While Counter-Strike games are generally thought to be well-optimized, players are reporting a blaring issue with CS2’s main menu that’s leaving their systems’ GPU units gasping for air.
In a Reddit post dated Nov. 19, a player named u/pentafe shared screenshots of how their system’s resources are being used, highlighting the peculiar 100 percent GPU utilization for when they keep CS2’s main menu open. They had the same question as most of us might have, why does a main menu with no major rendering points need so much graphics resources?
If you’ve been playing CS2 for a while, you might suggest capping the maximum FPS at 30 or 60. Many in the thread did so, too—all you have to do is type fps_max_ui 60 in the console and press the Enter key. In fact, pentafe had it capped at 120 as well. But this wasn’t the point they wanted to make.
“I’ll limit the framerate, but I still think that main menu should not push graphics card to the limit, especially when fully loaded Overpass game with 10 people, 10 guns and other effects like smokes and nades don’t. It’s just a less demanding scene than a whole map,” pentafe wrote in a reply thread later. And while many players in the thread proceeded to downvote them, I think their point makes complete sense.
Main menus in games are supposed to be minimal, and a feature as such using that many GPU resources isn’t normal. Granted that you can prevent high GPU usage by capping the frames allowed using a console command, but we don’t need to do that for most other games, do we? Modern video games like CS2 should automatically know where to use fewer resources and save energy.
Albeit CS2 has much bigger problems, including bugs, cheating, and whatnot, waiting to be tackled, as much as it seems harmless, pentafe’s spot could point to an optimization error or even a bug that requires Valve’s attention.
Published: Nov 20, 2023 05:13 am