GuidesOct 27, 20265 min readCS2Sell

CS2 video settings: what each option does, 4:3 vs 16:9 and stretched res

CS2 video settings explained: what every graphics option does, 4:3 vs 16:9 and stretched resolutions, and Valve's own advice on refresh rate, V-Sync and Reflex.

CS2 video settings sit on two pages, Video and Advanced Video, and Valve describes every option in its own tooltips. This guide goes through them using those descriptions, explains the 4:3 vs 16:9 choice and stretched resolutions, and gives the few recommendations Valve itself makes. Beyond those, the right setup depends on your PC and your taste. Our CS2 audio settings guide covers the Audio tab the same way.

Display settings: resolution, aspect ratio and refresh rate

Settings > Video holds the basics: Display (which monitor), Display Mode, Aspect Ratio, Resolution, Refresh Rate and Brightness.

Display Mode is Windowed, Fullscreen or Fullscreen Windowed. Since August 14, 2025 Fullscreen Windowed also lets you change the rendering resolution and aspect ratio.
Aspect Ratio is Normal 4:3, Widescreen 16:9 or Widescreen 16:10.
Refresh Rate: Valve's Steam Support page recommends the highest rate your monitor supports, because higher rates give smoother motion. In Windowed and Fullscreen Windowed modes the rate comes from your system's display settings, so check it there. Since June 2024 the game also warns you at startup if the rate is below the maximum.
Brightness changes the gamma correction of the image, and has worked in windowed modes since April 2024.
Display picks the monitor for Fullscreen, an option added in October 2024.

4:3 vs 16:9 in CS2

16:9 matches most monitors and shows the widest view. 4:3 trims the sides, and on a 16:9 screen you then get either black bars or an image stretched to fill the screen, which is what players mean by stretched res. 16:10 is close to 16:9.

Stretching makes player models look wider, which some players find easier to aim at, but targets also cross the screen faster and you see less to the sides, as Dexerto and Dignitas both note. GGRecon points out that the models aren't actually bigger; only their width on your screen changes. A lower 4:3 resolution such as 1280×960 also renders fewer pixels, which Dignitas counts as a performance gain, though 1024×768 looks clearly more pixelated. Dignitas adds that AWPers lose less from the narrower view, since it matters less when zoomed in. Your mouse turns you the same angle either way; our CS2 eDPI guide covers sensitivity itself.

The Contrast Spray finish on the FAMAS and M249, and the P250 Visions

In Fullscreen, stretching depends on your graphics driver's scaling setting. GGRecon's steps: set Full-screen scaling under Adjust desktop size and position in the NVIDIA Control Panel, or turn on GPU Scaling with Full panel in AMD's software. Since August 2025 Fullscreen Windowed accepts other resolutions and aspect ratios too, and a fix on August 18 made it stretch the image to fill the screen. Either way it is an ordinary setting; GGRecon notes there is no ban risk.

Many professionals play stretched. Dexerto's settings page for donk, last updated in September 2025, lists 1280×960 at 4:3, stretched, in fullscreen; our donk article has the rest. Published settings change, so treat any pro's list as a snapshot. If you switch resolution, your crosshair keeps its proportions: since September 2026 the game rescales crosshair pixel values with the resolution, as our crosshair codes guide explains.

What each Advanced Video setting does

Setting	Options	What it does, per Valve's tooltip
Boost Player Contrast	Disabled, Enabled	Makes players easier to see in low-contrast situations; can cost performance
Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode	CMAA2, 2x, 4x or 8x MSAA	Smooths jagged edges; higher quality costs performance
Global Shadow Quality	Low to Very High	No tooltip; which lights cast shadows is set separately
Dynamic Shadows	Sun Only, All	Which lights make players and smoke cast shadows
Model / Texture Detail	Low, Medium, High	Texture resolution and model complexity
Texture Filtering Mode	Bilinear, Trilinear, Anisotropic 2X to 16X	Improves how textures look; higher costs performance
Shader Detail	Low, High	How sophisticated lighting and shading on surfaces are
Particle Detail	Low to Very High	Complexity of effects, and whether particles cast shadows
Ambient Occlusion	Disabled, Medium, High	An extra lighting calculation; can cost performance
High Dynamic Range	Performance, Quality	Range between the brightest and darkest pixels; Performance uses less GPU memory
FidelityFX Super Resolution	Disabled (Highest Quality), Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, Performance	Renders below your resolution and upscales with a spatial technique

Two tooltips are worth reading closely. Valve warns that Dynamic Shadows on Sun Only "might leave you at a competitive disadvantage, particularly indoors", because other lights stop making players and smoke cast shadows. Boost Player Contrast exists purely for visibility, and in December 2024 Valve fixed a case where it revealed parts of players or weapons through thin surfaces.

Computer-themed finishes on the M4A1-S, SSG 08 and M4A4

Dynamic Shadows became a separate setting in June 2024, and the Very High texture level went in October 2023 because, Valve said, it was identical to High. The Presets row sets everything to Low, Medium, High or Very High at once.

Frame pacing: V-Sync, G-Sync, Reflex and max FPS

Since June 2024 Advanced Video has a Frame Pacing section. It holds V-Sync, a row showing whether NVIDIA G-Sync is active, NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency (Disabled, Enabled or Enabled + Boost) and two sliders, Maximum FPS In Game and Maximum FPS In Menus, which run from 64 to 1000. Valve says Boost "may draw more power to the GPU and slightly impact FPS". The AMD counterpart, Anti-Lag 2, has been supported since May 2024.

Valve's Steam Support page explains the trade-off. A frame rate above your monitor's refresh rate causes tearing, where the screen shows parts of two frames at once, and microstutter, where the game drifts out of step with the display. V-Sync fixes both by making the game wait for the next refresh, but while it waits it doesn't process your mouse and keyboard, which adds input latency.

With G-Sync, Valve recommends turning on V-Sync and Reflex as well, which removes that extra latency. The combination caps your frame rate slightly below the refresh rate by design, and Valve calls it "usually the smoothest-looking and lowest input latency settings combination". G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync are switched on outside the game, in NVIDIA's or AMD's software, and CS2 needs a restart afterwards. Our June 2024 update article covers when these recommendations arrived.

Set your frame cap before you join a server: since August 2025 fps_max can't be changed while you're connected. And if an experiment goes wrong, the Reset defaults button on the Video page puts Valve's values back.