CS2 appears so bad because of its outdated design and lack of modern polish.
CS2 appears so bad because of its outdated design and lack of modern polish.
I just tried again and the GPU is running around 60-70% on vertigo, while the CPU is at 50%, actually clocking about 4.7GHz—no overclocking needed, but it’s still way below its potential. The frame drops are as severe as 120 FPS average, not just minor lags.
Did you verify the CPU temperatures? Core utilization looks fine. RAM consumption while playing, disk activity, etc.? Often strange performance issues mean starting at the lowest settings helps determine if the game handles changes well or if another factor is involved.
The memory consumption is around 12GB when the browser is active, which should be fine with 32GB available. The processor temperature is about 50°C, the disk activity is minimal, and since you have a Gen 4 NVMe SSD, it shouldn’t be the main issue.
It seems the game or map isn't fully optimized yet. I used Vertigo with a low preset at 2560x1080, but I sometimes hit a CPU bottleneck. It was about 200 frames per second minimum when OSD and screen recording were on, though my usage stayed around 40% CPU. Could there be heavy background processes? Try installing it on a different drive or partition for a fresh start.