Best Modern Warfare 4 Settings for FPS and Performance
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The fastest way to gain FPS in Modern Warfare 4 is to turn every ray tracing option off, drop Shadow Quality and Particle Resolution to Low, set VRAM Scale Target to 80, and add DLSS, FSR or XeSS on Quality if you are still GPU-limited. Ray tracing is the heaviest thing MW4’s renderer does — it is available across all modes this year — and switching it off usually recovers more frames than every other quality setting put together. This guide covers the full graphics table, the hardware tiers, and the Windows settings that keep frame times flat in a 6v6 lobby.
The goal is stable frame times and readable sightlines — not maxed ray-traced reflections that cost you the gunfight.
Written during the MW4 beta. Weekend One ran from August 21 and the open beta runs August 28 – September 1, ahead of the October 23, 2026 launch. Menu names and defaults are from the beta build and will be re-verified at launch.
Best Modern Warfare 4 graphics settings
Set Graphics Quality to Custom first — the built-in presets re-enable ray tracing. Then work through the Quality tab:
| Setting | Recommended value |
|---|---|
| Graphics Quality | Custom |
| Render Resolution | 100 |
| Dynamic Resolution | Off |
| Upscaling / Sharpening | DLSS / FSR / XeSS — Quality (if GPU-limited) |
| VRAM Scale Target | 80 (70 on 8 GB cards) |
| Ray Tracing Reflections | Off |
| Ray Traced Shadows | Off |
| Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion | Off |
| Texture Resolution | High (Medium on 8 GB VRAM) |
| Shadow Quality | Low |
| Volumetric Quality | Low |
| Particle Resolution | Low |
| Spot Cache | High |
| Screen Space Reflections | Off |
| Depth of Field | Off |
| Motion Blur (World) | Off |
| Motion Blur (Weapon) | Off |
| Film Grain | 0.00 |
And the Display tab:
| Setting | Recommended value |
|---|---|
| Display Mode | Fullscreen Exclusive |
| Display Resolution | Native |
| Aspect Ratio | 16:9 (Automatic) |
| Screen Refresh Rate | Highest available |
| V-Sync (Gameplay) | Off |
| V-Sync (Menus) | Off |
| Custom Frame Rate Limit | A few frames below refresh |
| NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency | On + Boost |
| Background Shader Preloading | On |
| High Dynamic Range | Off |
| Display Gamma | 2.2 (sRGB) |
The four settings that actually cost you frames
Not every setting is worth the same. In Modern Warfare 4, four of them dominate the frame time:
- Ray tracing — reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion and volumetrics all have ray-traced modes this year, spanning campaign, multiplayer and the large-scale Big War maps. This is the biggest lever in the entire menu. Turn all of it off for multiplayer.
- Shadow Quality — the classic Call of Duty frame killer.
Lowcosts you nothing competitively; enemy silhouettes are what you track, not shadow softness. - Volumetric Quality — the god-ray and smoke lighting pass. Expensive, and it actively hides players inside smoke.
Low. - Particle Resolution — every explosion, killstreak and smoke grenade runs through it.
Lowkeeps frame times flat during the chaotic moments where you most need them flat.
Texture Resolution is the exception. It is nearly free on frame rate as long as it fits in VRAM, and higher textures make distant players easier to read. Push it as high as your card allows, then stop.
Set VRAM Scale Target correctly
VRAM Scale Target caps how much of your video memory Modern Warfare 4 will fill. At 100 the game will happily consume every megabyte, leaving nothing for the driver, the compositor or your overlays — and the result is texture thrashing that feels like stutter even though your average FPS looks fine.
| Your GPU VRAM | VRAM Scale Target | Texture Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| 6 GB | 70 | Low |
| 8 GB | 70 | Medium |
| 10–12 GB | 80 | High |
| 16 GB+ | 80 | High |
If textures load in late, or you get a repeating hitch every time you round a corner into a new area, lower this before touching anything else. The Modern Warfare 4 stuttering fix has the full diagnostic.
Modern Warfare 4 PC system requirements
| Tier | CPU | GPU | RAM | VRAM | OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Ryzen 5 1600 / Core i5-8400 | GTX 970, GTX 1060, RX 470 or Arc A580 | 12 GB | 3 GB | Windows 10 64-bit |
| Recommended | Ryzen 5 3600 / Core i7-8700 | RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT or Arc B580 | 16 GB | 8 GB | Windows 11 64-bit |
Three requirements apply to every tier:
- An SSD is mandatory. Modern Warfare 4 streams assets continuously; a mechanical drive produces constant hitching regardless of your GPU.
- TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot must be enabled for online play — Ricochet anti-cheat verifies the boot path. If you hit a secure attestation error, see how to fix Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 for MW4.
- Update your GPU driver. The beta lists NVIDIA
610.47, AMD26.7.1and Intel32.0.101.8861as the minimum recommended versions.
Settings by hardware tier
Entry level (GTX 1060 / RX 580, 1080p)
Render Resolution 100, upscaling on Balanced, every quality setting Low, Texture Resolution Low, VRAM Scale Target 70, all ray tracing off. Target 100+ FPS; if you fall short, drop Render Resolution to 85 before lowering textures further.
Mid range (RTX 3060 Ti / RX 6700 XT, 1080p–1440p)
The main table above, unchanged. Upscaling on Quality, Texture Resolution High, ray tracing off. This tier should hold 144+ FPS at 1080p in 6v6.
High end (RTX 4070 Ti or better, 1440p)
The main table with Volumetric Quality at Medium if you want the look back. You can run native (upscaling off) at 1080p. Keep ray tracing off anyway — on a 240 Hz panel it is still the difference between hitting your cap and missing it.
