Counter-Strike: Global Offensive CSGO – Playing CS:GO on Macbook Pro Best Settings

Why Macbook Sucks ?

My Specs : I have a 16″ Macbook Pro 2019 base model with 6-core i7 and 5300M GPU. Its a work laptop so i didnt purchase it for gaming but i still like to play CS:GO a lot so i use it for gaming as well. I’ll talk about native MacOS version of CS:GO, I dont prefer bootcamp.

Why Macbook suffers from poor performance even with such capable hardware ?
The reason is Thermal Throttling due to bad cooling system. If you plan to play such graphics intensive games regularly and you stay in a warmer climate zone then your macbook will heat up too much and MacOS will use Kernel Task process to limit the CPU usage. So if you see Kernal Task in your activity manger taking up all your CPU power then chances are that your macbook is overheating. You can play CS:GO for 10 mins perfectly but suddenly it heats up and starts to lag due to limited CPU power. But below are some workarounds to run it smoothly.

What can be done to fix it ?

To run CS:GO smoothly at around 90 FPS without overheating for a long duration, there are 3 easy steps.

1.crystalidea.com – https://crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control : Download the free version of this app for MacOS. This app allows you to run the fans at full speed so they do better cooling. You should run this app and use full blast preset before running the game. Its completely safe.

2. tbswitcher.rugarciap.com – http://tbswitcher.rugarciap.com/ : Download the free version of this app. Basically it allows you to disable Turbo Boost for intel CPU so that the peak CPU speed is at the base level, in my case its 2.6 Ghz. so the CPU cannot go to higher speed thus reducing thermal heating to great extent. So you need to disable the turbo boost feature before you start playing CS:GO. It can run CS:GO smoothly even without turbo boost. This is also completely safe to use. I havent noticed any issues.

Please note : If you disabled turbo boost but your macbook goes to sleep then again you’ll have to disable turbo boost. This is a bug for some reason the icon says its off but actually its not. So you’ll have to enable it and disable again to make sure its completely off.

[ Optional step ] For checking if your CPU has capped to its base speed, you need to download software.intel.com – https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/intel-power-gadget.html. In the screen shot you can see my i7 is at 2.6 Ghz which is its base speed. But its just for checking if turbo is disabled or not, so you can skip this if you dont want to check.

3. Adjust CS:GO settings :

• When you run the game you need to go into console ( ` ) and type fps_max 90. This will set your maximum fps to 90 so that there is less cpu resources used and also less stuttering. i think 90 is fine considering its macbook and i can play well with that. Atleast for causal matches.

• Lower your Graphics settings so that the CPU and GPU can be less stressed and thus reduce thermal throttling. Ofcourse you’ll compromise on the graphic quality of the game but since its a macbook you cant expect much. i usually keep everything on low and resolution 1400×900

Follow these whenever you play the game, and you’ll definitely see a difference in performance.

Hope this helps 🙂

This is all that we can say about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive CSGO – Playing CS:GO on Macbook Pro for now. I hope this post helped you. If there is anything that we should add, please let us know via comment below. See you soon!