How many threads/cores can CS:GO use?

[PC-4LIFE]

I've seen debates of people claiming source engine can only use 2 cores, or 3 or 4.

There doesn't seem to be a fixed answer.

Would putting -threads 4 even make a difference with my i5 6600k OC to 4.5GHz?

 

[why_wolf]

my understanding is by default it uses 3 threads. You can apparently manually command it to use more threads but this is a negative and produces instabilities in the game. Which makes sense, cramming more threads at an application that wasn't designed to use more threads will not produce better results.

 

[elbert]

-threads <number of cores/threads>
I was not able to find a definitive answer about the maximum number of threads that CS:GO uses. If you have a CPU with 4 or more cores, you can try to set -threads to your cores (or number of threads, but I can not guarantee that your performance will improve. Test it, if you don’t notice any difference or your performance is actually worse, remove the launchoption again.

Valves server software on the other hand is only single threaded.