Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is not the game that it used to be. Really! Load up an
old version of the game and you’ll be hard-pressed to find ANYTHING that’s the same as in the
game today. So when people say that the game doesn’t run the same as it used to, well…
yeah, that’s to be expected. But it also makes it hard to pinpoint which feature or
features are responsible for these differences. It’s immediately assumed to be the game’s
fault, but it could also be your computer, especially if you’ve been using the same
one since the game came out 9 years ago! And particularly if you haven’t reformatted.
But diagnosing that sort of stuff is a whole other kettle of fish.
So in this video, to keep things simple-r, I will be sticking with Counter-Strike’s
changes, using the same computer configuration throughout.
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So how do we get access to the old version of Counter-Strike? Simple. Right-click on
CS:GO in Steam, properties, Betas, and you’ll find a ‘demo_viewer’ version, which is
there to run old demos of games from before a certain update which presumably corrupted
them in some way. This version of the game isn’t ‘release day’, but it’s close-
it doesn’t even have a deathmatch mode. So I’m just going to refer to this as ‘2012-Counter-Strike’,
even if it might have been as late as January 2013.
And I will be comparing this version with the framerates from today’s version of the
game, here at the end of 2021. I’m testing all this on my good old Ryzen 2200G computer.
Its graphics performance is about as fast as a mid-range computer from 2012, but because
it’s a quad core processor, that makes it one of the fastest that was out back then.
But by today’s standards, it’s absolutely baseline performance, and if your computer
performs worse than this one does then it is time to consider upgrading. Time to test
it in Counter-Strike. Every single defuse map that was in the game
in 2012 has since received a facelift, which will cause them to run slower. But how much
slower? Aztec was one of the maps remade for CS:GO,
representing 2012 graphical and performance standards. Ancient is the latest Valve-made
map, representing 2020 standards. The fact they both happen to share the same setting
is just happy coincidence! So I tested Aztec when running on 2012 CS:GO, against Ancient
running on current CS:GO. And because I want to give the PC a fighting chance, I used low
settings and resolution. And running about on both maps, I concluded
that performance has HALVED. Remember, I’m comparing a release-day map, played on an
old version of Counter-Strike, against the newest map, on the latest version of Counter-Strike.
So I think this represents the greatest drop you can expect and it wouldn’t be so pronounced
on, say Dust 2 or Inferno. But this test confirms what we all suspected - the new maps, models
and everything else all add up and take their toll on our computer’s framerates. But I
was pleasantly surprised to still be getting 100+ fps on Ancient using such a slow computer!
I’m sure it would drop quite a bit lower if other players were also on the server,
but I think you can appreciate it’s hard to benchmark this when nobody’s playing
the old version of the game any more.
Let’s see what happens if we keep the map the same. This proved more difficult than
you’d expect- trying to port new maps to the old version of Counter-Strike made it
crash and behave all weird. So I decided only to test with maps bundled in the old version
of the game.
I chose dust2_se. This was meant to be the ‘competitive’ version of Dust2, and it
lacked fancy graphics like wires, fog and debris on the floor. Valve soon abandoned
the idea of _se versions, combining the best of both map versions together for everyone
to enjoy. But I suspect this was also done to make Valve’s life easier when it came
to updating the map. So I started by benchmarking it without any
HUD or weapons visible at all, and with both high and low settings, dust2_se runs 5% slower
today than it did in 2012 CS:GO. So not a HUGE difference, but it’s definitely there.
Since I used the same map, I assumed that these differences must have been from engine
and feature bloat over the years. However, I bothered to take screenshots, and if we
compare these, you’ll notice there have also been a few graphical differences. I promise
you, I’m using the exact same version of the map- I literally copied the map file over.
To understand why there are differences, we need to look at these notices on the wall
just here. Here they are when viewed in 2012. And here they are, in today’s version of
Counter-Strike. The same texture today is literally different from how it was when the
game was released! And just in case you were wondering, when a map is remade it uses new
and different textures, so that isn’t what’s causing this change. And to prove it’s all
the same texture, and not just 2 different ones where one got removed, we can find the
exact same arrangement of notices on the wall here in bombsite B, and again the same one
has been removed when we jump to modern CS:GO. So what’s fair for me to do here? As well
as keeping the map files the same, should I also some how replace the textures from
one version of the game with the other to make for a fairer comparison? Or is it better
just to draw the line here and to admit that everything has changed since the game came
out- even the stuff that we THOUGHT would have remained the same, like textures and
props with the same files names and locations?
