cl_updaterate

Updaterate is a tricky one as the best setting is different depending on the server. Cmdrate is data you send to the server, updaterate is data you receive from the server. People just used to set this to 101 to match cmdrate but didn’t really know why.So how do you know what to set it to? Servers have a setting called sv_maxupdaterate which determine the maximum updates it will send to you, the default for a CS server is 30, which is bad, most servers nowadays have this set to 100+ but some publics you will find still have it set to 30. There is no way you can check what it is set to unless you have rcon to the server, but you can look at the lines on net_graph 1 to predict it.To show this, set your updaterate to 100, then ex_interp 0. (I will cover this later) then join a server, if you see lots of orange and yellow dots on your net graph, this means your interp is set wrong for the server and you are not receiving the right amount of updates for your interp setting. Try lowing your updaterate by increments of 10 until the yellow/orange dots go away, you will find servers that have maxupdaterate set to 30 they will go away when you set it to 30 etc.But what if you join a server that does have sv_maxupdaterate set to 100+?Like I said, everyone just used to set it to 101 and leave it like that, this is wrong, the correct setting should match your interp otherwise will cause reg problems. The last few CS updates they briefly changed this to maximum 100 but because everyone had 101 in their config, it defaulted to 30 and caused mass spam to steam support asking them why, so because of this they changed the max to 102, just to stop the spam of forum threads to steam support, but really the correct setting you should use is 100, which matches perfectly with ex_interp 0.01 which I will go over next.My server has sv_maxupdaterate set to 100, but I’m still getting yellow/orange dots!Just because a server has the right setting does not mean it can still actually send 100 updates per second, some bad servers can’t handle it and you should lower your updaterate by 10 until the dots go away, note servers like this are very bad as it depends on how many players and how much action is going on at the time. For example both teams rush B the server cant handle all the traffic of 10 people shooting at once and can only send for example 50 updates per second instead of 100 at that time, so everyone in that moment gets bad reg (which is shown by orange/yellow dots). But when everyone is dead except 2 players, the server can now again send 100 updates per second and you good reg returns. To fix this, you either buy a good server, or lower your sv_maxupdaterate on the server to compensate for its ♥♥♥♥yness.