Call of Duty Warzone Optimization: Best Settings for PC 2024

The latest season of Call of Duty: Warzone is now live, bringing new maps, Area 99, and more for players on PC and console. The F2P Battle Royale title follows the release of Black Ops 6, featuring related plotlines and characters. It also features the same graphics settings, but due to the limited map size, their performance impact isn’t quite the same. Here’s our Call of Duty: Warzone PC (2024) optimization guide with benchmarks for every graphics setting.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

• Enable Resizable BAR.
• Turn on Game Mode.
• Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
• Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
• Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
• Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
• Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
• Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.

Call of Duty Warzone: PC System Requirements

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Testing Methodology

• Hardware setup used:
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
  • Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE.
  • Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
  • Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

Graphics Presets & Resolution Scaling

Call of Duty: Warzone scales well with resolution, averaging 79.5 FPS at 4K, 138 FPS at 1440p, and 183 FPS at 1080p “Extreme.” These numbers indicate a GPU-bound workload which is ideal for competitive shooters.

Changing the graphics presets yields less uniform performance scaling. The lowest three presets deliver roughly similar frame rates, and the same can be said for “Ultra” and “Extreme.”

Texture Filtering & Resolution

Call of Duty: Warzone features the same graphics settings as Black Ops 6. However, the impact of each setting is different, and we generally see lower-quality visuals than the latter. Texture Filtering doesn’t notably impact performance, and is best left at the highest (Ultra) for sharp textures.

Texture Resolution substantially impacts VRAM usage. From over 15 GB at “High,” the graphics memory consumption drops to 10.4 GB at “Normal,” 8.6 GB at “Low,” and 7.6 GB at “Very Low” running at 4K.

Call of Duty: Warzone leverages local and on-demand textures. The former is loaded from the local storage, while the latter is downloaded in real-time. If you’re running low on storage space or have a slow internet, you may want to set it to “Minimal” which downloads only the basic assets.

Conversely, setting it to optimized and increasing the texture cache allocation (up to 64 GB) can improve visual quality by downloading high-quality textures in real time.

Shadow & Detail Quality

Detail Quality sets the LOD by adjusting the polygon count of different meshes. Higher settings produce more detailed (3D-wise) objects, while lower values yield more flat-looking surfaces. The Low and Medium quality settings perform the same, while “High” is 2-3% slower.

Shadow Quality adjusts the resolution of shadow maps, impacting framerates and VRAM consumption. The “Low” and “Very Low” options disable grass shadows. Reducing it from “Ultra” to “Low” frees up 500 MB of graphics memory. The framerates scale more linearly, with “Very Low” granting a 7% boost over “Ultra.”

Screen Space Shadows renders self-contained shadows along the edges and boundaries of objects/surfaces. It subtly impacts framerates.

Occlusion & Reflections

Like Black Ops 6, Call of Duty: Warzone enables GTAO at “Low” and “Medium” only to be replaced by MDAO at “High.” The highest quality setting (Ultra) leverages global illumination to calculate the ambient lighting. Unless you’re completely disabling Occlusion, the performance impact of the four settings is almost identical.

Call of Duty: Warzone features four different technologies for calculating the ambient lighting. These are GTAO (Low), GTSO (Medium), MDAO (High), and Global Illumination (Ultra):

• Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion or GTAO, similar to HBAO+, upgrades SSAO with a horizon-based approach but is supposed to be faster.
• Ground Truth Specular Occlusion or GTSO, adds specular occlusion to the algorithm without affecting performance.
• MDAO is a more aggressive technique that produces larger shadows and darkens prebaked shadows.
• The highest quality setting employs some form of global illumination. It looks very similar to MDAO but avoids excessive shading like the former.

Screen Space Reflections renders on-screen reflections at low resolution. Disabling this setting can grant a ~10% performance boost at the cost of a minor quality reduction.

Static Reflections enable pre-baked reflections onto shiny surfaces. Since they’re rendered at loading time, they don’t impact performance, using 150-200 MB of graphics memory at 4K.

Tesselation, Volumetrics & Physics

Tesselation produces additional geometric detail by subdividing existing triangles/primitives into smaller ones, resulting in finer meshes without increasing resource consumption. It has a negligible impact on framerates.

Volumetrics enable fog, light shafts, and 3D clouds. Enabling it can have a drastic impact on quality and performance which is most evident in rainy or foggy maps. The lowest quality setting (Low) is almost 10% faster than the highest (High).

Deferred Physics enables object physics, including ground and water deformation due to player actions. Disabling it grants a 3% framerate gain at 4K.

