CS:GO Netgraph Explained

The Network Graph in CS:GO is the best tool to monitor your games performance. This article will explain every detail of the Netgraph to you.

How to activate the Netgraph

First of all you need to know how to activate the Netgraph. For this you need to type

net_graph 1

into the developer console. From there you should see this on your screen:

FPS

"FPS" means frames per second. The source engine that runs CS:GO is meant to run on high fps, which means the higher the value the better. You have the option to limit your fps to avoid high fluctuations of this value that could lead to a less than optimal experience with the following command:

fps_max 300

In this example the fps would be limited to 300.

VAR

"Var" shows you the consistency of your fps. It uses the recent 1000 frames to calculate deviations in the fps value.

UP

This shows you the current value of your update rate. Update rate means the amount of data packets that are sent to the server per second. You can leave this value at 64 if you are only playing Valves Matchmaking, since their servers run on 64 tick, but if you are playing on a third party service like FaceIt or community servers, you should set the value to 128 with the following command:

cl_updaterate 128

CMD

This shows you the current value of your user command rate. This is how many times your client checks if there are new user inputs and sends them to the server. The default value also is 64 but if you want to play on 128 tick servers you also need to set this value to 128 with:

cl_cmdrate 128

LOSS

This value shows you how much data that the server sends to your client gets lost. This is a common cause for lags in the game and this stat allows you to distinguish between hardware caused lags and internet caused lags.

CHOKE

This value shows how much of the data that your client requests cannot be processed. This means the bandwith of the client reaches its limit and the server is forced to skip a part of the data.

TICK

This shows you the tickrate of the server. As said already above, this means how often per second a server requests data from your client. Valve Matchmaking runs on 64 tick, a lot of community servers run on 128 tick.

SV

This value shows how many milliseconds it took the server to process the recent server tick. If this value is too high (it will be highlighted in yellow or red) the server you are playing on is causing issues. That is the third option that could cause lags.

Netgraph Settings

Although the Netgraph is a neat tool, it's also really important that it is not distracting to you in the game. Therefore you can make some adjustments: netgraph_pos x

X can be replaced by 1, 2 or 3. 0 = left, 1 = right, 2 = middle. net_graphproportionalfont X

Determines the font size of the Netgraph. We recommend to set this value to 0.5.