Frames per second is an extremely important statistic when playing Call of Duty, so to help you get the most out of your equipment, here are the best Black Ops Cold War FPS settings for your PC.
In first-person shooter games like Call of Duty, maximizing your frames per second can give you a big advantage over other players. Higher FPS means smoother gameplay, improving your reaction time and the ability to track moving targets.
With Black Ops Cold War season 2 in full swing, with League Play ratings to crush, you’ll want to play your best.
The biggest crutch at the frame exit will be the hardware. Here, we’ll take a look at everything you need to get the optimal performance from your system when playing Black Ops Cold War on the PC.
Cold War Black Ops system requirements
Before customizing the graphics settings, it’s worth taking a look at the Treyarch System Requirements chart for Black Ops Cold War.
Looking at this chart, you will be able to tell what kind of performance to expect from your system. Our graphics configurations assume that you have met the minimum requirement and will provide optimal settings for visuals and performance, regardless of your equipment.
How to update graphics drivers
For optimal system performance and to make Cold War run as smoothly as possible, you need to make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.
See how to update your graphics drivers.
How to update the NVIDIA graphics driver
If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, the GeForce experience app will take care of that for you.
- Download the GeForce experience at NVIDIA.com.
- Open GeForce Experience
- Select the ‘Drivers’ tab
- Click ‘check for updates’ in the upper right corner
- If an update is available, follow the steps
How to update the AMD graphics driver
If you have an AMD GPU, you can use the Radeon settings to update your drivers.
- Right-click on your desktop
- Select AMD Radeon settings
- Click the Home icon
- Click on ‘New updates’ in the bottom left corner
- Select ‘check for update’
- If an update is available, follow the steps
The best Black Ops Cold War graphics configurations for low-end hardware
If you are playing Black Ops Cold War on the NVIDIA 1000 series graphics card, your best bet is to place majority settings below. While the beautiful looks are great, you want BOCW to work as smoothly as possible so you can play at your best.
Here are the settings you should perform if your system is a few years old.
Hardware
- Refresh rate: Match your monitor’s refresh rate
- V-Sync gameplay: Off (unless you have a bad screen cut)
- V-Sync menu: Disabled
- Rendering resolution: 100 (smaller if your system is experiencing problems)
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: Enabled (Boosted)
Exhibition
- Field of vision: 90-110
- ADS field of view: Affected
- Vehicle sighting field: Affected
- Frame rate limit: Custom
When setting a custom frame rate, you want to set the gameplay’s custom frame rate limit to match your monitor’s refresh rate, for example, 144 FPS on a 144 Hz monitor.
You must set Menu Custom Framerate Limit to 60, and the frame rate to Minimized to 30.
Details and texture
- Texture quality: Medium low
- Model quality: Low
- Special effects quality: Average
- Reflection of screen space: Low
- Viewing distance of the object: Low (this is a heavy CPU option)
Shadow and Lighting
Shadows affect FPS more. On a lower graphics card, shadows will be an unnecessary load on your system, so it’s best to set everything to Low. However, you must set ‘Dynamic Shadows’ to All, as this will allow you to see the enemies’ shadows.
- Volumetric Illumination: Low
- Shadow quality: Low
- Dynamic shadows: All
- Special effect shadows: Disabled
- Gun shadow: Disabled
Ray Tracing
Unfortunately, Ray Tracing is a new and graphically advanced rendering technique that older systems are not able to handle.
- Ray Tracing Sun Shadows: Disabled
- Ray Tracing Local Shadows: Disabled
- Radius tracking environment occlusion: Disabled
Post-processing effects
- Anti-aliasing quality: The lowest
- Quality of Environmental Occlusion: Low
- Blur motion: Disabled
- Subsurface dispersion: Disabled
- Order-independent transparency: Low
Advanced
- VRAM usage target: 80% standard. If you are experiencing problems with the game, try 70%.
- Video Adapter: The graphics card you want to use.
The best Black Ops Cold War graphics settings for next-generation hardware
It makes no sense to shell out more than $ 1000 dollars for the best hardware if you are not going to take advantage of it. Using the same graphics settings as an inferior device will guarantee a high FPS, but you will lose the high quality visuals that these expensive GPUs and CPUs can easily handle.
With state-of-the-art graphics cards, such as the NVIDIA 2080 ti or the 3000 series, you can have the Cold War looking its best and still have a competitive performance.
We’ve put together graphical configurations that combine the high-quality visuals of Black Ops Cold War with competitive performance.
Hardware
- Refresh rate: Match your monitor’s refresh rate
- V-Sync gameplay: Off (unless you have a bad screen cut)
- V-Sync menu: Disabled
- Rendering resolution: 100 (smaller if your system is experiencing problems)
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: Enabled (Boosted)
Exhibition
- Field of vision: 90-110
- ADS field of view: Affected
- Vehicle sighting field: Affected
- Frame rate limit: Custom
When setting a custom frame rate, you want to set the gameplay’s custom frame rate limit to match your monitor’s refresh rate, for example, 144 FPS on a 144 Hz monitor.
You must set Menu Custom Framerate Limit to 60, and the frame rate to Minimized to 30.
Details and texture
- Texture quality: High
- Model quality: Medium / High
- Special effects quality: High
- Reflection of screen space: Average
- Viewing distance of the object: Average
Shadow and Lighting
Shadows affect FPS more. When playing on a state-of-the-art video card, such as the 3000 series, you will be able to run it at high speed without greatly affecting its performance.
For a balance between visuals and performance, you must use these settings.
- Volumetric Illumination: Average
- Shadow quality: Average
- Dynamic shadows: All
- Special effect shadows: Disabled
- Gun shadow: Disabled
Ray Tracing
If you have a 3000 series graphics card, you can take advantage of the new Ray Tracing technology. It will take an unnecessary blow to your multiplayer performance, but it is worth using when playing the Cold War campaign.
- Ray Tracing Sun Shadows: Disabled
- Ray Tracing Local Shadows: Disabled
- Radius tracking environment occlusion: Disabled
Post-processing effects
- NVIDIA DLSS: Performance
- Anti-aliasing quality: High
- Quality of Environmental Occlusion: Average
- Blur motion: Disabled
- Subsurface dispersion: Disabled
- Order-independent transparency: Low
Advanced
- VRAM usage target: 80% standard. If you are experiencing problems with the game, try 70%.
- Video Adapter: The graphics card you want to use.
No matter what your system, you can use these graphical settings to improve the performance and visuals of Black Ops Cold War on your system.
Image credit: Activision / Treyarch