Particles & Shader Quality

Particle quality controls the density of onscreen particle effects and their influence on lighting. Unless you’ve opted for the highest quality setting, the resulting framerates should be within the reasonable range. Due to fewer large-scale explosions in Warzone (versus Black Ops 6), particle effects don’t noticeably impact visuals.

Shader Quality controls the impact of lighting on a scene. This includes the tone of different surfaces, reflection quality, shadow range and softness, and luminance. It is the most taxing setting in Warzone, reducing framerates by more than 20% at 4K.

The rest of the graphics settings, including Bullet Impacts, Persistent Effects, Texture Streaming, Weather Grid Volumes, and Water Quality don’t have a discernable impact on the game’s performance.

Upscaling & Frame Generation

Like most competitive shooters, upscaling is among the most important settings in Call of Duty: Warzone. Regardless of your hardware, DLSS, FSR, or XeSS is necessary for attaining 144 FPS or higher at 1440p and 4K.

Warzone is 65% faster with DLSS “Quality,” 92% faster with “Balanced,” and 208% faster with the “Performance” upscaling preset. Further reducing the internal resolution to “Ultra Performance” increases the average framerate to 195 FPS (2.44x) at the cost of blurry textures.

Quality Mode	Scale factor	Input resolution	Output resolution
DLAA/Native AA	1.0x per dimension (1.0x area scale) (100% screen resolution)	1920 x 1080 2560 x 1440 3440 x 1440 3840 x 2160	1920 x 1080 2560 x 1440 3440 x 1440 3840 x 2160
Quality	1.5x per dimension (2.25x area scale) (67% screen resolution)	1280 x  720 1706 x  960 2293 x  960 2560 x 1440	1920 x 1080 2560 x 1440 3440 x 1440 3840 x 2160
Balanced	1.7x per dimension (2.89x area scale) (59% screen resolution)	1129 x  635 1506 x  847 2024 x  847 2259 x 1270	1920 x 1080 2560 x 1440 3440 x 1440 3840 x 2160
Performance	2.0x per dimension (4x area scale) (50% screen resolution)	960 x  540 1280 x  720 1720 x  720 1920 x 1080	1920 x 1080 2560 x 1440 3440 x 1440 3840 x 2160
Ultra Performance	3.0x per dimension (9x area scale) (33% screen resolution)	640 x  360  854 x  480 1147 x  480 1280 x  720	1920 x 1080 2560 x 1440 3440 x 1440 3840 x 2160

Frame Generation doesn’t provide tangible performance gains over upscaling, so it’s best left disabled (even if you don’t mind the associated latency penalty).

Call of Duty Warzone: VRAM Usage

Call of Duty: Warzone uses up to 15 GB of graphics memory at 4K “Extreme.” Stepping down to “Ultra” reduces the VRAM usage to 10 GB, while “Balanced” uses over 7 GB. The lowest presets use up to 6 GB at 4K.

1080p and 1440p use 10-11 GB of graphics memory at the Extreme quality graphics preset regardless of the upscaling method.

Call of Duty Warzone: CPU Bottlenecks

Call of Duty: Warzone is well-optimized for multi-core CPUs. The game is primarily GPU-bound at 1080p with an average GPU-Busy deviation of 15% at the highest quality preset.

QHD and 4K UHD produce similar GPU-Busy deviation figures at the Balanced and Basic quality presets, dropping to under 10% at “Ultra” and “Extreme.”

Call of Duty Warzone Performance Summary

• Shader Quality is the most taxing graphics setting in Call of Duty: Warzone, granting a 17%+ performance boost when disabled.
• Volumetrics is second, improving framerates by 10.5% when reduced to “Low.”
• Screen Space Reflections confer a 9% FPS boost when disabled.
• Shadow Quality can enhance framerates by up to 7%.

Best Settings for Call of Duty: Warzone 2024 PC

Warzone PC Settings	High-end	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC
Resolution	4K (3840×2160)	1440p (2560×1440)	1440p (2560×1440)	1080p (1920×1080)
Target FPS	180 FPS	240 FPS	144 FPS	144 FPS
Upscaling	DLSS or FSR 3 Performance	DLSS or FSR 3 Balanced	DLSS or FSR Balanced	DLSS or FSR Balanced
Frame Generation	Off	Off	Off	Off
VRAM Scale Target	90%	90%	90%	90%
Texture Resolution	High	High	High	High
Texture Filtering	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
DOF	Off	Off	Off	Off
Detail Quality	High	High	High	High
Particle Resolution	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal
Bullet Impacts	On	On	On	On
Persistent Effects	On	On	On	On
Shader Quality	Medium	Low	Medium	Low
OD Texture Streaming	Optimized	Optimized	Optimized	Optimized
Local Texture Streaming Quality	Default	Default	Default	Default
Shadow Quality	Ultra	High	Ultra	High
Screen Space Shadows	High	High	High	High
Occlusion+	Ultra	High	Ultra	High
Screen Space Reflections	Off	Off	Off	Off
Static Reflection Quality	High	High	High	High
Tessellation	Far	Far	Far	Near
Volumetric Quality	Medium	Low	Medium	Low
Deferred Physics Quality	High	High	High	Off
Weather Grid Volumes Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Water Quality	All	All	All	All

