Planning on picking up a 500Hz monitor ahead of the upcoming Counter Strike 2 release date? Well, there’s a chance Valve’s multiplayer game won’t make full use of the new standard, as churning out a matching frame rate appears to be a chore. That’s not to say you’ll ever have to go out of your way to boost fps to triple digits in Counter Strike 2, but even the mighty Nvidia RTX 4090 won’t necessarily satiate speedy screens like the Alienware AW2524H.
Counter Strike 2 could become the next best FPS game within the esports scene, so it’s only natural to assume players will aim for higher frame rates than ever. Naturally, manufacturers are already gearing up to help the industry reach new performance heights, with 500Hz screens making their debut alongside GPUs like the one featured in our Nvidia RTX 4090 review.
However, if early gameplay glimpses by Twitch streamer Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek are anything to go by, maintaining over 500fps in Counter Strike 2 could be a challenge. During a recent stream, the Canadian content creator switched on a frame rate counter using a prompt, and fps mainly appeared to hover between 200-400fps.
For context, Shroud uses a Maingear MG-1 gaming PC, armed with an RTX 4090 and Intel Core i9-13900K. In other words, he’s equipped with the best graphics card and CPU combo on the market, so you’d think that’d be enough to match a 500Hz refresh rate. Yet, that doesn’t appear to be the case, and that may mean new speedy esports screens are a little too advanced for current setups.
Of course, this is all mere speculation, and the frame rate situation might change once Counter Strike 2 officially arrives. There’s also a chance that Shroud’s settings aren’t completely dialled in to reach 500fps, as the streamer uses an Asus ROG Swift 1440P 360Hz monitor.
We’re itching to get our hands on both an Alienware AW2524H monitor and Counter Strike 2, and only time will tell whether 500Hz refresh rate panels are worth investing in. Until then, check out our best gaming monitor picks for options that’ll pair perfectly with your gaming PC specs.
Even if reaching 500Hz is an issue, you’ll be pleased to hear that Counter Strike 2 Nvidia Reflex support will be a thing at launch. The GeForce feature should kick latency issues to the curb, provided you’re using something newer than a GTX 900 graphics card.