Everything About DPI and Sensitivity

When you start digging deep into Counter Strike, you will most likely see “eDPI”, “sensitivity” and “DPI” keywords here and there. The debate about the best CSGO sensitivity, how to find the perfect one is a never ending story, but it isn’t really a surprise. It’s the one of the basics things you need to get right to start building a foundation on which you can grow your skills. Counter Strike Global Offensive is one of the games, where it is very important to take care about every factor you can possibly control, to enable yourself to be a better player. eDPI is one of this things. For the start, let’s talk about these 3 keywords, sensitivity, DPI and eDPI to better understand how they relate to each other.

What Is Sensitivity

Simply, it’s a value. If you install CSGO for the first time or it is a fresh reinstall, it is set to 2.5 by default. It used to be 6, but Valve has lowered the default value of sensitivity. The reason could be that the average sensitivity of professional Counter Strike players hovers around 1.5 – 3 value. Sensitivity is important, as it’s a part of eDPI. We will talk about it later on, when we get to know what DPI is. For now, you need to remember that sensitivity is just a value you can set using in-game settings menu:

You can also open the developer console and use command:

sensitivity [value]
example:
sensitivity 2

Just like in the screenshot below:

What Is DPI

It’s a second important factor that is very important, when trying to set your total eDPI. DPI stands for Dots Per Inch and is, in simple terms, a sensitivity of your mouse. If you are serious about Counter Strike, you should already have a mouse that will let you change these settings using your mouse software. Again, we have a ‘unspoken rule’ that your DPI should be set to 400 or 800 DPI, as this are the most used settings in the professional Counter Strike scene. Some people argue over which one is better, 400 or 800 DPI, but they effects of picking one over another are negligible. Most people would use 400 DPI as a ‘standard’. Also, most gaming mice will have this exact setting available as the lowest DPI possible.

What Is eDPI

We already know what sensitivity and DPI are. These two keywords together make up your eDPI. You can calculate your eDPI using this simple formula:

eDPI = sensitivity x DPI

The reason for having eDPI is to accommodate for different gaming mice on the market and how people like to set them up for CS / Windows / other games. Most gaming mice will have the default DPI of 400, but some will have the default as 450 or will not have anything below 800. All we care about is your effective dots per inch (eDPI) after all.

Few examples.

Your mouse comes as default 400 DPI. You want to copy some professional player with 800 eDPI. You would want to set your sensitivity in-game or using console to value of 2.

800 eDPI = sensitivity 2 x 400 DPI.

Your mouse doesn’t have 400 DPI settings, only allows you to pick 450 DPI as closest value. You want to achieve 800 eDPI? Do the simple math and set sensitivity to 1.777.

800 eDPI = sensitivity 1.777 x 450 DPI

Professional CS Average eDPI Per Team

Here is a simple chart with average dpi x sensitivity = effective DPI values for some of the most legendary teams in Counter Strike Global Offensive. The data are valid for at the time of this post and could be subject to change over time, but you can get a grasp of how it pans out when it comes to average settings used across professional CS teams.

How To Find My Perfect eDPI

You can’t really find it exactly at this specific moment. What is strongly recommended is to check what is your current effective dots per inch value and understand what is affecting is, to most likely lower it at the end.

It’s very common occurrence that a new player to FPS world has no idea what is his current DPI and that you can also set ‘sensitivity’ in the Main Menu.

First step is to research your mouse brand and model and try to find its default DPI mode. It very well could be 400 DPI (a standard) or it could be 9000 DPI. Then you will have to set a corresponding value to ‘sensitivity’ in game to get the final eDPI somewhere around 800-1000 eDPI.

