Counter-Strike 2

Why this game, specifically

Counter-Strike 2 is rarely limited by the graphics card on the hardware people play it on. It is limited by how promptly the CPU can finish a frame and how quickly that frame reaches the display. That makes it one of the few workloads where background CPU contention, a deep frame queue, and a notification arriving mid-round are all measurable to the player. ORION concentrates on those, and does not pretend that clearing a temp folder is what wins duels.

What ORION checks

• Background activity: startup entries, scheduled tasks and always-running apps that take CPU time while a game has it.
• Capture and overlay: Game Bar background recording, broadcasting and clip capture, which run whether or not you use them.
• Latency-sensitive settings: frame-queue depth, presentation path, notification interruptions and input-related Windows options.
• Power behaviour: the active power plan, processor power management, and device idle policy, including whether the machine is on battery.
• Scheduling: the Windows multimedia scheduler category a game registers under, and process priority where it is justified.

Recommended changes

Broadly appropriate, low expected side effects, and reversible where the badge says so. These are catalog entries, not a script: ORION reads the current value on your PC first and skips anything already set.

• Enable Game Modegame-mode SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Turns on Windows Game Mode so the OS prioritizes the active game.

• Enable Auto Game Modegamebar-auto-mode SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Lets Windows automatically apply Game Mode when a game is detected.

• Disable Game Bar background recordinggamebar-bg-off SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Keeps Game Bar background recording off until you turn it back on.

• Disable Xbox Game DVRgame-dvr-off SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Stops Xbox Game DVR from recording in the background while you play.

• Reduce gaming notificationsfocus-assist-gaming SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Turns off a common notification surface while leaving Windows security notifications alone.

• Low-latency session preferencegame-latency-mode-flag SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Records a low-latency session preference.

• Keep fullscreen optimizations ongame-dvr-fse-window SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Keeps windowed-game optimization on.

• High Performance power planhigh-performance-power SafeFreeReversibleNo restart

  Switches to the built-in High Performance power scheme.

Advanced options

Legitimate changes with real trade-offs: hardware dependence, power draw, or behaviour that varies between systems. ORION shows these separately, records the previous value before writing, and never folds them into a one-click run.

• D3D max frame latency 1d3d-max-frame-latency-1 ModerateEliteReversibleNo restart

  Limits D3D frame queue to 1 frame globally for lower input lag.

• Games scheduling category Highgames-scheduling-high ModerateEliteReversibleNo restart

  Sets the MMCSS Games task scheduling category to High.

• Remove DWM refresh capcompositor-max-refresh-rate ModerateEliteReversibleNo restart

  Uncaps DWM refresh rate to use monitor's maximum supported rate.

• Raise Games task prioritygames-task-priority ModerateEliteReversibleNo restart

  Gives the foreground game a higher multimedia scheduler priority.

Trade-offs and limits

• Frame-queue and scheduler options are the ones most likely to behave differently on your hardware than on someone else's. ORION labels them Advanced and records the previous value before it writes a new one.
• None of these settings change what happens inside the game. They change how much of the machine is left for it.

ORION does not publish a frame-rate figure for Counter-Strike 2, because we do not have reproducible before-and-after data for your hardware. What the app can do is capture frames on your PC, in your game, before and after a change, and show you that.