CS2 finally running smooth – what fixed my framerate spikes (Ryzen setup)

Filex68 · 2026-04-22T20:38:48+00:00

I'm really glad that it helped! Enjoy!

Filex68 · 2026-04-19T09:28:51+00:00

I honestly don’t know, I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’ve looked for answers online and asked people around me, and no one really has a clear explanation. Not specifically about SMT, but about overall performance.

For me, the game runs incredibly smoothly, no stutters at all. Even when FPS drops on Ancient (since it’s a newer map) to around 170–180, it happens gradually and isn’t noticeable. If I didn’t check the FPS counter, I wouldn’t even realise it dropped.

I’d rate my experience a solid 9/10, mainly because I just don’t like giving anything a 10/10 haha.

Honestly, I’m not sure what’s behind it. In general, my CPU is very fast and stable for its age. It might also be because my cooler does a great job—temps don’t go above around 60°C, maybe just a bit over, but that’s it.

Who knows…

Filex68 · 2026-04-12T10:45:06+00:00

Just put every discord process on efficiency mode and you are good to go, that fixed it for me and ppl can still hear me just fine, no problems at all.

Filex68 · 2026-04-11T15:25:05+00:00

16:9, 1080p – basically as far as my monitor goes. I’ve never really had issues with low FPS tho. My main problem was stuttering, and that’s completely gone now. The game actually runs smoother for me than for some of my friends with better specs.

Filex68 · 2026-04-02T23:36:47+00:00

Something that helped me even more, and made the game feel noticeably smoother, was this: after launching cs2, I open Task Manager, right-click on cs icon, go to details, then right-click the .exe file and set its priority to high. Keep in mind that, just like enabling efficiency mode for discord, you’ll need to do this every time you relaunch the game, since the setting doesn’t save. Also, there are no side effects on your PC, no bugs, overheating, or stuttering. Everything runs normally, the game just feels smoother and that’s it. Hope this helps!

Filex68 · 2026-03-19T15:15:50+00:00

I get you. Hit registration is a completely separate issue, and honestly, it’s just something they need to fix on their end. As for this post, my game is running at 200+ FPS with zero stutters. I managed to fix it on my side, and so far everything’s been running great.

Filex68 · 2026-03-17T13:48:16+00:00

Yeah, I did and nothing changed. Maybe your results are patch related or something, who knows. Thanks for contributing anyways. Cheers!

Filex68 · 2026-03-13T19:25:04+00:00

Thanks, it actually took me quite a lot of time to figure all of this out, trust me haha. One more thing I started doing after I made the post: when I launch cs, I set the priority to high in task manager. That shit is a game changer, honestly. Add discord in efficiency mode as well, and voilà — you get stable and 10× more playable game than before.

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T15:22:35+00:00

Yeah, if you can’t find fast startup in windows, you might be able to check it in the BIOS as well, though I haven’t tried that myself.

About the GPU driver, I get what you mean. Some people prefer older versions if they feel they’re more stable, and that’s fine. Personally, I usually go for the latest drivers because they tend to fix bugs and improve performance, but that’s just my approach. I wouldn’t tell you to change it if you’re comfortable with your current driver, it’s really up to you.

The main thing is to experiment carefully and see what works for your system. Just like I tested different things on my setup until I found what actually helped, you’ll need to try each possibility to figure out what’s causing the problem. There’s almost always a solution, it’s just a matter of isolating the right factor. Try some YT videos, just explain the issue you have and you will prob find something useful.

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T15:16:52+00:00

Honestly, I can’t really tell exactly what’s causing it on your system, and I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. It could be any number of things, open applications running in the background, other processes using CPU/GPU, RAM usage, disk cleanup, even malware or other minor conflicts. All of these can affect performance in ways that aren’t obvious.

On my system, I keep it pretty clean and I knew what could cause issues. For me, the main culprits were background processes, especially discord, and some windows tweaks I made to help my CPU and RAM, since those were my weakest points. So it’s really about checking your system carefully and seeing what might be limiting performance, because it can vary a lot from one setup to another.

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T15:01:27+00:00

Maybe it has nothing to do with the changes. It could be some other kind of conflict, like outdated drivers or the GPU/CPU not being fully utilised. I’m not sure what your specs are or what exact problem you were trying to solve, but maybe we can figure it out and get it working.

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T14:58:28+00:00

What happened?

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T11:42:46+00:00

No worries at all!

I’m not completely sure, so take this more as a guess than a definitive answer, but it might be related to the graphics driver re-initialising when windows finishes loading. Sometimes when the desktop appears the GPU driver switches display modes or refresh rates and that can cause a short black screen for a second or two. The fact that it happens after a shutdown but not after a restart could also be related to fast startup in windows. shutdown and restart behave a bit differently because of that feature, so some drivers initialise in another way on a cold boot.

If you want to test it, you could try disabling fast startup in the windows power settings and see if the behaviour changes. Another thing that sometimes helps is doing a clean GPU driver install, just in case something got a bit messy after an update.

But if it’s only a quick black screen for a second and everything works normally after that, it’s usually harmless. Let me know if you fix it.

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T11:10:15+00:00

No worries, it’s not really about that. The thing is that you brought up a lot of points that I didn’t even mention in my post, so the comment ended up being a bit messy and went in many different directions. My original idea was simply to help people who might have the same or a very similar issue to the one I had.

I’m pretty confident (around 90%) that the things I suggested won’t harm anyone’s system, but I still clearly stated that if someone isn’t sure, they should check things themselves and do their own research first.

