Valve Updates Counter-Strike 2 — Some Celebrate Improvements to Subtick and Vulkan

Valve Updates Counter-Strike 2 — Some Celebrate Improvements to Subtick and Vulkan

Valve has rolled out a new update for Counter-Strike 2, enhancing both technical underpinnings and gameplay tweaks. The patch addresses collision issues on Mirage, refines R8 Revolver geometry and animation, adjusts subtick behaviour, and enables Vulkan defragmentation to ease texture streaming overhead.

 Key Changes in the Patch

On Mirage, the collision model above the ladder toward the sniper position was updated.

The R8 Revolver received geometry revisions and rescaling of animation to make it feel smoother.

The command sv_subtick_movement_view_angles is modified: now subtick view angles are only sent together with other subtick events, rather than being sent on every frame where they change.

Vulkan defragmentation is enabled, aiming to reduce resource usage and lower strain during texture streaming

The official Counter-Strike site confirms that Vulkan defragmentation is now part of the build, specifically to help with texture streaming overhead. 

Player and Community Reactions

In the Russian community site linked by iXBT, professional player ScreaM (FUT Esports) was quoted reacting positively:

“After the last update, subtick got a lot better — do you feel it too?” 

On Reddit, users also discussed these changes:

“Enabled Vulkan defragmentation to help alleviate texture streaming overhead.”

“That gun is sooooooooo fun, but it’s soooooooo bad…” (referring to the R8) 

“Movement feels really snappy and less heavy. I hope it’s not placebo but I am really liking to move around after this update.” 

“This confirms they’ll buff it, trust me, 100% of the time it happens 0.000003% of the time!” (about R8) 

In the Steam Community forums, some players reported big performance gains on Vulkan mode compared to DirectX 11 after the patch:

“After the last update … I have less FPS in the menu than on DX11, but in the game the FPS have returned almost to normal! … Vulkan ~200 vs DirectX 11 ~130fps (on Train, straight ahead). Nuke: DX11 ~200, Vulkan ~260.” 

This kind of anecdotal feedback suggests that for certain hardware configurations, Vulkan may now offer better performance relative to DX11.

Broader Context & Previous Fixes

Valve has been rapidly iterating on CS2 with multiple updates in a short period. Earlier in September, they pushed fixes for sound, animation, and maps (Ancient, Shoots, Grail, Agency, Dogtown), and in August the community praised the optimization improvements, claiming notable FPS gains. 

Such frequent patches underscore that CS2 is still in a heavy refinement phase, as Valve responds to both technical issues and player feedback.