Turning on the weapon model dropped a few more frames, but it wasn’t too bad, considering
the player’s glove models look much better than they used to. It feels like I’m getting
my money’s worth out of this 1 or 2% drop, given how much of the screen this hand takes
up. It could also be from all of the custom weapon skins that are in the game these days,
which certainly use a bit more storage, and probably a bit of RAM as well.
And last, we’ll turn on the HUD. And this is where things get interesting! Performance
dropped quite considerably at low settings- delivering just 89% of the framerate we would
have got in the same situation in 2012! But when we jump to high settings and resolution,
the opposite occurs- new CS:GO actually claws back some performance. It was running 7% slower
than old CS:GO when just the weapon model was drawn, but with the HUD drawn as well
it’s now only 5% slower than old CS:GO was! So maybe the game’s modern HUD is designed
in a way to have less of a burden on your computer when it’s in a GPU-limited state.
For this PC of mine, this seems like the one area where new CS:GO is more efficient than
it was at release. Silver lining and all that.
It’s long been suggested that people with lots of custom skins and players on their
friends list get better framerates by jumping to a new, empty account! So I put this to
the test: I compared my 3kliksphilip account, which
has 1000 things in my inventory and more friends than I can eat, against my FREEkliksphilip
account, which I made to test the free edition of the game when it came out, and nothing
more. These were both tested on the current version of Counter-Strike, because obviously,
2012 CS:GO didn’t have an inventory like it does today. I will say this testing took
me a while to do, but I can quickly summarise it by saying that I found no evidence that
an empty account runs better than a full one does. In fact, it ran very slightly slower.
There we have it- to win, you need to have lots of friends and lots of custom skins!
I did only logout and login between tests, though- Maybe I should have completely reinstalled
Counter-Strike, just to be sure it was fair. But then… are I don’t think people are
really doing every time they switch between accounts?...
While I’m bad-mouthing all my testing, I’ll just say that yes, I KNOW all of my testing
so far has been done on an empty map, which isn’t representative of a proper match.
I should be testing with bullets flying about everywhere- because the bullet penetration
system has been updated since 2012, so that could make a difference. There should be characters
running everywhere- which have also had their models updated, as have their hitboxes. And
even the bot systems have changed since then. So to try and summarise the changes in one
go, I ran arms race gamemode for 5 minutes on the map, shoots, to get an average framerate
over that period. I will say that even the armsrace gamemode has changed since 2012!
But since deathmatch didn’t exist back then, it seemed like the right gamemode to test.
I ran at 720p, low settings, with no hud visible of any sort. I think bots are more process-intensive
than real players are, since the game has to think for them. But it’s better than
nothing, isn’t it. And the results were significant.
The important thing here is the average FPS, which has dropped from 140 to 107. That’s
a big drop, given that we’re comparing what really should be the same gameplay. Our performance
is now only 77% of what it was when the game came out.
In conclusion: CS:GO has got more demanding to run in the 9 years since it came out. There
are two ways you can look at this. The first is to say that a game that was playable on
release day should remain playable forever more, on the same hardware. And if you believe
this, I get your point. Because historically, this has always been the case with games.
Or even the opposite, as games get MORE optimised as time goes on!
But my opinion on the is slightly different- 9 years have passed. The world moves on! The
game is multiplayer- it only has value for as long as people are still playing it. It
isn’t fair to compare it with what you’d expect from a fixed single-player experience.
Counter-Strike has a much longer and invested lifespan than one of those. It’s something
that people can follow as an esport, or to play in waves, with breaks inbetween, spanning
months or even years. I see it as a service, so in that sense, it would be better to compare
it to the likes of World of Warcraft which evolves over time, or to see it as an alternative
to game series which may get a new version that you have to buy every year.
Counter-Strike’s changes weren’t just changes for changes sake- they’re there
to keep it relevant, and modern. If it was still in the state it was in 2012 I don’t
think it would be anywhere near as popular. I believe they have made the game significantly
better, in both gameplay and graphics. And computers have advanced since the game’s
release as well- greatly outpacing the growing demands of Counter-Strike- to the point where
even a barebones budget rig like the 4-year-old APU I’ve been testing in this video can
still output decent framerates- without there being a graphics card in sight! Which is just
as well, because I acknowledge that right now, there isn’t a graphics card in sight!
So it really boils down to whether you think the game’s updates have improved it enough
to justify- and whether you’d still be here and would have spent as much time and money
on the game if they hadn’t been done.
And Merry Christmas.