Call of Duty: Warzone has been out for a couple of weeks now and it has quickly turned into one of the most beloved multiplayer Battle Royale games out there. Warzone is not exactly a standalone thing though and is a part of the latest entry in the Call of Duty series, Modern Warfare. So Warzone, much like Modern Warfare, follows the same formula of bringing the Call of Duty back to its glory days.
In Warzone, the guns feel heavier and the movement is solid, making it the perfect fit for people who prefer the classic entries in the franchise before it went sci-fi. And while it is not the first Call of Duty Battle Royale (with Blackout being the first one), a lot of people do seem to prefer it.
There are tons of new game mechanics in Warzone as well that make it unique and unlike any other Battle Royale game out there. For instance, in classic Battle Royale mode, players have multiple ways to come back to life after they’ve been eliminated like fighting 1v1 battles in the Gulag or getting called back by a teammate. The new cash system also adds another layer giving players incentive to hoard cash and buy equipment.
Another thing that sets the Warzone Battle Royale apart from the rest of the field is the fact that it has 150 players at the start, which is a higher number than most other games. Furthermore, a new game mode called Plunder has also been added to the game in which the players have to horde cash to win. If you’ve been keeping tabs of other other games, this game mode is quite similar to what you’d find in Escape from Tarkov.
Call of Duty: Warzone has managed to surpass over 30 million players in less than two weeks. That is, without a doubt, a staggeringly high number. However, the fact that Warzone is completely free-to-play which might have aided that since it is something that is unheard of for the Call of Duty community. If you’re playing on an Xbox One though, you’re still going to need an Xbox Live Gold subscription sadly.
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Call of Duty: Warzone’s parent game, Modern Warfare released with a lot of bugs and glitches that caused issues ranging from low FPS, performance drops and stutters to straight up crashes. While Infinity Ward and Activision did manage to iron out a lot of those bugs in subsequent patches and updates, a lot of those issues still linger around in the game.
As Call of Duty: Warzone is still new (not to mention that it is a public beta), a lot of newer performance related issues were bound to arise in addition to those still left within the base Modern Warfare game. Many players have reported running into frequent FPS drops, random stutters, occasional lag and crashes.
While Infinity Ward continues to provide newer updates to fix those issues, no one wants to wait around for updates while the rest of the world gets better at the game. So, here are a few methods that can hopefully fix most of your performance woes in Call of Duty Warzone including low FPS, crashes, stutters, lag and freezes.
1. Call of Duty: Warzone System Requirements:
Call of Duty: Warzone is still a very new game and while that does mean that you could be suffering from a genuine glitch that’s throttling your performance, you also need to make sure that you have enough power to begin with.
Warzone, despite looking the same as Modern Warfare, can actually take up much more resources due to the fact that it takes place on a massive map with 150 other players, an unprecedented thing for the Call of Duty franchise. So, if you want to get stable framerates, you’re going to need a pretty beefy setup.
The system requirements for Call of Duty: Warzone are as follows:
Minimum System Requirements:
- CPU: Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
- RAM: 8 GB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD 7950
- OS: Windows 7 64-Bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-Bit (1709 or later)
- HDD: 90 GB (Around 20 GB if you already have Modern Warfare installed)
- Dedicated Video RAM: 2048 MB
- Network: Broadband Internet Connection
Recommended System Requirements:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X Processor
- RAM: 12 GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB / GTX 1660 6GB or AMD Radeon R9 390 / AMD RX 580
- OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest Service Pack)
- HDD: 90 GB (around 20 GB if you already have Modern Warfare installed)
- Dedicated Video RAM: 4096 MB
- Network: Broadband Internet Connection
As you can see from the specifications given above, you’re going to need a pretty capable gaming rig to run Call of Duty: Warzone smoothly even on low settings. And if you wish to run on higher graphics settings with framerates climbing over 60, you’re going to need some serious horsepower.
However, if your gaming rig is good enough and you’re still experiencing performance drops you may have to tweak some settings so let’s move on.
2. Install the latest graphics card drivers:
Call of Duty: Warzone is still a relatively new game and while NVIDIA and AMD both did release their game-ready drivers for the game when it initially came out, both graphics card manufacturers have continued to dish out further patches and updates for better optimization with the game.
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Most people have auto-updates enabled for their graphics cards. However, some peculiar issues can prevent your system from automatically downloading updates for your GPU. In addition to that, a lot of people just straight up disable auto-updates because of the compatibility issues that can arise due to newer updates.
However, the chances of that happening to you are quite low so it is recommended to keep auto-updates on at all times. So, whether you have auto-updates for your graphics card turned on or off, you still need to check the official drivers from time to time to check if you’ve missed a crucial new update.
Here are the links to the latest graphics card drivers for both NVIDIA and AMD cards:
3. Enforce dedicated GPU usage for Call of Duty Warzone:
Call of Duty: Warzone is a fairly demanding game and while you could potentially run the game on an integrated GPU provided that it is newer, the performance levels would still probably linger below the playable level. So, a dedicated graphics card is absolutely necessary for attaining a playable and stable framerate.
