Releasing videos on this channel can be scary.
Despite what you might think, I know I don’t know everything, and it only takes one of
you to know something that I miss to show me that my video is wrong and stupid.
Still, I try to show my workings and to be open about of the limitations of my methods
and findings.
And even if the video doesn’t end up being the ultimate definitive guide to something,
I hope that it can be used as foundations that can be built upon further by those who
wish to do so.
Last week I made a video, comparing the framerates from CS:GO’s beta with those of the game
today.
I concluded that the game now runs slower, but couldn’t determine which of the updates
would have caused this.
Geri43 over on Reddit pointed out a flaw to my testing: I failed to account for the anti-wallhack
update in 2015.This update made players hidden by cover completely invisible, even if you
could see through the walls with wireframe enabled.
I can imagine that this significantly reduces the effectiveness of wallhacks, since your
PC isn’t even given data about players unless you’re close to seeing them without needing
wallhacks any way.
I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a GOOD update that we’re very happy was added.
The issue is that doing these visibility calculations is difficult.
How difficult, you might ask?
Well, visibility in 3D is inherently a 4-dimensional problem that can be tackled using Plucker
coordinates which also get a helping hand from a 5D projective space, all the while
transcending time and space.
All this just to render courtyards and children’s bedrooms correctly for every player.
As you can imagine, doing these visibility calculations puts extra stress on the server
hosting the match.
Not a problem if you’re just playing the game, but since I was using the same PC to
both host the server and to benchmark the game, it could have resulted in extra framerate
drops when compared with the beta.
So I redid the test, using the exact same settings but using another PC to host the
game, leaving my benchmark PC free to act as a client rather than also as a server.
And the results were stunning.
Firstly, GPU-limited PCs.
This will apply to you if you’re running the game on high settings and have a decent
processor.
If you’re only a client, the latest version of CS:GO has dropped by just 7% since 2012,
rather than the 20% that you’d have if you’re also hosting the server you’re playing on.
The improvement is smaller if your PC is CPU-limited, with the drop in FPS going from 33% to 27%.
Now I can understand how this can be a little confusing since I’m comparing so many different
variables at once here.
But to put it simply, you get much higher FPS if you’re just a player rather than
the hoster of a server.
Which is kind of obvious but now we have graphs to show how much of a drop it causes on my
setup.
What’s more alarming is that playing on a server with 10 bots today is more intensive
than it was to be hosting that CS:GO server back in 2012!
That’s a significant drop.
So it appears that this wallhack update and whatever else has been added to a game server’s
workload adds mostly to the GPU, which is a smart move considering how CPU-limited the
Source engine has been in the past.
If you want the best framerate possible you should still use the lowest settings.
But your framerate- and therefore the advantage of using lower settings- will be about 25%
lower than it was back in 2012.
So yes, Geri43’s suggestion not only massively changed my results, but also answered the
question I had in the previous video about which update was causing the drop in FPS.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the drop in GPU performance since the game’s
release is mostly only felt if you’re hosting a server, and although we don’t know for
sure why, the anti-wallhack update is one very possible culprit!
Maybe server owners watching this can think of any other possible causes for this.
I still don’t know what’s causing the CPU drop, but that hitbox update looks mighty
suspicious.
So thanks to Geri for pointing out something I overlooked.
Have a klikpoint.
But now to question my method of testing.
Remember, this is all from just 3 minutes of bot action- it could be that performance
varies wildly every run, meaning that none of my findings should be trusted!
So I repeated it again- twice- giving me 3 results for every test.
And much to my delight, the results were remarkably similar every time, meaning that 3 minutes
of bots on armsrace is a fairly consistent benchmark to use, in case for whatever reason
you can’t use any other method to measure your framerate in CS:GO.
From these repeats I’ve drawn these more robust conclusions about the difference that
being a client makes compared with hosting the server yourself.
If hosted on the same computer as you’re benchmarking, the drop in CPU performance
remains at about 33% and the drop from GPU is close to 20% every time.
If using a server to host, you can see that in GPU-limited situations the drop is between
2 and 6%.
In other words, if your graphics card could handle CS:GO in 2012, it most likely still
can, provided you’re not hosting the server.
Which you won’t be doing unless you’re playing offline against bots or hosting private
matches with friends online… which I suspect very few of you are.
CPU drop varied a bit more between runs, at worst being 27% and at best 21% slower than
in 2012.
This is the result you should care about the most, since this will reflect the drop that
most of you will have experienced since the beta, provided you game at low settings and
therefore most likely care about getting the highest FPS that you can.
In my last video on this I concluded that performance had dropped by about 33%.
With what I’ve learned from this video, I can lower that to just under 25%.
CS:GO’s updates have still resulted in framerate drops but they’re not QUITE as extreme as
I previously thought.
Unless you host servers.
So, I apologise that this video had to be made.
As I’ve said, I don’t know everything.
I have to research every video I make and learn things from them.
If you binge-watched my videos now (which I strongly recommend you do, they’re awesome)
then you’ll likely end up knowing more than I do about CS:GO right now.
I think the important thing is to be honest when I make a mistake and to use it as an
opportunity to fix my mistakes and if anything, to improve on my research further, which I
believe this video has done.
Thank you to Geri43 for making this possible.
If you spot a MOUSTACHE in my videos then please, shout out about it… but don’t
be too mean please, I’m a sensitive soul.