What tweaks are you using (Windows, Nvidia Settings, etc?)

I was wondering about the above in general, and I have read the stickies... but seems a lot of debate about overall best optimizations.


Personally, I specifically play CSGO & mostly care about input lag and "stuttering".

In the Nvidia Control Panel, I have obviously set "maximum pre-rendered frames" to 1 globally, as well as globally disabled V-Sync completely & set texture filtering to high performance.


Yet one thing that I've been uncertain about is the color options found under the "Change Resolution" tab of the NVCP, where you can select between Use default color settings and Use Nvidia color settings?

I have a monitor (AW2518H, to be exact) that has an ICC profile that comes installed with the monitor's drivers... and in a way, I feel by leaving the colors to default, the game feels smoother & overall has less tearing or distortions when moving around?

Yet... when I choose the Use Nvidia color settings option, I feel there's a bit less input lag & the game feels somehow more responsive?


In addition, I'd also been making use of the option to disable fullscreen optimizations by using the check-box on "csgo.exe" itself, but as of late have become uncertain if it's truly the best idea to do so?

I've read about how FSE enabled may cause "triple buffering" and a sort of delay, yet when I unticked the box today, the game feels as if it has less input lag rather than more?


What have you found?

 

For nVidia: set global power to ADAPTIVE, then per any GAME only, set to MAX PERFORMANCE

Also i run MSI Afterburner and always set a more aggressive fan profile.

Other then those, not really much other then personal prefs. Those other settings you mention i always just leave alone (or at least set per game but never globally).

 

I can't tell you specifically for csgo, as I mostly play R6 and BF3, however, your questions are interesting. I'm not sure if color settings change sth or if it's only placebo. Hopefully someone can elaborate.
I always set texture filtering to "performance", as "high performance" turns on Anisotropic Optimization, which could lead to shimmering on objects - which I turn off.

disable fullscreen optimizations - I would highly recommend this to leave this checked for the games I play (benchmarked it), uncertain for csgo. But why should it be different there, hmm.

An older thread on Overclock.net mentioned, that if you put resolution scaling to "off" and let your monitor scale, you have less input lag. I still do it.

Regarding Adaptive: I found in R6 there is no difference between max perf and optimal. Also, as after 3 mins you can choose an operator (which is 2d only), it lets the card downclock for 30 sec and cool down as well. This saves both energy and enables the card to run on the highest performance once you're ingame again. Adaptive itself gave me less fps than optimal.

I'd also turn off AA - Gamma correction, which could help reduce blending player models into the surroundings and turn off Anisotropic Filtering as well, so the floor / walls at a distance turn a bit blurry. That makes players stick out more yet again.

 

Especially for CS:GO, I changed my scaling mode to 'Perform scaling on 'GPU'. Unrelated to that, I feel the game is more responsive with the latest 435.27 driver when I set the settings to Lowest Latency in NVCP. Some pointed out that it may be because I had Thread Optimization ON on the prior drivers I used, I haven't checked - this one works well, that's all I care about.

In Steam CS:GO's launch command, I have added -high & +mat_queue_mode 2. Mat_queue_mode 2 can increase FPS in some cases. Make sure to try mat_queue in CS:GO's console command first while in a match, to see if there's any difference. Or you can just have them in your autoexec.cfg. Back when I was on AMD, I also had -threads 8.

I used to run NVIDIA freestyle as well with CS:GO, it does give you an edge with Sharpness and Clarity - the enemies are more vivid and easy to aim at. Turning up Shadows also make darker corners more apparent. Although beware that it does add input lag, depending on the settings you use. Adding Vibrance doesn't create any input lag. Reshade doesn't work with CS:GO anymore.

My monitor's overdrive settings are off. I find it helps with aiming. You see exactly whats happening on the server, without the ghosting that would happen otherwise; making it seem like the enemy are just faster than you in everything. Extreme overdrive makes it impossible to pre-aim around an angle and land the shot, normal overdrive makes it very doable but overdrive off makes it a effortless.

 

Threaded Optimizations are enabled by default anyway. Lowest latency is probably a setting for "Threaded optimizations off + Prerendered frames 0 / 1" - I think that's what he meant.
Btw. display scaling is faster than gpu scaling.