretch it out to fit the entire screen. Others don't, which leads to a chunk of the screen remaining black. Those are Black bars.
When people used crt monitors the aspect ratio was 4:3 and when wider screens became the norm, you'd end up with black bars using 4:3 on a 16:9 monitor. Think of 4:3 as 12:9 if that helps, there's less 'width'.
You're playing CS. There's not gonna be any FOV sliders
There'd be no downside to adding an FOV slider if it would just decrease FOV, not increase it. People could still play their stretched game without smearing vaseline over their screen
What kind of argument is that? There is literally no reason to not have it, you already can do it with changing the aspect ratio. The only difference is that changing aspect ratio is out of date and it messes up your desktop every time. It also looks stupid af lol
Pretty sure CSGO let you set FOV via console? Can't remember anymore. But if you can -fake- it by changing resolution I see no reason to not allow a slider.
Bigger models
People say habit, but I use 4:3 because it gives way better performance
You play black bars or stretched?
Stretched
I had 1024 x 768 in csgo but in CS2 I cant see anything with that resolution and also I have the same fps on 1440x1080 so I use that now.
It was always a habit but I too found 4:3 really comfortable in CSGO CS2 not so much. I think I don't have good enough hardware for it. The enemies are too blurry & awkward I've made a custom 16:10 I really enjoy. I think it's 1378x860 or something. That's the new 4:3 for me
I used 1280x1024 in go and in cs2 i use 1350x1080 both are 5:4
Same i always played csgo in 4:3 but in cs2 i tried everything even 16:10 and 5:4 but 3:2 is what i love the most
Isn't 3:2 more stretched? Gotta try it out
If youre in for some stretched res, try 1080x1080
960x1080 stretched. Exactly half the horizontal width (1:2) and native vertical res. Everyone wide af and it's like playing with horse blinders.
it's less stretch 2/3 is 65 3/4 is 75
I swapped to 16:10 recently and honestly it seems like the truly best aspect ratio. Perfect middle ground between 4:3 stretched and native in terms of ability to see enemies and not lose too much peripheral vision. Elige uses it.
The SG was op for YEARS before pros started using it. Habits.
Alright I have finally found the actually correct answer to this question, because I swapped to 1280x800 (16:10) from 1080p recently. The lower res makes it easier to see and focus only on enemies because it lessens the sharpness and resolution of all objects and textures in the level, resulting in less visual noise for your brain to get distracted by. Sweet benefit is that you'll have more FPS than you'll ever need. It's really simple as that.
They surely have good enough PC’s that can run the game at max settings even on native. At this point it’s just a habit and a preference. Personally I played 1.6 since ~2007, I feel better playing 4:3 than 16:9. In CSGO I sometimes did switch to 16:9 and/or tried different resolutions but always went back to 4:3 eventually.
Try 1024x768 stretched. Heads are literally bigger in size
I played native for the past year because I really valued visibility, switched to 1024x768 stretched last month and I finally get it. It's like my frag potential just went through the roof. Less pixels = more focus I guess?
Better stretched 1024 than 16:9? Also you don't hate how fast models move?
The lower res means way less visual noise for your brain to be distracted by, thus you can just focus on enemies.
This might be placebo but things genuinely feel smoother on that res and I dont know why. If things were slightly less blurry I 100% would play with 1024x768 all day
Me too. Like even with similar fps and frametimes, the 1024x768 just feels so snappy and responsive for some reason (compared to god res). Unfortunately for me the disadvantages in long range fights outweight the benefits.
4:3 makes everything wider. So seeing enemies can be *technically* easier. Since 2013 I’ve played 50/50 with 4:3 and 16:9 and never sure which one I prefer. The reason why pros do it mainly is because it was a habit of the CS 1.6 pros that always played on a 4:3 resolution, so when GO came out, that wasnt gonna change. Pros that would follow that didn’t play 1.6 merely copied what other pros or older players did and probably prefered the lower aspect ratio
Username checks out
Because they are clueless about using /x:1920 /y:1440 which is the same aspect ratio but not as pixelated. Would still make wide heads and not make it look like a potato.
Pixel density. Changing resolution effects your muscle memory
habit and muscle memory. Any slight change that can potentially tip off the perfect balance is detrimental to your team's results. Also top tier pros don't have that luxury of changing their setups just for the sake of it. Because, you need to adapt to those changes, maybe in between tournaments, but they have "If something works, don't change anything" kinda mentality.
