Microsoft and Activision’s brand new first-person shooter, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, is now available, and we’ve put together the best PC settings for getting optimized performance on mid-end system specs.
Before we delve into the best settings for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on PC, make sure you’ve updated your GPU drivers and Windows to their latest respective versions. Additionally, disable or close any unnecessary background applications in order to reduce the CPU overhead as much as possible. The settings detailed ahead should provide a more optimized balance between graphics and frame rate compared to the presets available in-game.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Best Settings
The settings below are there to serve as a broad starting point for further optimization based on your specific hardware specs. As a result, you may need to tweak some settings until you find a sweet spot based on your display’s refresh rate and the overall performance you seek.
DISPLAY
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Screen Refresh Rate: set as per the native refresh rate of your display
- Display Resolution: set as per the max resolution of your display or preference
- Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: On + Boost
- V-Sync (Gameplay): Off on a display that supports VRR/G-Sync, On otherwise
- V-Sync (Menus): Off on a display that supports VRR/G-Sync, On otherwise
- Custom Frame Rate Limit: Unlimited on a VRR/G-Sync supported display, otherwise set to your target frame rate
QUALITY
- Graphics Preset: Custom
- Render Resolution: 100
- Dynamic Resolution: Off
- Upscaling/Sharpening: FidelityFX CAS
- VRAM Scale Target: 80
- Variable Rate Shading: On
- Texture Resolution: High
- Texture Filter Anisotropic: Normal
- Depth of Field: as per preference
- Detail Quality Level: High
- Particle Resolution: Medium
- Bullet Impacts: On
- Persistent Effects: On
- Shader Quality: High
- On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off
- Local Texture Streaming Quality: High
- Shadow Quality: Medium
- Screen Space Shadows: Normal
- Ambient Occlusion: On
- Screen Space Reflections: On
- Static Reflection Quality: High
- Tessellation: Off (or On if GPU headroom available at preferred resolution and target frame rate)
- Terrain Memory: Max
- Volumetric Quality: Medium
- Deferred Physics Quality: Medium
- Weather Grid Volumes: Off
- Water Quality: Medium
Steam Deck Optimized Settings
The settings below are for getting the best possible performance on the Steam Deck.
DISPLAY
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Screen Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
- Display Resolution: 1280 x 800
- V-Sync (Gameplay): Off
- V-Sync (Menus): On
QUALITY
- Graphics Preset: Custom
- Render Resolution: 100
- Dynamic Resolution: Off
- Upscaling/Sharpening: FidelityFX CAS
- VRAM Scale Target: 80
- Variable Rate Shading: On
- Texture Resolution: Low
- Texture Filter Anisotropic: Low
- Depth of Field: Off
- Detail Quality Level: Low
- Particle Resolution: Very Low
- Bullet Impacts: On
- Persistent Effects: Off
- Shader Quality: Low
- On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off
- Local Texture Streaming Quality: Normal
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Screen Space Shadows: Off
- Ambient Occlusion: Off
- Screen Space Reflections: Off
- Static Reflection Quality: Low
- Tessellation: Off
- Terrain Memory: Max
- Volumetric Quality: Low
- Deferred Physics Quality: Off
- Weather Grid Volumes: Off
- Water Quality: Off
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was released on November 10, 2023, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
