Recommended In-Game Settings

So you have finally made the decision that competitive Counter-Strike is right for you. If you're like me and have a super competitive mindset, I'm sure you want to do everything possible to gain an advantage. As they say, practice makes perfect, but that doesn't mean there aren't other measure you can take to improve your game. The time you spend properly setting up your game for competitive play will be well worth your time.

Everyone has their own theories regarding the best in-game settings for competitive play. Below, are my own personal settings that I have found work best for me.


Keyboard / Mouse
 

There are 3 main options that you want to focus on here. First is Mouse Acceleration which needs to be Off. Playing with it on will give you very inconsistent mouse movement. The second options is Raw Input which you should play around with. I prefer how the game feels with it on, but as mentioned before, everyone is different. Lastly, is your Mouse Sensitivity. Again, this takes a lot of playing around with, but once you find something you're comfortable with, stick with it! There are plenty of guides on how to find your ideal mouse sensitivity, so I will not get into that. 

Game Settings

Everything in this screen capture is really dependent on personal preference. With that being said, I would highly recommend setting Max Acceptable Matchmaking Ping to 50 and enabling the developer console. The latter will be handy in an upcoming article. I will also discuss crosshairs in that same article.

For these settings, I highly recommend keeping Switch Weapon on Pick Up set to No. Setting it to yes will only cause you trouble, especially during a high pressure situation. I also suggest using my Radar Options as a starting point for changing them to your liking. 

Video Settings

 

I want to start off by saying yes, you might be able to run this game with higher video settings. Does that mean you should? If you are playing at a competitive level, no. These options are ideally set for optimal competitive play. Increased visibility, no AA or V-Sync which give you no benefit competitively. There are only two reasons to not use these settings the first of which is because your computer cannot handle the game with them. In that case, play around with dropping some of these options. The second reason is monitor limitations. Regardless, you should set your resolution as high as possible unless you encounter frame rate issues. And please, if your monitors native aspect ratio is 16:9, do not play with 4:3 stretched or 4:3 black bars. CSGO is not 1.6 or Source so you gain no advantages. The only reason why you will see professional players playing with a 4:3 resolution is because they have been playing with that resolution for 10+ years and have grown accustom to it.

Audio Settings    

Audio settings are pretty self explanitory. Some key things to note are Master Volume, Speaker Configuration and Master Music Volume. As you can tell, my Master Volume is set to .9 instead of 1. This helps compensate for slight distortion that you may experience if it were set to 1. Speaker Configuration should be on Headphones because lets be honest, why on earth would you play competitive Counter-Strike with speakers? Finally, Master Music Volume. Youve made it this far, so you want to start playing competitive CS right? In that case, you don't need in-game music. It adds nothing in regards to competitive advantage.

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Hopefully you found this guide helpful and learned a thing or two while reading through it. My next article will show you how to properly set up a complete config file. This will allow you to tweak your game settings in ways that you could never accomplish with in-game settings.