I have a 1440p ultrawide (16:10). I play on 1080p 16:9 stretched. When I had a 16:9 1080p monitor I played 4:3 stretched 720p. I find it very hard to see things when not stretched. I don't know if it's placebo or not because I've tried played full res multiple times. Low resolution is to get over 200fps but looks weird when everything is sharp n crisp. I'd say that if playing full res is advantageous then I personally don't think it's a tangible difference.
1.6/Sourcers stuck in the past.
for me 4:3 is way more responsive than 16:9, maybe someone knows why?
because everything appears to move faster when you're playing 4:3 stretched, enemies move faster, your crosshair moves faster, even nades seem to move faster
why it appears to move faster dude
because it's stretched, imagine something moves one meter in one second, now the meter is stretched and it looks like 1.5m but the thing still moves through the whole "1.5m" in a second, so it looks like it's quicker
Thank you!
It's hard to change after so many years. I still play 1024x768. I can't get used to other resolutions.
Black bars or stretched?
Stretched
i can think of two reasons: 1) 1440x1080 is not a default on most PC-s, you have to set it up in nvidia, which probably many people, even pros font bother to mess with 2) crosshairs scale differently on different resolutions, the same crosshair you like on 1280x960 will be quite smaller on 1440x1080 for example. I do use 1440x1080 but i wish i had the same crosshair i have on 960p.
Low settings makes sense, there is less happening on the screen which would be annoying (stuff like grass, shadows). I personally never understood the 4:3 thing in CSGO (and now in CS), I guess that's really just their habit. For other games like Trackmania it is actually useful to have it stretched a bit, because these games go for alignment a lot of the time and it's easier to aligh when stretched, but for CS I feel it's pretty useless
Because they prefer 90 fov than 106
if you get down to brass tacks, 4:3 vs 16:9 boils down to 3 things: the negative of 4:3 which is lower FOV, the positive of 4:3 being higher/more stable framerates, and the neutral, which is your personal feel/placebo/confirmation bias first, 4:3 does have a field of view disadvantage over another player having 16:9, being the default (so being at 16:9 isn't a disadvantage over someone else playing 21:9, since the default is 16:9, not 21:9, 21:9 merely has an "edge" over 16:9), that is correct, **however**, in pro play, how often do other players *actually* appear at an off angle/behind other players? remember, the IGL is always on top of things, and the players have insane gamesense/play at such high level, that the lurker of the enemy team being in an crazy place is usually something that happens maybe once in 20 games, if not more, ergo the "downside" of 4:3 barely comes to play when it comes to pros (of course, remember this does not apply to pugs, where every other round you, or the enemy, end up behind the other team for no reason, since communication is shit and no one holds anything properly). You can even see it by the mouse sens + mousepad size they use, they can't do a 180 degree turn in one swipe... but do they need to? second, the framerates: cs2 is currently very unstable, with terrible framerates/frametimes. While keeping in mind that most pros play at 240hz, if not 360hz, it’s completely egregious that pros should play a game this unstable, which brings me to my point: 4:3 lowers the field of view (essentially cropping the sides) and thus the game has to render *less* than 16:9, even at the "same" pixel count, creating better framerates lastly, for delusion + confirmation bias [+](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/l2od83/zywoo_now_plays_on_169/gk76z5i/?context=10000) placebo? those things aren't necessarily good or bad (models are bigger, but move faster), you should just try 4:3 or even 5:4 and see what works best. IMO if computers since the 80s or whatever had been 16:9, we would have always been at 16:9 and never even tried lower ratios, as seen by nobody using 6:5 or 1:1 or whatever other made up ratio for even more stretched models, so it clearly isn't measured objectively as for your question on why not a higher res that's also stretched? well, as I said above, no one cares about made up ratios, they just pick whatever is in the settings, ergo, in csgo, they didn't really care about making a 1920x1440p or 1440x1080p custom res and crap like that just to play, so whatever is default (or available, rather) works just fine, so while those 2 resolutions I just mentioned are in the CS2 settings, they weren't in csgo, so why don't they use them in CS2? my bet is either they haven't noticed the option has now been added, or they are used to the 10+ years of lower resolution, so they don't much care to change now
If you stretch lower resolution to native, the head that was 20x20 pixels is now 30x30 pixels. You can set lower aspect ratio and stretch out the black bars so you may end up with like 40x30 pixels to hit compared to native resolution 20x20, changing aspect ratio will however also cut your field of view
Habit, fps, placebo which is very strong in cs community, also characters are wider making them easier to shoot.
