CS GO Lags: How to Remove Freezes

Lags and stuttering are the main woes of a Counter-Strike player. It's essential to get rid of the problem, especially if the gamer competes in tournaments and is aiming for a professional career.

CS:GO is a team game; when issues occur for 1 of the participants, the entire team suffers. Every player contributes to the final victory, otherwise, the team won't be able to achieve high results.

If CS:GO lags at a crucial moment, the game starts to stutter. Errors lead to defeat.

Counter-Strike is a product of the American company Valve. This shooter game was released in 2000. For a game to be 23 years old is a long time and one of the reasons for the lags. Even regular updates do not protect against errors - the last one was released in 2020.

Running CS:GO on outdated configurations leads to problems with system requirements.

The provider's fault

The game lags due to maintenance and connection failures.

To check a possible source of lag and evaluate the quality of the connection, the user activates a speed test and starts an esports stream or any video.

Technical failures at the gamer's end

CS GO lags due to malfunctions in the player's equipment, such as a broken processor or graphics card. If your suspicions are confirmed, you should run a diagnostic, replace the components, and clean your PC from dust to increase performance.

Other factors

The occurrence of lags in CS GO is related to operating system errors and driver conflicts. To eliminate malfunctions, the gamer reinstalls the game or the OS.

A freeze is a problem in the game when the image hangs or the character moves jerkily. Players have come up with many ways to remove freezes in CS GO.

Initially, the user needs to identify the cause of the problem - the identified malfunction depends on what actions to take.

The game often lags due to provider faults. If the connection is stable, the reason might be in the incorrect rate settings.

When CS GO lags and freezes, replacing the storage on a weak computer will help users. The new storage will allow the gaming to be optimized, load information into RAM from the storage faster, lead to quick texture loading and eliminate hang-ups.

Cleaning the PC from temporary system files and junk will help when players do not know what to do if CS:GO is lagging - gamers use CCleaner:

1. Download the software from the manufacturer's website ccleaner.com.
2. Install the software.

3. Open CCleaner and select the "Custom Clean" and "Analyze" options.

4. Perform a scan in the "Registry" section.

5. Click the "Review selected Issues" button to view the selected issues. You can create a backup copy of the changes made.

6. Click the "Fix Issue" button to fix the issues.

After the cleaning, the PC's performance will increase.

Beginners do not know what to do if CS GO lags. Experienced players advise optimizing the shooter.

Optimisation is possible in the PC version of Steam:

1. Go to the "Library" section.
2. Right-click on the CS:GO game and open in properties.
3. Enter the command "-nosync -novid -nod3d9ex -nojoy -high +cl_cmdrate 128 +cl_updaterate 128 +rate 786432 -tickrate 128" in the "Launch Options" section.
4. Go to CS GO and enter commands: "snd_rebuildaudiocache 1" and "snd_updateaudiocache 1".

Increasing the FPS indicator - frames per second in the shooter when changing the smoothness of the picture can be achieved through a config with console commands. On high settings, you need at least 30-60 FPS. This method solves the problem when CS GO lags on weak PCs. When using the FPS config, you don't need to fine-tune most of the commands in the game.

Config installation:

1. Download the file with the FPS-config or create your own file with configurations and insert the commands.
2. Insert the config file into the CS GO game folder in Steam.
3. Launch control and enter the "exec fpsboost" command.

Overloading the PC's RAM due to antivirus can be a reason why CS GO is lagging. Antivirus can be disabled through the 'Task Manager'.

Counter-Strike may freeze due to background running programs. Unused processes should be closed through the 'Task Manager' and autorun should be disabled.

If your shooter game is lagging, PC owners with an NVidia graphics card should make changes to the settings:

1. Right-click on the desktop and select 'NVidia Control Panel'.
2. Select the 'Adjust image settings with preview' option.
3. Select 'Use custom settings with emphasis on …' and move the slider from 'Quality' to 'Performance'.
4. In the software settings, go to the 'Manage 3D parameters' section.
5. Specify CS:GO in the 'Select a program to adjust' section.
6. Set the 'High performance' parameter in the setting 'Texture filtering - quality'.
7. Press the 'Apply' button to activate the settings.

To enhance the performance of their computers, gamers set minimal graphics settings in the shooter. As a result, CS GO lags less. It's not necessary to minimize all settings. Descriptions with explanations will allow the player to understand what will happen when changes are made. The user decides which parameters to sacrifice.

• On the 'Effects Detail' tab, players choose the 'Low' setting. This parameter affects the display of individual objects. Switching to low quality significantly increases performance.
• The 'Shadow Quality' parameter provides accurate shadow processing. If you set high quality, shadows look nicer, but the PC performance drops noticeably.
• 'Texture Quality' - changes the resolution level of textures, which is noticeable when interacting with complex objects and characters. During a shootout, most gamers do not pay attention to textures - you can sacrifice quality for performance enhancement.
• Changing the 'Shader Detail' parameter is noticeable in lighting and shadow quality. Reducing the setting results in a primitive appearance of objects. At high settings, the image looks attractive, but the performance drops significantly.
• When activating multicore rendering, it is possible to activate several cores at once. The graphics quality increases at the expense of FPS. If you don't disable this feature, CS GO will lag even on powerful PCs. You can keep multicore rendering if diagnostics don't reveal impact on performance.
• The smoothing mode in CS GO affects the image quality when displaying geometric shapes. Reducing the parameter to a minimum enhances performance. Most gamers turn off the parameter with similar functions - 'Smoothing mode (multisample)'.
• Set the 'Texture Filtering' parameter to 'Bilinear' mode. This will blur structures but improve performance.
• Players should turn off vertical sync. There will be no noticeable changes in graphics.
• The 'Motion Blur' parameter is the effect for blurring the image when the camera suddenly changes angle. Disabling it significantly increases performance.

If CS GO freezes, installing the latest version of the video card drivers helps to solve the issue. The user can check the current version of the drivers via the video card manufacturer's website.

Installation instructions:

1. Find the video card model on your PC and download the latest version of video drivers from the manufacturer's site.
2. Install the downloaded drivers.
3. Exit all programs on the computer.
4. Check the PC for viruses.
5. Disable antivirus.
6. Run the game with minimum graphics settings.

Owners of low-performance computers should increase the paging file if the amount of RAM is no more than 2 GB - turn off the automatic selection of the paging file volume and set the value 2047 for PCs with 2 GB of RAM on the 'Virtual Memory' tab.

If CS GO is lagging, the player should check the functionality of the processor cores – go to the 'Performance' tab in the 'Task Manager' and look at the list of running logical processes and cores on the PC.

To unlock the processor cores, install the CPU Core Parking Manager 3 program and set the current minimum processor frequency to 100%.

Reinstalling the OS is a drastic way to fix issues when CS: GO freezes and lags. You can first launch system recovery if there is a saved restore point.

The gamer carries out the reinstallation with a full formatting of the hard drive.

Often CS GO lags due to low computer performance and hardware. If the problem cannot be solved by cleaning the PC, reducing the quality of graphic characteristics, or updating drivers, the gamer needs to assemble a new computer.

A powerful processor, graphics card, and other components are needed in the PC to enjoy the game without lags.