CS2: 2× vs 4× vs 8× MSAA

Median VProf average FPS was 325.0 at 2×, 307.3 at 4× and 249.6 at 8×. Relative to 4×, 2× was 5.76% higher and 8× was 18.78% lower. VProf P1 medians were close; image quality and input latency were not evaluated.

Input latency: not measured. FPS and these source-specific timing metrics do not establish click-to-photon latency or guarantee smoother gameplay.

Test setup & definitions

CPU

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D

GPU

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060

Driver

32.0.16.1742

OS

Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26300

CS2 build

25966348

Scene

FPSHeaven Ancient · workshop 3472126051

Display

1440 × 1080 · 144 Hz

Display mode

Borderless fullscreen

FPS cap

Temporarily uncapped; restored afterward

Capture

Full VProf benchmark · 88 one-second intervals per test

Only MSAA changed. Other video settings were checked; normalization of unused fullscreen refresh fields to 0/0 in this display mode was allowed.

Warmup order: 8× → 4× → 2×. Measured rounds: 8× → 4× → 2×; 4× → 2× → 8×; 4× → 8× → 2×. Fixed seed: 20261018. The game relaunched for every test.

The full fresh VProf summary after each unique benchmark marker supplied average FPS and P1. Each result contains 88 one-second intervals and no excluded frames. Charts use the median of three measured tests per setting.

VProf P1 is preserved under its source name. It is not relabelled as PresentMon 1% low. No raw frame-time percentiles or physical input-latency estimates were produced.

Data quality & downloads

All 12 raw VProf summaries and unique benchmark markers were checked against the result files and journal. Three warmups were excluded from summaries.

Ten original configuration files were independently checked for matching SHA-256 and file attributes after restoration. The original 4× MSAA and FPS cap were restored.

Steam performance display was off during measurement; the benchmark diagnostic overlay remained on. No automatic screenshots, UI input or OBS recording occurred during measurement.

An earlier session stopped during warmup shutdown validation. It was restored and its samples were not merged into this completed series.

• One PC, one synthetic workshop scene and only three measurements per setting.
• VProf covers the full benchmark; its FPS values cannot be compared directly with fixed 60-second PresentMon windows from other reports.
• No image-quality comparison, stutter analysis or input-latency conclusion.
• MSAA values were checked through configuration readback; the per-test UI verification field was false. No per-test visual UI validation is claimed.

Downloads contain allowlisted derived measurements, including warmups. Original captures, account identifiers, local paths, device identifiers and configuration contents remain private.