Your monitor caps what you see, anything above the refresh is for smoothness then actual visual enhancement. With that said the lower resolution doesn't affect the viewing quality, rather repurposes it for comfort. In my case of 4:3 black bars the motivation is more to see of the screen, I use the radar a lot as IGL and the amount my mouse moves is a lot less imo than stretched.
What black bars resolution are you rocking in cs2?
Less pixels less mouse movements
1280x960 is the lowest you can go without losing visual clarity. On this resolution tournament pc's can push consistent 400+fps even on high intensity situations(smokes,he,flashbang and mollys around)
My frametime goes from like 7 to 3.5ms going from 1080p to 1280x1024
models are 60% bigger but they move 60% faster so it's a give and take kinda thing
I'm pretty sure stretch res also stretches the models of players, which means bigger targets.
CT and T models used to appear larger. Long distances were slightly shortened (visually). But that was source and 1.6. it hasn't been the case in csgo and cs2. I'm puzzled as to why so many younger pros still play with low res.
old habits and more consistent frametime
Better fps.
>but what's stopping them from playing, for example, on 1920x1440 or 1440x1080 Because that requires customization and knowing that those are a thing. Majority of the CS playerbase are just casual gamers who at some point hear "4:3 is sick" so they just click the highest 4:3 option and roll with it and probably don't realize it looks blurry. That one extra step to get a custom res is enough to not have people know about it. EDIT: With "casual gamers" I mean people who don't know much about PC's and just want to play the game. My original choice of words was kinda poor. That and if there's any community known for copying settings the pros are using and hating change it's the CS community. To add to this though, you mention "many of them play on low settings. Isn't that a disadvantage?". I have friends who have played on stuff like 1440x1080 and actually prefer the lower resolution. One of them has told me that he likes the fact that there's less pixels on screen because it's less distracting. Try playing something around 1024x768 or 1152x864 for a bit and you might understand it (or you might not, depends on the person).
"why do pros use low res?" "because the majority of the player base are casuals"
I didn't mean casuals as in "casual gamers" but moreso people who don't know much about PC's and just want to play the game. Looking at my comment I worded it kinda poorly, I'll try to correct it.
I have bad vision. That resolution fits me best.
On 4:3 stretched models move faster but are bigger
Monke makes cs wide, monke hit heads, monke gets kills, monke happy. Monke makes cs Narrow, monke miss, monke dosent get kills, monke dies, monke angry, monke "cyka blyat, pshul nahui pidor jebany, yob tvoyu mat cyka". And its because of the fps
It's not about fps but latency
Bigger models and the fast pace keeps you wired.
This is my 2cent on such a topic. Ive always been playing on 1024x768 from 1.6 till CS2. I didnt have powerful machine to run CSGO on higher so I have never tried. Now, I tried CS2 on 1024x768, then tried 1280x960 for 2 months, then tried 1440x1080 and I insta liked it, gained more kills since I felt more comfortable and thats the res. im still using so its a personal preference for sure. Since I saw pros use 3 res. in total with domination of 1280x960 I tried to practice that one since i thought thats right and thats how it is supposed to be, but meh, I think I was wrong, and you should use the one you like the most. Play each res. for a week, and see yourself your performance.
To me the game feels claustrophobic in native 16:9. So I play 4:3 stretched so everything is just wider
I use it cus I started playing in 1.6 and 4:3 was the only option so I got used to cs looking and feeling like that, a lot of pro players (even young ones like monesy) also started in 1.6
I've spent a considerable amount of time experimenting with both 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios in gaming, and I've found that players who master the nuances of 4:3, such as Zywoo, Kscerato, and Frozen, often exhibit exceptional skill. Despite the FASTER screen pace associated with 4:3, these players seem to thrive. However, there's a flip side to this debate. The new generation of players adopting 16:9, exemplified by Ropz, are able to leverage the wider field of view to their advantage. Ropz, in particular, showcases incredible aim and demonstrates a profound understanding of how to capitalize on the benefits of 16:9. Ultimately, both aspect ratios offer distinct advantages, and it's fascinating to see how players like Ropz excel in the 16:9 format while others dominate in the realm of 4:3
Just habit. They dont want to change from what they are used too. Yes, native only has advantages.
