How to Optimize Warzone for Performance (2026) Optimization Guides

Quick Answers

Common questions answered at a glance

What’s the best way to get more FPS in Warzone?

Most players report an improvement of 40–100% in their FPS after making optimal in-game settings adjustments combined with tweaking their Windows and driver settings. Budget systems see the biggest jumps. If you’re on a GTX 1060 struggling at 50 FPS, you could realistically push 90–110 FPS with the right setup.

Is there one thing I can do to improve FPS?

Will any of this break my game?

Why Warzone Doesn’t Run As Well As It Could

Warzone is currently one of the most taxing games available, but the main reason why it performs poorly on most computers isn’t due to Warzone itself being broken — it’s because everything else around it is competing for the exact same resources.Windows is running Telemetry Services in the background. Xbox Game Bar is quietly logging. On-Demand Texture Streaming is downloading textures mid-game. Your Video Card’s shader cache is only partially built since the last time you updated your drivers. And Warzone was released with graphics options turned up to the point that a 4K Cinema Trailer would look good in the game — not to provide you with a stable framerate in a fire fight.

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So think of it this way: your PC is a race car, but someone loaded the trunk full of sandbags before the start of the race. This guide removes those sandbags.

Step 1: In-Game Graphics Settings That Make a Real Difference

The truth is: not all graphics settings affect FPS equally. Some take a ton of resources, others make little difference visually. Below are the best things to change in order of how much of an impact they’ll have on your FPS, based on verified benchmarks from FRAMESYNC LABS.Shader Quality — Low. A 20%+ boost in FPS — that’s the biggest FPS bump from any one graphic setting in Warzone. Get rid of it.Screen Space Reflections — Off. Another 10% more FPS. Nice reflection shots in puddles and on surfaces may look cool in screenshots; they don’t help in a gun fight. Turn it off.Volumetric Quality — Low. 10% faster than High. Controls fog, smoke, and other atmospheric light density. Looks great and saves a lot of resources.Shadow Quality — Very Low or Normal. 7% faster with shadows being harder to spot in dark areas. Many competitive players keep their shadows very low.Ambient Occlusion — Off. Adds minor shadow details that look cool but cost measurable FPS. Not worth it for competitive players.Depth of Field — Off. Blurs out-of-focus objects. You’ll want to be able to see everything in a competitive shooter, so always turn it off.Tessellation — Off. Totally free FPS with no real visual impact at typical combat distances.Weather Grid Volumes — Off. This is a hidden CPU hog. Manages dynamic weather and can cause stutters on systems with less than 8 processor cores.Texture Resolution — Low or Very Low. Primarily related to video memory. High texture usage can consume up to 15GB+ of VRAM at higher resolutions. If you’ve got 6GB or less of VRAM, keep it Very Low. 8GB+ can try Normal.On-Demand Texture Streaming — Off. Downloads higher quality textures while you’re playing. Sounds convenient, but it takes away your bandwidth for in-game data and causes mid-match stutters. Charlie INTEL reported that players rallied against forced texture streaming due to the lag it introduces, and community testing shows that disabling this resolves stuttering approximately 70% of the time.Motion Blur (World and Weapon) — Off. Both of them. Motion blur makes tracking down enemies way tougher.

Step 2: Display and Framerate Options

Graphics settings are just part of the story. There are plenty of display and framerate options that you can tweak to get the most out of your computer.Display Mode — Fullscreen Exclusive. Fullscreen exclusive allows Warzone to directly access your display. It provides the least amount of input lag possible. You should never use “Windowed” or “Borderless.”Render Resolution — 100%. Leave this at native unless you’re using some form of upscaling such as DLSS or FSR. Lowering your render resolution makes the game look very fuzzy.NVIDIA Reflex — On + Boost. If you’ve got an NVIDIA Video Card, then you’ve got to enable this. NVIDIA’s own data shows Reflex reduces latency by up to 43% in Call of Duty. The “Boost” option keeps your Video Card’s clocks high even when you’re in a light scene. All competitive players enable this.V-Sync — Off. VSync adds a huge amount of input lag to your game. Turn it off everywhere — both in-game and in your Video Card’s control panel.Frame Rate Limit — Cap at 3–5 FPS under your monitor’s maximum refresh rate. So if you’ve got a 240Hz monitor, cap your framerate at 235. This prevents your framerate from going above your monitor’s refresh rate, which can lead to frame-time spikes. Some people prefer to cap their framerate at unlimited — test both options.VRAM Scale Target — 80–90%. This sets how aggressive Warzone will fill your Video Card’s memory. Setting it too high can cause stuttering when the memory gets full. If you’ve got a 6GB Video Card, drop this to 70%.