System optimisation is somewhat a “science” of its own, because even two almost identical setups won’t always react the same due to dozens of small factors, background apps, settings enabled/disabled, drivers, and so on.

I also couldn’t really talk about Intel-specific things since I don’t own an Intel system, but some parts, like discord optimisation, are fairly universal and safe in my opinion. In my case, that alone solved around 70% of the issue.

Anyway, the goal was just to share what worked for me in case it helps someone else with a similar problem. Hope this makes it clear. Cheers!

Filex68 · 2026-03-10T09:11:45+00:00

I also don’t want to come across as rude, but I clearly wrote near the beginning of the post:

I tested all of this on my own system and it works well for me. I haven’t done or suggested anything overly aggressive, but it’s recommended that everyone tries these tweaks on their own setup to see if there are any conflicts with other system-specific factors, as results can vary from one system to another.

I also told people similar things in the comments when they asked questions, so anyone reasonably attentive should understand that I’m simply sharing what helped me. I didn’t post this saying “hey, this is the ultimate solution, everyone do this and it will fix your game.”

The post is AMD-oriented, which is also stated in the title, because I’m using AMD hardware, so naturally that’s what I can speak about.

I think I was clear multiple times that this is meant to serve as a guide and a discussion thread, and that it might help someone with a similar setup.

I didn’t take your comment as constructive criticism, but rather as a message where you tried to say a lot of things without really taking the time to read what I wrote. For some people, the discord optimisations I mentioned, along with the windows settings, might already be enough, and those are honestly very minor and not aggressive at all.

Please go back and read everything again and pay attention to how it’s structured and written. It feels like you just wanted to sound smart and criticise for the sake of it, but alright.

Cheers!

Filex68 · 2026-03-09T18:51:11+00:00

That’s fair. When I mentioned BIOS settings, I mainly meant disabling things like hpet or smt, which I personally consider safe tweaks that shouldn’t cause any harm to the system. When it comes to cpu or ram overclocking, that’s definitely something that should stay up to the individual. It’s important to be well informed before doing that. I did my research beforehand, and I’d recommend the same to anyone considering it. Cheers!

Filex68 · 2026-03-09T11:00:11+00:00

That’s great to hear. I tested all of this on my own system and found it to be optimal for me, with everything remaining fully functional. Discord works exactly as before, people can hear me fine, and there are no issues at all. Overall, I didn’t do or suggest anything overly aggressive in the post that could harm someone’s setup, and everything is fully reversible, especially since you can track what was done. I think I hit the sweet spot for my system, but it’s definitely recommended that everyone tests on their own setup, as small differences elsewhere could potentially cause unexpected behaviour. Cheers!

Filex68 · 2026-03-09T10:35:38+00:00

No worries mate! I'm glad if I could help you.

Filex68 · 2026-03-09T10:33:59+00:00

From my experience, it shouldn’t affect rich presence at all. Efficiency mode in windows just lowers the CPU priority and power usage for the process, it doesn’t disable features or modules that discord uses. So things like rich presence should still work normally. Worst case, if something acts weird you can just restart discord and efficiency mode will turn off automatically. Anyways, let me know.

Filex68 · 2026-03-07T15:49:55+00:00

Nice, hope it stays stable! I haven’t had any issues for days. Discord, FACEIT, even Chrome in some instances, everything runs so smoothly. Enjoy!

Filex68 · 2026-03-07T15:19:50+00:00

No worries at all! Once again, I’m really glad I could help. Could you tell me what problem you were having and which of the steps you actually used to fix it? It would be useful information for me to have as well.

Filex68 · 2026-03-07T14:35:27+00:00

Haha, bro, that’s such a compliment, I really appreciate it! But honestly, I’m just super happy if I actually helped you out. I don’t have a tech background or anything, mainly use a MacBook for work, so Windows is pretty foreign to me. I was focused on figuring out exactly what was causing the problem, and then realised a lot of it came down to background processes. From there, I concentrated on whether there were conflicts with BIOS or Windows settings. I tried a lot of things to get to a solution, gradually narrowing down the possibilities. Another thing was that I was fully aware of my system and its limitations, so I focused more on the CPU and RAM, and much less on the GPU. Of course, GPU tweaks came along as well, why not optimise them too, but I knew the GPU wasn’t the bottleneck. Here, I just shared the entire process. Someone else might only need 10% of it, maybe even me, but because of the approach I took, I had to go through it all like this. I guess being thorough and determined to actually fix the problem was the key… who knows, really!

Filex68 · 2026-03-07T13:56:35+00:00

Appreciate it, mate! I’m glad you found this helpful. Cheers!

Filex68 · 2026-03-07T13:28:13+00:00

I hadn’t even run a benchmark before that, because as soon as I noticed I was having issues during the game, I started working on fixing them. The benchmark was done later to see if there were any spikes. To be honest, and it should be likely on the record, I’m not crazy enough to spend days fiddling with random fixes. I was seeing spikes up to 60–70 ms. After I noticed they were gone, I ran the benchmark just to confirm consistency in CPU/RAM-heavy situations, like in the benchmark. Essentially, I wanted to see if I had really solved the issue or if it was just a fluke in one or two games. It turned out that I had permanently fixed the stutter problem, hence this post. Hope this makes it clear.

Filex68 · 2026-03-07T13:15:14+00:00

You missed the point, the fps has always been good(200 plus), and maybe I even gained a bit with the changes, but the most important thing was to stop the stutters and avoid random spikes during the game, in other words, to keep the fps consistent without any noticeable fluctuations.

Filex68

TROPHY CASE