CPU	Core i7-14700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D	Core i5-13600K/Ryzen 5 7600X	Core i5-12400/ AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU	RTX 4080/RX 7900 XTX	RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT	RTX 3060/RTX 3060 Ti/RX 6600
Memory	32GB (dual-channel)	16GB (dual-channel)	Less than: 16GB (dual-channel)
Warzone PC Settings	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC

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Warzone PC Settings	RTX 4090	RTX 4080	RTX 4070 Super	RTX 4070
Resolution	4K	1440p	1440p	1080p
Target FPS	180 FPS	240 FPS	144 FPS	144 FPS
Upscaling	DLSS Performance	DLSS Performance	DLSS Balanced	DLSS Performance
Frame Generation	Off	Off	Off	Off
VRAM Scale Target	90%	90%	90%	90%
Texture Resolution	High	High	High	High
Texture Filtering	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
DOF	Off	Off	Off	Off
Detail Quality	High	High	High	High
Particle Resolution	High	High	High	High
Bullet Impacts	On	On	On	On
Persistent Effects	On	On	On	On
Shader Quality	Medium	Low	Low	Low
OD Texture Streaming	Optimized	Optimized	Optimized	Optimized
Local Texture Streaming Quality	Default	Default	Default	Default
Shadow Quality	Ultra	High	High	High
Screen Space Shadows	High	High	High	High
Occlusion+	Ultra	High	Ultra	Ultra
Screen Space Reflections	Off	Off	Off	Off
Static Reflection Quality	High	High	High	High
Tessellation	Far	Far	Far	Far
Volumetric Quality	Medium	Low	Low	Low
Deferred Physics Quality	High	High	High	High
Weather Grid Volumes Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Water Quality	All	All	All	All

Call of Duty Warzone: Best Settings for Low-end PC

Call of Duty: Warzone struggles to hit 144 FPS on low-end PCs and gaming laptops. The GeForce RTX 3060 and the Ryzen 5 combo average over 120 FPS at 1080p with DLSS “Balanced.” Getting to 144 FPS requires dialing down upscaling to “Performance” mode and turning the shaders, volumetric, and reflections to the lowest option.

You can read more about the game’s performance on the RTX 3060, 3060 Ti, and the 4060 laptop GPU in our low-end performance guide. The following are the recommended settings for low-end PCs in Warzone:

Warzone PC Settings	NVIDIA RTX 3060	NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti	NVIDIA RTX 4060	NVIDIA RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
Resolution	1080p	1080p	1080p	1080p
Target FPS	120 FPS|144 FPS	120 FPS|144 FPS	120 FPS|144 FPS	120 FPS|144 FPS
Upscaling	DLSS Balanced|Performance	DLSS Balanced|Performance	DLSS Balanced|Performance	DLSS Balanced|Performance
Frame Generation	Off	Off	Off	Off
VRAM Scale Target	90%	90%	90%	90%
Texture Resolution	High	High	High	High
Texture Filtering	High	High	High	High
DOF	Off	Off	Off	Off
Detail Quality	High	High	High	High
Particle Resolution	Normal	Normal	Normal	Normal
Bullet Impacts	On	On	On	On
Persistent Effects	On	On	On	On
Shader Quality	Low	Medium|Low	Medium|Low	Medium|Low
OD Texture Streaming	Optimized	Optimized	Optimized	Optimized
Local Texture Streaming Quality	Normal	Low	Low	Low
Shadow Quality	High	High	High	High
Screen Space Shadows	Off	Off	Off	Off
Occlusion+	High	High	High	High
Screen Space Reflections	Off	Off	Off	Off
Static Reflection Quality	High	High	High	High
Tesselation	Near	Far	Far	Far
Volumetric Quality	Low	Low	Low	Low
Deferred Physics Quality	Off	High	High	Off
Weather Grid Volumes Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Water Quality	All	All	All	All