Step 3: Up-Scale and More FPS Without the Blur

Competitive players at 1080p and 1440p use FidelityFX CAS (with a strength of 70–90%) as their up-scaler. This is a sharpening filter, not an up-scaler. It gives the sharpest image with the least amount of FPS lost and is the preference of most competitive players.If you need more FPS at 1440p and 4K, you can try NVIDIA DLSS on Quality mode (if you have an RTX card) or AMD FSR on Quality. These up-scale from a lower resolution using AI. They work really well at 1440p and 4K and produce results that are very close to native.Don’t mess with DLSS Frame Generation (DLSS 3) — it generates fake frames that look great in a counter, but add input lag to your game. All competitive players disable this.

Step 4: FOV and Camera Options

Field of View — 110 to 120. Increasing your field of view gives you more periphery awareness — something that is essential in a battle royale. Most pros play with a FOV of 110 to 120. The drawback of increased FOV is that your targets become smaller at longer ranges. Start at 110 and go up until it feels good.ADS Field of View — Affected. This helps to keep your AD scopes zoom consistent with your FOV settings. This feels a lot nicer than having “Independent” selected.Weapon Field of View — Wide. This shrinks your weapon models and increases your view of the battlefield. More vision without losing any performance.1st Person Camera Movement — Least (50%). Helps reduce the screen shaking when you’re running and taking damage. Makes it easier to focus on your surroundings in the heat of the moment.

Step 5: Windows Settings That Steal Your Frames

Most Warzone guides stop here. However, Windows itself is likely to be a larger performance thief than any in-game settings — not because Windows is broken, but because Windows is doing a whole bunch of things you never told it to do.Disable Memory Integrity (VBS). This is a security feature that creates a mini-Virtual Machine to run alongside Windows to validate the execution of code. Some tests have reported 5–10% of FPS lost with this enabled. On top of that, independent testing has reported losses of up to 33%. To disable it, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Windows Security → Device Security → Core Isolation → Uncheck Memory Integrity. You’ll need to restart Windows after making this change.Disable Xbox Game Bar and Game DVR. Even though you’re not actively using it, Game Bar is a background process that consumes anywhere from 200–400 MB of RAM and introduces 18–23 ms of input latency into your game. Settings → Gaming → Game Bar → Off. If you need to record, use NVIDIA ShadowPlay or OBS.Enable Game Mode. Tells Windows to put your game first and stop doing background maintenance while you’re playing. Testing has shown that enabling this can result in a 5–15% performance improvement. Settings → Gaming → Game Mode → On.Switch to Ultimate Performance power plan. The Balanced plan is throttling your CPU to save power. Open command prompt as administrator and enter the following: powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61. Once done, go to your Power Options in the Control Panel and select “Ultimate Performance.” Only apply this to desktop PCs — Laptops should use “High Performance.”Clean up your startup programs. Open Task Manager → Startup Tab. All of the programs listed in the startup tab load at boot and remain in memory forever. Disable anything you don’t need to start automatically — Spotify, Discord, RGB software, cloud-sync apps etc. Cleaning up your startup programs can free up 1–4GB of RAM.Enable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS). Allows your Video Card to manage its own task scheduling rather than rely on your CPU. Can free up 5–10% of CPU resources. Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Change Default Graphics Settings → Toggle On. You’ll need to restart your computer for this to take effect.