Enthusiast (RTX 5080 / 5090, 4K)
Upscaling on Quality at 4K, everything else per the table. Ray tracing is genuinely playable here, but competitive frame pacing is not the reason you would enable it — leave it for the campaign.
Frame rate limit and refresh rate
Cap your frame rate a few frames below your refresh rate rather than leaving it uncapped. An uncapped GPU queues frames ahead of the display, and that queue is felt as input delay even while the FPS counter looks great.
| Monitor refresh | Custom Frame Rate Limit |
|---|---|
| 144 Hz | 141 |
| 165 Hz | 162 |
| 240 Hz | 237 |
| 360 Hz | 355 |
Set it in Display → Custom Frame Rate Limit, keep both V-Sync options off, and leave G-Sync or FreeSync enabled in your driver. The lowest input lag settings guide covers the full latency stack.
Windows settings that matter for MW4
In-game settings only get you so far — a good share of Call of Duty’s frame-pacing problems live in Windows:
- Set the High Performance power plan. The Balanced plan parks cores and drops clocks mid-match, which shows up as inconsistent 1% lows.
- Turn off VBS / Memory Integrity. Virtualization-Based Security costs measurable CPU performance in shooters. Check
msinfo32for “Virtualization-based security: Running”. - Enable XMP or EXPO in BIOS. Running 5600 MT/s RAM at its 4800 JEDEC default is a real frame-rate loss in a CPU-heavy 10v10 lobby.
- Raise the Windows timer resolution. The default 15.6 ms tick makes input sampling and frame delivery less consistent. The free Tier1Suite does it in one click and restores the default on exit — the background is in the ultimate guide to timer resolution.
- Close overlays you do not use. Discord, browser hardware acceleration and RGB software all contend for the same CPU time as the game.
- Test HAGS both ways. Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling helps on some driver and hardware combinations and hurts on others. Measure your own 1% lows rather than trusting a blanket recommendation.
The full list is in Windows gaming tweaks that actually work, including which popular tweaks are placebo on modern Windows.
Let shader preloading finish
Modern Warfare 4 moves shader compilation outside the game client. After installing, and after each major update, you get a “Shader Pre-Loading Will Start” prompt and the work runs in the background.
Do not queue into a match while shaders are still compiling. Doing so forces the GPU to compile mid-game, which produces severe frame drops, missing textures and, on some systems, a crash. Leave Background Shader Preloading on, let it finish, then play. This one change removes most of the day-one stutter that plagued previous Call of Duty releases.
Best FOV for Modern Warfare 4
FOV is a personal trade-off, not a performance setting — a wider FOV shows more of the map but shrinks enemies on screen, and it costs a few frames because the GPU renders more geometry.
| FOV | Best for |
|---|---|
| 90–100 | Balance of target size and awareness — the default competitive range |
| 105–110 | Fast movement, flanks, and the larger Big War maps |
| 115–120 | Maximum awareness, hardest to hit distant targets |
Start at 100–105, and set ADS Field of View to Affected so your sight picture stays consistent between hip-fire and aiming.
Verify your changes are actually helping
Turn on the performance overlay and watch frame time, not average FPS. A flat frame-time line at 120 FPS feels far better than a spiky one at 160. Change one setting, play two matches, and check the 1% lows before changing anything else — that is the only way to tell a real gain from placebo.
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
What are the best Modern Warfare 4 settings for FPS?
Set Shadow Quality and Particle Resolution to Low, turn every Ray Tracing option off, keep Render Resolution at 100 with DLSS, FSR or XeSS on Quality, and set VRAM Scale Target to 80. Ray tracing and shadows are by far the most expensive settings in Modern Warfare 4, so disabling ray tracing alone typically recovers more frames than every other quality setting combined. Enable NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency on the Display tab to keep latency low while you are GPU-bound.
Should I turn ray tracing off in Modern Warfare 4?
Yes, for multiplayer. Modern Warfare 4 ships with ray-traced reflections, ambient occlusion, shadows and volumetrics across all modes, and they are the heaviest thing the renderer does. Turn Ray Tracing Reflections and the other ray tracing options off for competitive play — the visual gain does nothing for spotting enemies, and the frame-time cost is large even on a high-end card. Save ray tracing for the campaign.
What is VRAM Scale Target in Modern Warfare 4?
VRAM Scale Target is the percentage of your graphics card's video memory that Modern Warfare 4 is allowed to fill with streamed assets. Setting it to 80 leaves headroom for the driver, Windows and your overlays, which prevents the texture-thrash stutter that appears when the game tries to use 100% of an 8 GB card. Lower it to 70 on 8 GB GPUs, and leave it at 80 on 12 GB or more.
What are the Modern Warfare 4 PC system requirements?
The minimum spec is a Ryzen 5 1600 or Core i5-8400, 12 GB of RAM and a GTX 970, GTX 1060, RX 470 or Arc A580 with 3 GB of VRAM on Windows 10 64-bit. The recommended spec is a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700, 16 GB of RAM and an RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT or Arc B580 with 8 GB of VRAM on Windows 11. An SSD is required on every tier, and TPM 2.0 plus Secure Boot must be enabled for online play.
How much VRAM does Modern Warfare 4 need?
Modern Warfare 4 lists 3 GB of VRAM as the minimum and 8 GB as recommended, but High textures with ray tracing enabled will exceed 8 GB at 1440p. On an 8 GB card, run Texture Resolution at Medium, VRAM Scale Target at 70 and ray tracing off. On 12 GB or more you can hold High textures at 1440p comfortably. Running out of VRAM shows up as hitching and late-loading blurry textures rather than a low average FPS.