Pro Counter-Strike 2 gamer says game runs like 'a**' on anything other than AMD's Ryzen 9800X3D — custom demo of the game runs at under 200 FPS even on on AMD's best gaming CPUs

Counter-Strike 2 is taking fire for serious frame rate issues that are causing headaches for esports players and affecting performance on even the Best Gaming CPUs. Renowned CS esports player ropz took to X to complain about these issues, noting that the game's frame rate instability is so serious that only AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D runs the game well enough for tournament play.

Ropz claims he can tell the difference between playing the game on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D or an Intel-based system running CS2. Not just that, but if the game is running on an Intel system, Ropz claims the game runs poorly. Further, Ropz claims that CS2's frame rate issues specifically revolve around 20-slot DM servers or in highly stressed 5v5 sessions where frame rates can reportedly drop below 200 FPS on Intel's latest CPUs.

However, these issues aren't just a problem with Intel. A day after he made the above claims, he asked his fellow CS2 gamers to play through a demo of CS2 featuring a replay of a highly intensive 5v5 match to see what performance is like on other users' Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming machines and other hardware.

The reports he got back are impressively poor. Multiple users boasting Ryzen 7 9800X3Ds or Ryzen 9 9950X3Ds reported frame rates below 200FPS. For one user (Arklyn) sporting a 9800X3D and an RTX 4070, frame rates start at 600FPS but drop all the way down to 170 FPS during intensive scenes. Another user (badhan) reported an FPS dip all the way down to 163 FPS in the same replay, despite also running a 9800X3D and an even more powerful RTX 5080 graphics card.

If you are wondering if graphics settings are causing the issues, at least one X poster recorded a frame rate drop as low as 135FPS, featuring a 7800X3D and running the game on "almost all" settings on low with a resolution of 1280x960.

Ropz's demo is likely a worst-case scenario that won't always happen in your games, even in tournament matches. So you shouldn't worry about frame rates going that low if you're a more casual CS2 player.

Regardless, it shows CS2's performance issues firsthand and how erratic the game's frame rate dips can be. For those unfamiliar with CS2's regular performance, the best gaming chips on the market, liuke the 9800X3D, are capable of allegedly playing the game (albeit in less intensive scenes) at 600+ FPS, depending on graphics settings and the graphics card used. Less-capable chips, such as AMD's non-X3D chips and Intel's Core i5 and i7 Raptor Lake chips, are known for running the game in the 300-400 FPS range (again, depending on graphics settings and the GPU used).

Hopefully, Valve will get to the bottom of this. The game has technically been receiving patches with performance optimizations since its release, but highly intensive 5v5 and apparently 20-slot deathmatch sessions appear to be the Achilles heel of CS2's continuing frame rate fluctuation issues.