Step 6: NVIDIA Control Panel Options

If you’ve got an NVIDIA Video Card, the following settings will provide measurable improvements. Right Click your desktop → NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings → Add Call of Duty Modern Warfare.Power Management Mode — Prefer Maximum Performance. Prevents your Video Card from reducing its clock speed during gameplay to save power.Low Latency Mode — On. Important: if you’ve already got NVIDIA Reflex enabled in-game (and you should), set this to “On”, not “Ultra”. They don’t work together when stacked. Without reflex, use “Ultra”.Shader Cache Size — 10 GB or Unlimited. Very important for Warzone. The game compiles shaders on demand, and a large cache means less micro-stutter when encountering new effects or moving to new parts of the map.Texture Filtering Quality — High Performance. Little to no visual difference, measurable FPS gain.Vertical Sync — Off. Same as the in-game setting. Never have VSync enabled twice.AMD users, the equivalent options in Radeon Software are: Anti-Lag → Enabled (or Anti-Lag 2 if supported), Surface Format Optimization → Enabled, Tessellation Mode → Override Application Settings → Off, Texture Filtering Quality → Performance, Wait for V-Sync → Off.

Step 7: Advanced Configuration Options

Modern Warfare stores advanced settings in a file called adv_options.ini. You can locate it at: C:\Users\[YourUsername]\Documents\Call of Duty Modern Warfare\players\adv_options.iniOpen it with Notepad and look for these values:VideoMemoryScale — Sets how much of your Video Card’s memory Warzone can use. The default is 0.85, which works great for most setups. Be careful lowering it — testing has shown that setting it too low (0.55–0.65) can hurt performance. Stick it between 0.85 and 1.0 unless you’re getting VRAM overflow errors.RendererWorkerCount — Sets how many processor cores Warzone can use for rendering. Set it equal to your number of physical cores (not threads). So if you’ve got a 6-core processor, set it to 6. If you set it too high, you can overload your CPU and get stutters.Once you’re done, right click the file → Properties → Check Read Only. This ensures Warzone won’t overwrite your edits.One final note: after each driver update, delete your shader cache folder at Documents\Call of Duty\players\shadercache. This will force Warzone to recompile shaders cleanly with the new driver, which can prevent compatibility-related stutters.

Step 8: Networking and Ping Improvements

Bandwidth-wise, Warzone requires 3–5 Mbps for smooth gameplay. Bandwidth issues are rare. What matters most is stability and latency.Use Ethernet, not WiFi. This is non-negotiable for competitive players. WiFi is going to add jitter, packet loss, and inconsistency. A $10 Ethernet cable will improve your connection quality far more than a $200 gaming router.Switch your DNS to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8). Your ISP’s default DNS is likely going to be slower than either of these. Go to Settings → Network → Your Connection → Edit → DNS → Manual. Enter 1.1.1.1 as Primary and 1.0.0.1 as Secondary.Port forward Open NAT. Having an Open NAT type can help improve your matchmaking and reduce ping. For Steam: TCP 27015, 27036 and UDP 3074, 27015, 27031–27036. For Battle.net: TCP 1119, 3724, 6113 and UDP 3074, 3478–3479. Have your router enable UPnP as a backup.Close any bandwidth-hogging apps. Anything you’re actively streaming, cloud syncing, downloading, or updating in Windows is using bandwidth and introducing latency. Stop all of this before you start playing.

Step 9: Hardware-Specific Recommendations

If you’re on a budget or older PC: Set every graphic setting to Low or Very Low. Drop Render Resolution to 80–90% and enable FidelityFX CAS at 80+ strength for sharpening. Disable On-Demand Texture Streaming. Set VRAM Scale Target to 60–70%. Shader Quality on Low is your single biggest FPS gain — don’t skip it.If you’ve only got 8GB of RAM: Close everything before you launch Warzone. Chrome alone can eat 2–4GB. Set your Windows pagefile to System Managed on an SSD. Seriously consider upgrading to 16GB — 8GB is below the recommended spec and you’re going to run into issues in longer sessions.If you’re on a laptop: Always play plugged in. Set both Windows and your manufacturer’s software (Armoury Crate, Dragon Center, etc.) to High Performance mode. Prop the back of your laptop up for better airflow — thermal throttling kicks in at 90–95°C and your FPS will tank when it does.Enable XMP/DOCP/EXPO in your BIOS. Your RAM probably shipped rated at 3200MHz or 3600MHz but is actually running at 2133MHz because nobody turned on the speed profile. Enabling it can give you 15–20% better performance and noticeably smoother frames. This applies to every PC, not just budget ones.Think about going to 32GB of RAM. Warzone has a known memory leak — RAM usage climbs steadily between matches. With 16GB you’ll start feeling it after 5–6 games. With 32GB you’ve got a lot more headroom. If upgrading isn’t in the cards right now, restart Warzone every few matches to clear the leak.

