This tutorial is intended for people with low end machines, which can be qualified as machines with some type of 1.7 gigahertz processor or below, an agp slot - mostly towards 4x, or an nVidia 5900 series or below card or an ATI 9600 series or below (although you may also want to copy and paste the following link for the VALVe hardware assesment service)

steam://support/?Issues=*

. It is separated into six sections:

Graphic Card Drivers
Command Line Settings
Automatically Executed Configuration
Setting Priorities
In game settings.
Other Helpful links

It is intended to get the maximum playability for those who can not afford to upgrade; it is not going to make a pretty game with all the bells and whistles, rather, it will turn them ALL OFF. Your game, when done, will now graphically resemble CS 1.6, but hopefully will be more playable in Source. This tutorial is not intended for users who already have a decent machine and just want to "squeeze out a few more fps", rather, it's for players who have fps problems. I hope it helps. This tutorial can easily be modified to work on all Source games, not just CS: S. This tutorial is not the end all be all of tutorials, it is only here for help. If you find it helpful, great, if you find something in it that does not work for you, feel free to let me know what doesn't seem to work and why in this thread. Computers are very different from one another, there is no generic single solution for everyone. Nothing is 100% and neither is this tutorial. Feel free to add your own tweaks or recommendations to this thread.

**Note** THIS TUTORIAL PROBABLY WON'T HELP IF YOU DON'T HAVE AT LEAST THE MINIMUM SPECS

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1.) Graphic Card Drivers

BE SURE TO HAVE DirectX 9.0c INSTALLED. NOT SURE WHAT VERSION YOU HAVE? CLICK START-> RUN-> TYPE IN DXDIAG. THIS WILL TELL YOU RIGHT AWAY

Older cards require older drivers. Just because a new driver was released doesn't mean you should install it. They won't help geForce F/X or ati 9600 or below series owners, and may in fact hinder you. I think nVidia put it best, on this one. Guru3d has a great database of graphics drivers for everything, and an awesome forum to help you identify which drivers you need(although for older nVidia users I recommend the 79.11 drivers). Check them out at: http://www.guru3d.com

But, be sure to use the software removal tools for any drivers. There are some on Guru of 3D although I've also heard good things about Driver Cleaner, too. When you've downloaded and installed the driver removal tool of your choice, and after you've downloaded but before you've installed the new driver, be sure to:

open Control Panel-> Add/remove Software-> find your card's drivers -> remove
Reboot in Safe Mode ->tap the f8 key while rebooting to get this option
Run the driver removal tool of your choice
Reboot normally
Install your new driver

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2.) Command Line Settings

THESE ARE EASY TO UNDO

First, start Steam. (Figure 2 shows DoD:S, substitute CS:S instead)

Then, right click on the Steam icon in the lower right hand corner Figure 1.
Select Games Figure 1.
Right click on Counter Strike : Source Figure 2.
Click Properties
Click Set Launch Options Figure 2.
enter in the following commands, the only spaces being between the commands as well as the command values Figure 2.:


Set the amount of ram used by Steam*. it is recommended to use 1/2 your available ram - so for the following:
Code:
-heapsize <number>Ram - Heapsize
2 gigs - 1048576
1 gig - 524288
512 megs - 262144
256 megs - 131072
128 megs - 65536 (you should consider buying more ram)
*VALVe has said that this doesn't control
the same resources it did in Half-Life. For more
information read this.

Specify the DirectX level used by the game.**
Code:
-dxlevel <number>DxLevel - Number
9.0c - 90 (really unnecessary if you are already fine)
8.1 - 81
8.0 - 80
7.0 - 70 (recommended for very low-end, although leagues consider this a cheat, for which I can understand.)

**Also, once set, you should remove this command from the launch options before
the next time you play. That way, if you've made any video setting changes
from the game engine after this, it will save and not reset itself each time.

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3.) Automatically Executed Configuration

TO UNDO THESE, RENAME OR DELETE THE AUTOEXEC.CFG FILE, THEN START THE GAME. OPEN YOUR CONSOLE ANDTYPE IN THE FOLLOWING -
-autoconfig
Thanks, Bazooka

Copy the following code (Thanks, Casey) and paste it into windows notepad. Name it autoexec.cfg and save it in your Steam directory - in one of two places (I have been made aware of two different directory structures - I believe it depends on how old your Steam installation is - if you don't have one path you most likely have the other, unless you made a custom path)
c:\Program Files\Steam\ . . .counter-strike source\hl2\cfg\
or
c:\Program Files\Steam\ . . .counter-strike source\cstrike\cfg\
directory.
**Note**Both the r_drawdetailprops and the r_propsmaxdist are considered cheats in most leagues, so do not include these if you play in CAL, TPG, BFE, or ViE **

Here are the commands, with a brief explanation (to activate or de-activate certain lines, simply comment or un-comment them by adding or removing "//" in front of the actual command. when the two forward slashes are there, like "//mat_dxlevel 60" that means it's not going to be read by the computer.):


*more below*