CS2 Input Lag Fix: How to Get Low Latency in Counter-Strike 2

Experiencing CS2 input lag can be incredibly frustrating. When you’re stuck in a gunfight on a server, that small delay can be the difference between life and death. Yet, input lag in CS2 is still a real problem for many players out there, but it doesn’t have to be.

Often, it’s simply a case of some CS2 settings being slightly wrong, and that’s easy to solve. If you’re looking for a CS2 input lag fix, we’ve got a few possible solutions to try here.

CS2 Input Lag Fix: Low Latency Mode

The first CS2 input lag fix to try is to enable Low Latency mode. While you can technically do this from within your in-game settings, don’t. They don’t always work perfectly. If you’re playing CS2 on an NVIDIA machine, you can do this via the NVIDIA Control Panel. With this launched, follow these steps for lower CS2 input lag:

• Head to “Manage 3D Settings”
• Under the Global Settings tab, change the “Low Latency Mode” setting to Ultra
• Change “Power Management Mode” to Prefer maximum performance
• Change “Vertical Sync” to Off

Now, head to CS2 in your Steam library and right-click on its Properties. Under the General tab, you’ll see the “Launch Options” setting. You may already have your own launch options, but you should now add “-noreflex” to this.

Optimize your mouse settings for CS2

It may go unnoticed, but your mouse polling rate could be influencing your CS2 input lag. If you’re using a wireless mouse and the polling rate is too low, then there will always be input lag, no matter what you’re doing on your PC, as this affects the speed at which the mouse sends data across to the system. The solution: increase your mouse polling rate to around 1000 Hz.

How you go about doing this depends on your mouse brand. Most gaming mice have drivers or software you can adjust settings with manually, and polling rate is one such setting. This will use up more power and therefore drain your battery quicker, but it’s worth it to fix input lag in CS2 and get low latency.

There is another system setting you should change to reduce CS2 input lag: Mouse Acceleration. To do this, follow these steps:

• In your PC Control Panel, go to the Mouse settings
• Go to the Pointer Options tab
• Uncheck the “Enhance pointer precision” setting

With this sorted, your mouse settings should be optimized to fix CS2 input lag.

Disable V-Sync in-game

You may have noticed that we already advised you to turn off V-Sync in the NVIDIA Control Panel, but you should also make sure it’s not enabled in-game, either. To do this, head to the Video tab in the Settings menu, and under Advanced Video, you’ll find the V-Sync option. Disable it. Easy.

V-Sync is actually one of the biggest contributors to CS2 input lag, so if you’re obsessed with getting that extra percent out of your performance, this should always be off.

Monitor settings for lower CS2 input lag

Finally, you should make a very important change to your monitor settings if you’re struggling with input lag in CS2. Disable G-Sync/FreeSync if your monitor supports it. For NVIDIA, it’s G-Sync. For CS2 AMD users, it’s FreeSync. Again, this is pretty simple:

• NVIDIA: Head to G-Sync Settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel and disable G-Sync
• AMD: Head to Radeon Settings, Display, and then disable FreeSync

That’s all our advice for a potential CS2 input lag fix. Remember, PCs can be a strange beast, so one step might work for you that doesn’t for another player, and vice versa. That’s why it’s important to try all of these steps, as the solution might not be what you expect.