Time in Counter-Strike 2 flows differently. Instead of minutes and seconds, Valve introduced ticks to measure time. The number of ticks or tickrate indicates how many times per second the server updates the game data. Counter-Strike 2 uses sub-ticks technology which is closely related to tickrate. CS.MONEY Blog will tell you what is tickrate, how it works and how the tickrate affects CS2 today.
It doesn’t matter how much the tickrate affects CS2 and what a subtick is. You can still have fun: just play with your favorite skins! And buy them cheaply and quickly on CS.MONEY, as it’s your best option to trade skins.
Tickrate and ticks in CS2 and how it works
Let’s simply explain what tickrate, ticks and subticks are in CS2. Basically, a tick is a measure of information, one update of game data. The server collects data from clients (all lobby players’ PCs), compiles it and sends it back. Thus, all players have one game state, and all shots, jumps, movements are synchronized. In order for the game state to be updated for everyone as smoothly as possible, a whole bunch of tricks is used, but today we will not delve into network magic.
Again, a tick in CS2 is a measure of data collected from all lobby PCs combined, and ticks can happen multiple times per second, depending on how the developers want it.
CS2 works on 128 tickrate?
CS2 servers update information 64 times (ticks) per second. In other words, CS2 tickrate is 64. And this value cannot be easily changed as it is built into the game by Valve themselves. But there are also subticks. Subtick is a technology that appeared in CS2 just recently and it works simple. Besides ticks, the game also attaches a timestamp to each action. The server, receiving data from players, collects everything in chronological order and sends the information back to the clients.
So CS:GO was better because there were servers with a tick rate of 128? You might ask. Well, yes and no. Although doubling the tick rate allows you to update the game status twice as often (in the case of 128-tick it is every 8 milliseconds), subtick allows the game to be more accurate, have fewer conflicts when players interact, and also read the input more reliably.
Which tickrate does Faceit use for CS2? Is it 128?
As we said earlier, tickrate is built into CS2. Any third-party platforms and tournament operators, be it Faceit, ELS or PGL, host matches with a tickrate of 64. You shouldn’t expect CS2 servers with a tickrate of 128.
CS2 lags, how to fix tickrate?
It is impossible to change the tickrate in CS2. We also do not recommend entering console commands without understanding how they work. Doing this will most likely only harm you client and game. It is worth remembering that optimization on one PC will not necessarily give the same result if repeated on another.
If some strange lags, FPS drops or other problems occur, it is best to run some diagnostics and find the source. First, check the frame rate itself, its stability. And also the quality of your network connection. No console commands are needed for this.
- Open Settings
- Select Game
- Find Telemetry on the right
- In this section, you should enable the constant display of the frame rate counter and ping.
After enabling, several lines of data will appear in the upper right corner.
If your frames per second drop, then the problems are either in the game settings, or it’s time to think about updating your PC hardware. If you have internet connection issues, you need to try changing the server, rebooting the router and checking background programs.
Overall, to summarize, unlike CS:GO, in CS2 all servers work with a tick rate of 64. This is compensated by the new subtick system, which allows CS2 servers to update the game with increased accuracy. Answering the question of how the tick rate affects CS2, we can only say the obvious truth: the higher the tick rate of the game servers, the better.