However, despite having a powerful dedicated graphics card, your PC can sometimes choose to not use it and run the game on your integrated GPU instead. This problem is especially common in laptops where the integrated GPU kicks in to save battery in low-power modes.
This obviously results in some pretty horrid performance with extremely low framerates and sometimes, straight up not being able to load the game. So, you need to make sure that your game is currently using your powerful dedicated graphics card rather than the integrated GPU. Here’s how to do it (Only for NVIDIA users):
- Right click anywhere on the empty desktop and select the NVIDIA Control Panel.
- In the NVIDIA Control Panel, select Manage 3D settings tab on the left hand side under Settings.
- Once you’re in, go to the program list and find the game you’re trying to enforce dedicated graphics card usage on. In this case, select Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or Warzone, depending on whether you own Modern Warfare or not.
- Select High performance NVIDIA processor under the preferred graphics processor option.
- In case you’re unable to find Warzone in the list of applications, click browse and find the executable file for the game. This can be found by going to the directory where the game has been installed.
4. Battle.net tweaks for Call of Duty Warzone:
Before you get into tweaking with the graphics card settings or the in-game settings, you need to make sure that your game is launching properly. As Call of Duty: Warzone uses the Battle.Net launcher, there are a couple of things that you can adjust that might fix some issues for you.
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A lot of video game launchers including Battle.net have this weird quirk where they don’t run properly if not launched as an administrator. This can happen due to Windows permission issues and conflicts resulting in performance drops. Thankfully, this issue can quickly be resolved by just running the launcher as an administrator. In order to do that, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the folder where Battle.net is currently installed.
- Right click on the Battle.net launcher executable file and go to properties.
- Select the compatibility tab at the top and under it, select ‘Change Settings for all users’.
- Under the privilege level option, choose ‘Run this program as administrator’ and click apply.
This should sort out the clashes between Windows and the launcher before you even launch the game itself.
Now, the second thing that you need to do is make sure that your game has been downloaded properly and there aren’t any files missing or corrupted.
Usually, due to connection disruptions and other such issues, game files get corrupted while downloading. Other times, your antivirus software or other cleanup software can also potentially delete game files by flagging it as unnecessary.
Thankfully, Battle.net has a feature that allows users to recheck their game files and make sure that everything is properly downloaded and stored in its place. The repair tool for the Battle.net launcher goes through every single game file and in case any of it is corrupted or missing, the launcher re-downloads those files.
Here’s how you can check the game files and repair Call of Duty: Warzone using the Battle.net launcher repair tool and fix your low FPS, stutter, crashing and other performance related issues in the game:
- Launch the Battle.net launcher and select Call of Duty: Warzone (or Modern Warfare depending on whether you own Modern Warfare or not) from the games library.
- Open the options menu for the game and click on the Scan and Repair option.
- Run the scan. The launcher will now check for any irregularities within the game files.
- Once the scan is done, restart Battle.net and your game should be good to go.
5. Tweak your dedicated graphics card settings:
One final thing we need to make sure of before we eventually head into the in-game graphics settings for Call of Duty: Warzone is the settings for our graphics card. All dedicated graphics cards, whether they are from NVIDIA or AMD come with default settings in which some features are enabled while others are disabled.
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However, while the default settings are fine enough, you can still tweak those and get the best performance out of your card. Altering these settings can sometimes fix a lot of low FPS, lag, stuttering, crashing and freezing issues that people have with graphics intensive games like Call of Duty; Warzone.
Both AMD and NVIDIA have their own set of settings under their respective control panels so we’ll go through both one at a time.
Control Panel settings for NVIDIA users:
If you own an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, this method applies to you. Just follow the steps written down below and apply these settings:
- Right click anywhere on an empty desktop to open the menu.
- Select NVIDIA Control Panel and go into the ‘Manage 3D Settings’ tab on the left under Settings.
- You can either choose to apply the following changes to Global Settings or you can go into program settings and apply these specifically to Warzone in case you don’t want to mess with settings for other games.
- Change the Power Management mode to Highest Performance in the settings tab.
- Disable Image Sharpening mode.
- Turn on Threaded Optimization.
- Turn off Low Latency Mode.
- Set the Max Pre-Rendered Frames value to 1.
- Change the Multi-Display option to Single Display Performance mode. This will redirect maximum resources to a single display.
- Set the Texture Filtering Quality to Performance Mode.
- If your monitor is compatible with G-Sync, enable it.
Control Panel settings for AMD users:
If you own an AMD Radeon graphics card, then this method applies to you. Just follow the steps down below and apply all the settings given for optimal results:
- Right click anywhere on an empty desktop and select AMD Radeon Settings.
- Select Global graphics in the AMD control panel (Radeon Settings).
- Turn off the following features:
- Radeon Anti-Lag
- Radeon Boost
- Morphological Filtering
- Wait for VSync
- Radeon Chill
- Image Sharpening
- Maximum Tessellation Level
- Frame Rate Target Control
- OpenGL Triple Buffering
- Anisotropic Filtering
- Once you’ve disabled these settings, select ‘Use Application Settings’ under the Anti-Aliasing Mode.