To answer the question, there is no such a thing as perfect sensitivity, perfect DPI, perfect eDPI. There is a community / professional scene average that hovers around 800-1000 eDPI. If you chose to play at 1200 eDPI, it’s still fine! If you prefer 600 eDPI, it’s still good choice. It all depends on your preference, what makes you feel good while gaming, but it most likely has to be lower than it is now. Counter Strike is a specific game where you want to be as accurate as possible on any given day to achieve maximum efficiency in every match you play, no matter if you have a bad day. This is only guaranteed to some extend by having something in the range of the sweet spot 800 – 1000 eDPI. There are special cases where players perform as good on quite high eDPI.

w0xic from mousesports (AWPer) plays on 1620 DPI x 1.5 sensitivity, which makes his effective DPI 2430. It’s nearly 3 times higher than the average.

f0rest from NIP (Rifler) plays on 400 DPI x 3.2 sensitivity. His effective DPI is 1280. It’s about 50% higher than the average of 800 eDPI.

s1mple from NaVI (Rilfer), the best CS:GO player plays on 400 DPI x 3.09 sensitivity which makes it about 50% higher than average 1236 eDPI.

The secret is to put alot of hours into training, playing competitive matches and even more training practice to build that muscle memory and game sense, to allow you to always be at the required angle at any given situation. To have that angle trained hundreds of times to again, build muscle memory and so on. We’re talking about thousands of hours of just practice and even more matches played for the experience. But you have to start somewhere and it better be lower eDPI.

Should I Copy Pro Player Settings

There is nothing wrong with copying your favourite player settings, his DPI, sensitivity, autoexec and start up options. The general idea is to be as close to average as possible and adjust from there. Play so many matches on their settings and maybe lower your sensitivity or put it up a little bit to find something that feels comfortable, gives you freedom of movement (very important skill in Counter Strike on it’s own) and makes your crosshair placement smooth and correct.

Spend some time with it, rethink how it’s working for you, come back to us and create your own autoexec file with our generator. Keep it simple and remember what your favourite player uses. It’s most likely very simple too. The good thing is that you have came to the right place and you have started the process of improving yourself as a Counter Strike Global Offensive player by researching about eDPI, DPI and sensitivity.

Calculate Your eDPI

You can use this simple tool to calculate your current / desired effective DPI and then compare it to specific professional Counter Strike player or the approximate average of 800-1000 eDPI value across the CS scene. Simply enter your mouse DPI in the left box, your sensitivity that you are using for CS:GO in the middle box and read the result in the box on the right.

Enter DPI	In-game Sensitivity	Your eDPI

Changing Sensitivity And Staying Consistent

Do you remember the time when you set your new sensitivity and effective DPI to that sweet, god-like aim value and you just destroyed everyone all day long? You probably also remember that day when everything went wrong and it got you thinking it’s your eDPI / sensitivity. You can’t be more wrong.

You are not alone, millions of us have the same problem from time to time. You have to realize that the only thing that could be to blame is you. You might be over worked, not sleeping enough, having a rough day at school, being dehydrated, playing at different chair height.

You are the problem here, not your sensitivity. Don’t change it for a day, stick with it, play different style, maybe more passive or maybe aggressive play style will work. You could play support role, use this day to learn all the nades for your best map, improve another skill set, but don’t degrade your muscle memory you have been working on for so long by changing sensitivity or eDPI like madman. Trust us, the slump will go away. It could be that you need a few days break from Counter Strike.

To be consistent in Counter Strike you have to be consistent in all areas to have overall consistency at maximum level at all times. It’s sadly impossible. There are so many things like the ones mentioned above that will affect your performance. You need to try to keep some of them as consistent as possible, so your eDPI is a great choice. The rest is hard to control. Try daily exercises, running, whatever to keep your mental and physical state at good form. This will help enormously. Leave your sensitivity alone and keep building muscle memory.

Important Additional Settings

To make sure your eDPI is essentially valid while playing, you have to make sure your Mouse Raw Input settings is set to ON inside in-game options.

This settings makes the game override the Windows settings, so it is possible to have higher Windows eDPI for your daily system use. It’s also a common thing that if your eDPI isn’t on the lower end, for example 500 eDPI, players use same eDPI in game and identical one in Windows.