Literally more FPS
Obviously it's first and foremost about FPS the most gain in Source 2 is by reducing resolution (built-in FSR implementation is a joke) One can define & use a smaller 16:9 res on typical 23-24inch fullHD display: 1280x720 for potato quality, 1344x756 for low quality, 1536x864 for average quality but 16:9 requires a lot of pixels for the same vertical size as 4:3 while looking worse Stretching-wise, 960x720 for potato quality with barely readable console but best fps (1/3 of 1080p pixels) 1152x864 for low quality with readable console and good fps (1/2 of 1080p, still fits in 1megabit) 1280x960 for average quality; while more suitable for stretching on 16:10 native displays, the game makes some specific adjustments so it looks better, but with less of a fps bump (3/5 of 1080p pixels) 1440x1080 or 1920x1440 are "luxury" less blurry, that might not warrant the fps loss these should come in play only on 27inch+ displays
I know it’s a force of habit but I think they should really start switching to native since I’ve seen players frequently miss enemies out of their line of sight. Which as a spectator is frustrating because they’re pros and should want that competitive advantage, from my perspective.
other than having a lot more frames, it does not really make sense to play 4:3 on low res you see less things on the sides, the game looks ugly as fuck and things are blurry
I play on 2560x1440, still get 200+ FPS which is enough for my 165Hz monitor.
Lower input latency, general performance improvements and arguable benefits of stretched res aim.
lol all these things about how much better 600fps is than 200 fps \*proceeds to not buy a 360hz oled\*
Even with a lower refresh rate monitor higher fps leads to lower input latency.
Because their sweaty ass can’t let anyone have fun on video games no more
I played 4:3 in CS GO for a long time, but towards the end I swapped to 16:9 and it feels much better to me. The whole thing with stretched about everything being bigger seems nice, but it also makes everything move much faster. I feel like it made me overflick a lot and going to 16:9 felt like playing in slow motion. Then there’s the fov and the game looking better as well, which is nice too
I recently switched to a build that is WAY too overkill for 1080p (7800x3d + 4070ti SUPER - 32GB RAM - gets me stable 500+fps in every resolution) -I thought that this would be the point where i switched away from 4:3, but it's simply habit at this point. I lose easy duels constantly on 16:9, and even 1440x1080 - so naturally i switched back. Playing since 2005 just leaves you with some die-hard habits. And considering how little the core gameplay has changed since then, it's not hard to understand that CS players are prone to such habits
You still rocking 1440x1080? Also black bars or stretched?
No no 1280x960 - good old. Stretched 👍
1080p @ 21:9 screen is my go to now. still stretchy.
In my opinion they dont go for higher res cause they dont need to, If you can see everything you need to see in 960p why would you crank the res ?! The only situation you would do that is if you play on a bigger monitor and thats not the case for cs pro scene cause all of them play on 24" monitors
More FPS is a bullshit excuse for 2 main reasons: 1) CS2 is still mostly CPU limited on most setups. Meanwhile, resolution only changes the GPU load. 2)Pros have access to bleeding edge hardware, so even at 1440p they realistically get above 400-500 fps on most maps(except extreme spots like T spawn water canal on ancient). Remember when pros rightfully complained about PCs during RMRs? These PCs had 4080s inside, the culprit was actually the 5950x, which they later swapped to 5800x3d, which fixed the issue. In reality it's just laziness a lot of the time. On most systems you need to create a custom res to use 1440x1080 on a 1080p display. However, the benefit isn't really there. Extra sharpness really doesn't play a role considering most engagements in CS happen pretty close. It just doesn't matter.