Step 10: What the Pros Actually Use

If you watch competitive Warzone, you’ll spot the pattern fast: every pro’s game looks the same. Everything on Low, FOV cranked to 110–120, NVIDIA Reflex on, all motion blur killed, Film Grain at 0.Biffle (Team Falcons, WSOW 2024 Winner) plays on an i9-14900K with an RTX 4090 and an ASUS ROG Swift 360Hz monitor. Even with that rig, every single graphical setting is on Low or Off. Because at the competitive level, being able to see clearly and maintain consistent frames beats eye candy every single time.One competitive visibility trick that’s worth trying: enable the Deuteranopia (Type 2) colorblind filter at 80–100% world intensity. This isn’t just for colorblind players — it makes enemy character models pop against backgrounds in a way that default colors don’t. A lot of pros use this and it’s a legitimate competitive advantage.For audio, use the Treyarch Mix or Headphones Bass Boost preset with Effects Volume at 100% and Music Volume at 0%. This maxes out footstep audio and gunfire clarity while getting rid of all that distracting background music.

Common Warzone Issues and Fixes

Packet burst (those orange squares in the top left). Here’s the thing most people get wrong — this is a hardware bottleneck about 70% of the time, not a network issue. If it happens during explosions or in menus, it’s your hardware. If enemies are teleporting around, then it’s network. Hardware fix: disable On-Demand Texture Streaming, drop VRAM Scale Target to 70%, delete your shader cache folder, and lower processor-heavy settings like Shadows, Particles, and Weather Grid. Network fix: go wired, set up port forwarding, and switch your DNS.Shader stuttering after updates. Always let the shader installation finish when the game prompts you. Don’t skip it. After driver updates, go delete the shader cache folder at Documents\Call of Duty\players\shadercache and let the game rebuild from scratch. Set your NVIDIA Shader Cache to 10GB or Unlimited.Dev Errors (6034, 6065, 6068). Almost always a Video Card driver issue. Use DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) in Safe Mode to completely wipe your drivers, then install a clean copy. Verify your game files through Steam or Battle.net and turn off any Video Card overclocks while you’re at it.Textures not loading or looking blurry. Make sure Warzone is on an SSD, not a hard drive. Verify your game files. Bump up VRAM Scale Target if it’s set too low. If nothing else works, try turning On-Demand Texture Streaming back on temporarily (assuming you’ve got the VRAM for it).RAM usage climbing between matches (memory leak). This is a known problem with the Call of Duty engine. RAM usage goes up steadily over time and never comes back down. The only real fix is restarting Warzone every 5–6 matches. Having 32GB of RAM just gives you more breathing room before it starts to hurt.

The Short Version

If you’ve only got 5 minutes, do these in order:1. Set Shader Quality to Low, Screen Space Reflections to Off, Shadows to Very Low2. Disable On-Demand Texture Streaming, Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, Tessellation3. Set Display Mode to Fullscreen Exclusive, VSync Off, enable NVIDIA Reflex On + Boost4. Disable Xbox Game Bar (Settings → Gaming → Game Bar → Off)5. Disable Memory Integrity (Settings → Device Security → Core Isolation → Off)6. Enable XMP/DOCP in BIOS for your RAM speedThat’s 80% of the benefit in 5 minutes. Everything else in this guide is the remaining 20%.Good luck in the Warzone. See you in the gulag.