I recently made the jump from an RTX 3070 Ti to a Radeon 9070 XT because I wanted more VRAM for games like Cyberpunk 2077 and other demanding titles. The issue is that while I'm seeing significantly higher frame rates in benchmark maps, my FPS tends to drop in actual CS2 matches. Specifically, I'm getting around 300–400 FPS during matches, with drops that can go down to 250+, whereas in the Dust2 benchmark map, I'm averaging about 580 FPS. My specs include a Ryzen 7 5700X3D for the CPU and the 9070 XT for the GPU, and my RAM remains unchanged. Is this a common issue for AMD cards in CS2? Are there any fixes, driver tweaks, or settings I could try? I'm unsure if it's an optimization issue with CS2 or something else on my end. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
Even if you've updated your drivers, it's a good idea to start fresh. I recommend using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU). Boot into Safe Mode, run DDU to wipe out all old NVIDIA and/or AMD drivers, then reboot and install the latest drivers for your 9070 XT. This can often resolve unexpected performance drops.
Good call on using DDU. Just to add, make sure there’s no NVIDIA software running in the background, like GeForce Experience. It can interfere with AMD cards.
It seems that CS2 doesn't run well with RDNA 4 GPUs for some reason. In fact, the 9070 XT can perform worse than the 6900 XT in this game. I initially thought it would outperform the 3070 Ti, but it looks like performance can vary based on settings and maps.
That's rough! I'm also considering switching to an AM5 setup to see if it helps improve performance in CS2 and other games.
Do you have a 480Hz monitor? Even if you're hovering around 250+ FPS, it's still pretty solid. You might not need to overhaul your CPU and motherboard just to boost those FPS numbers.
I already did the DDU thing before installing my 9070 XT and the new AMD drivers! Seems necessary these days to avoid conflicts.