Counter Strike Source Rates

In counter strike source you have the option of setting your network rates. These have a large impact on your gaming experience. Setting an incorrect rate value for your network connection can cause you to lag or have severe performance problem.

There are several different counter strike rates settings that each manage different things:

rate This controls network packets so that your connection bandwidth does not get saturated, setting is for maximum bytes per second.

cl_cmdrate This setting restricts the number of packets being sent to the server by your client and can be used to help connection bandwidth related problems for those with low upload bandwidth. Note that 56K modems, while downloading at up to 56000 BPS, only upload at 33600 BPS or less. You may wish to experiment with a higher or lower setting based on your connection type, for example 40 or higher for a digital connection.

For further tweaking, you can try to set cl_cmdrate to equal your average framerate or your fps_max setting or a divisor of it, but without saturating your upstream bandwidth. Example, if you are currently at fps_max "76" then try a cl_cmdrate value of 38 or 76 for a digital connection.

cl_updaterate The cl_updaterate setting is used to calculate how many gameworld updates you receive from the server, this value will never be more then the servers tickrate. For information on tickrate you can see the other guide.