- Set the Anti-Aliasing method to Multi-Sampling.
- Enable Surface Format Optimization.
- Set the GPU Workload to Graphics mode.
- Select Performance Mode under Texture Filtering Quality.
- Set the Tessellation Mode and Shader Cache to AMD Optimized Mode.
6. Change in-game graphics settings for Call of Duty Warzone:
If you’re still experiencing low FPS, crashes, stutters and other performance issues in Call of Duty: Warzone despite going through all of the fixes given above, this one might solve everything for you. Video games have gotten pretty good at detecting your hardware and recommending settings for your machine.
However, these settings can still be hit or miss a lot of times because they only come with three or four presets for all users (i.e. low, medium, high and ultra) and everyone’s system is vastly different. Someone may have a very good CPU but a mediocre graphics card so fine-tuning these settings and allocating them according to your own specific setup can make a ton of difference.
Call of Duty: Warzone is a fairly demanding game but most mid-ranged system should be able to run the game at decent and stable framerates. We’ve run some tests and found an optimal starting point for you to fine-tune your graphics settings according to your needs. With these settings, we’ve tried to maximize performance while also not sacrificing the visual quality of the game too much.
Under Settings > Display
- Set the display mode to Fullscreen.
- Set the Render Resolution value to 100.
- Turn off V-Sync.
- Set the Custom Framerate limit to Unlimited.
- Disable NVIDIA Highlights.
Under Settings > Details and Textures
- Set the Texture Resolution to Medium.
- Change the Texture Filter Anisotropic to Low.
- Set the Particle Quality to Low.
- Disable Bullet Impacts and Sprays.
- Disable Tessellation.
Under Settings > Shadow and Lighting
- Set the Shadow Map Resolution to Low.
- Disable Cache Spot Shadows and Cache Sun Shadows.
- Set the Particle Lighting to Medium.
- Disable DirectX Raytracing.
- Set the Ambient Occlusion mode to Static Objects.
- Turn off SSR (Screen Space Reflection).
Under Settings > Post Processing Effects
- Set the Anti-Aliasing to SMAA T2X.
- Disable all of the other post processing effects.
These are the optimal settings for a lower mid-range PC setup and obviously if you have a more powerful gaming rig, you can turn on some of the additional effects and turn up the settings. This provides a good balance of visual quality and performance though since you need high framerates in a competitive Battle Royale game.
This is a good starting point for you and you can fine-tune these settings and work out which combination of settings works the best for you.
7. Update Windows
Windows 10 updates have always been pretty finicky and have been known to cause issues with games in the past. In fact, some Windows updates have even caused the games to not work at all on some systems. One such Windows update was recently pulled back by Microsoft that caused a lot of performance related bugs within games.
Thankfully though, Windows has continued to receive multiple patches and updates since then that deal with most of the issues that spawned with the previous update. So, if you haven’t kept your Windows 10 up to date, you definitely should. Just follow these steps to ensure that you’re running the latest Windows 10 update:
- Click on the bottom right icon next to the clock on the Taskbar to open the notification center.
- Select All Settings to open the Windows 10 settings menu.
- Go into Update & Security menu and click on Check for Updates.
- Windows will then check for updates. If new updates are found, they’ll start downloading. Wait for the updates to download and install.
- Restart your PC to complete the update process.
8. Disable the Secondary Display:
A lot of people these days run dual or even triple monitor setups just because of the sheer productivity space they provide. While these setups are great for productivity and do provide an additional amount of immersion in games as well with wide FOVs, they can cause performance issues as well.
A lot of people have reported in the past that their performance woes with many games were fixed by just removing their secondary display from the mix. So, running on a single display might just be the key for you to fix your low FPS, crashes, and other performance issues.
So, pulling out your monitor cord or turning it off might just do the trick for you. Once you’ve done that, just restart your PC for the change to take effect.
9. Prioritize Call of Duty Warzone in Task Manager:
If there are a lot of background tasks eating resources on your machine and you cannot really disable them, you can try to allocate more resources to your game, Call of Duty: Warzone. Task Manager in Windows allows you to allocate resources to specific applications and take away from others. So, in order to change Call of Duty: Warzone to a high priority application, follow these steps:
- Launch Call of Duty: Warzone.
- Press Alt+Tab to minimize the game and come back to the desktop.
- Right click the taskbar and open the Task Manager. You can also do this by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
- Under the Details tab, look for the process for Call of Duty: Warzone.
- Right click the Call of Duty: Warzone process and choose the ‘High’ option under Set Priority.
If you’re still not able to run your game smoothly despite all of these fixes, you might have to contact Activision or your graphics card manufacturer for further troubleshooting. Your issue could also be a global one and in that case, you’ll have to wait for a patch from Infinity ward. If your game has been fixed though, then enjoy!
Call of Duty: Warzone is out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. You can download it from here.