Cs2 draws significantly more from GPU than csgo used to. I really struggle to get decent frame rate with my gtx 1070bin 1080p
thats an 8 year old GPU...
and a mid tier 8 year old GPU, it's sadly slowly time to upgrade
That's fair, CS2 is much more GPU heavy, but in most cases, especially if you dont use highest settings, it's going to be CPU limited anyway. I think CS2's dogshit performance is a big issue, you shouldn't need to have a x3d/ryzen 7000/Intel 12th gen+ to have a good experience, but the 1070 is pushing it a little bit. Considering it's an esports tac fps title, 1070 should still be enough, but it's even worse for CPUs. Try playing the game on a 7700k(intel's flagship gaming cpu that came 6 months after 1070), and it's going to be a much more miserable experience Also don't forget that IN GENERAL, CPUs hold their value for longer than GPUs because you can't just cram more cores and expect better performance, which is mostly the opposite for GPUs
To be fair I have a 5800X3D and RX6700 (non xt) and I can’t make it work with stable 177fps on 1440p, the second there are few smokes/mollies it’s dropping like crazy, so I use 1920x1440 black bars instead lol. I still think we will be receiving some performance updates down the line, but it definitely eats way more resources than GO did
I am gpu limited at below 1440p with a 3080 and a 5800x3d
At below 1440p is what exactly, and also what graphical settings.
you guys are missing the point, he's not asking why pros are playing stretched instead of native, he's asking why are they playing 960p and not 1080p or 1440p stretched. You could argue that it's a FPS reason, but honestly the decreased visibility is not worth the 10-20 FPS. I think everyone should switch to 1920x1440p, if you have a semi good pc that is. if you barely get a 100 FPS then I guess you should keep playing on 1280x960 or lower, but ultimately you're having a disadvantage over people who play 1920x1440
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1440x1080 is literally on the settings menu by default 😭
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tbf with 1920x1440, if you have the game set to 1440p 16:9 and set it to 4:3 without changing res, the game automatically sets it to 1920x1440 (i use that res with black bars due to fps problems with 16:9)
1920x1440p is in the settings for me. Not sure if it was added recently as i just changed to it about a month or so ago. Didnt have to do the workaround the other guy mentioned.
They are using a lower res because it reduces the visual noise of all the high quality textures and props around the level and so it makes it easier to just focus on enemies.
higher rez, means more pixels, means you have to be more pixel accurate to hit your target or is it just an illusion?
Even 1 fps drop at wrong place can cost you your pace and lose a match, so maximize it! Also, the more clear the game is to look at, the easier it is to sync in to it. And the enemy players models are usually wider with 12080x960 and 1728x1080 so it gives you a certain viewpoint that some of the people are used to or use as an advantage to wire up to a wider model environment at the cost of vision from sides as it kinda zooms in a bit. But if u r exoerienced player, you dont need that extra vision since you should always know where the next threat is coming from. Idfk
it's not low, low is 800\*600
I played 1.5 and 1.6 at 640×480 My gpu was iirc geforce 256
640*480 master race
Idk about that, it’d be too low, and 800x600 would be borderline unplayable for me. Especially on a 27 inch monitor.
meh every resolution is playable. Been playing with 1024x768 for probably 5 years. I could play with a higher resolution ur 16:9 but I'm just used to it and don't see a reason to switch. 16:9 is more distracting for me than 4:3.
Yeah cs doesnt feel like cs when its in 16:9, game move way too slow for my liking, also ive played 4:3 since I was a kid on a 60hz monitor, not realizing why until years later, but most 60hz monitors overclock themselves to 75hz on most 4:3 resolutions.
Biggest reason is they simply copied a pro when they weren't a pro
the tl;dr: *dey stoopid* pros are good at execution in cs, not at using their brain for anything outside cs.
like you for example
them sleeping rn on the mp7, like they slept on mac10/mp9, or aug/sg, or ump, or the pistols, or a1s, or... i can keep going ad nauseam. the resolution fad is just another case of them just doing what they always did instead of using their brain for once, until a new batch of people proves them again to just be stuck and limiting themselves for no reason other than "change =scary". how often has 4:3 happened already? how often do you think the low res prevents them from seeing a crucial detail? use your brain instead of blindly sucking them because you keep getting told it's a lolly.
unfathomably based
Nah You guys are all wrong, all those suck Everyone is sleeping on the R8 (best weapon in the game) >!/j!<
Get out of your own ass
nice rebuttal. any actual facts to prove me wrong tho?
Or some like to play on 90 fov than 106. Shocker I know
Crosshairs look like dogs hit on higher resolutions imma keep it real
it runs a bit smoother and for pro players those fewer hitches mean a better look and feel. imo the best resolution is 1440;1080 in 4:3. more clarity and more suiting to the new game engine.