modern warfare 3 This is a new bar for the franchise, at least in terms of visual quality. The highly scalable PC release can accommodate low-end systems, but if you want to get the most out of a midrange gaming PC, you’ll need the best settings for Modern Warfare 3.
I’ve been speeding up the game for about a week, testing various options in the graphics menu as well as its many upscaling options. Here’s everything you need to know about it modern warfare 3Performance on PC.
Best settings for Modern Warfare 3
Like previous Call of Duty releases, modern warfare 3 It is fully loaded with graphics settings. Even if you are used to adjusting the graphics menu to get the best performance, modern war’The options are absolutely baffling. However, after our testing, here are the best settings modern warfare 3 On which I settled:
- Render Resolution: 100
- Dynamic Resolution: Close
- Upscaling: DLSS on RTX, otherwise XeSS
- VRAM scale target: 80
- Variable Rate Shading: Off with DLSS/XeSS, on otherwise
- Texture Resolution: General
- texture filter anisotropic: General
- depth of field: But
- Detailed quality level: General
- Particle resolution: Less
- Effect of pills: But
- Persistent Effect: Close
- Shading Quality: medium
- On-demand texture streaming: But
- Local texture streaming quality: General
- shadow quality: Less
- Screen Space Shadow: Less
- Environmental disturbance: Statistics Object (GTAO)
- Screen Space Reflection: General
- Static Reflection Quality: Less
- square: near
- Terrain Memory: medium
- Volumetric Quality: Less
- Deferred Physics Quality: Less
- Weather Grid Volume: General
- water quality: wave wetness
We’re doing most of the cutting in shadows and reflections. This isn’t because they offer the best overall performance improvement – that goes to texture resolution, and I’ll get into why in the benchmarks below – but because they don’t degrade image quality as much. Even with the highest texture preset, it has some rough edges modern warfare 3, And reducing the texture quality to less than what I have is a sacrifice for image quality that is too big.
As for performance, my optimized settings turned out to be slightly faster than the Balanced preset, while pushing a solid number of settings up. The benchmarks below do not include any kind of upscaling, but modern warfare 3 Supports almost everything: DLSS, FSR 2, FSR 1, NIS, XeSS, and even its own built-in dynamic resolution.
My recommended settings focus on using DLSS for RTX GPUs and XESS for everything else. As I will find out later, XeSS has more stability than FSR 2, although FSR 2 is slightly faster. Built-in dynamic resolution is best if other upscaling tools won’t work with your GPU, but I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise. For most players, you’ll want to stick with DLSS or XeSS.
modern warfare 3 system requirements
As expected from a Call of Duty release, modern warfare 3 Is highly scalable. You’ll need a modern midrange rig to run the game at its recommended settings, but if you’re using an older system, you can still play the game without any issues, unlike more recent systems. alan wake 2,
| Minimum (MP only) | the minimum | recommended | 4K ultra | |
| CPU | Intel Core i3-6100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 | Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 | Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X | Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X |
| to hit | 8 GB | 8 GB | 16 GB | 16 GB |
| storage | 79gb ssd | 149gb ssd | 149gb ssd | 149gb ssd |
| asset cash | up to 32GB | up to 32GB | up to 32GB | up to 64GB |
| gpu | Nvidia GTX 960/GTX 1650 or AMD RX 470 | Nvidia GTX 960/GTX 1650 or AMD RX 470 | Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti / RTX 3060 or AMD RX 6600 XT | Nvidia RTX 3080 / RTX 4070 or AMD RX 6800 XT |
| video memory | 2 GB | 2 GB | 8 GB | 10 GB |
However, there are some interesting notes here. If you’re only interested in multiplayer, you can make do with a much weaker CPU. Multiplayer only requires a dual-core Intel chip, while you’ll need at least a quad-core for the campaign and additional modes. Additionally, you have the option to install multiplayer only, which reduces the install size significantly.
But you have to take care of storage space more than just the install size. Like previous Call of Duty releases, there is a real-time asset cache that can consume up to 64GB (you can determine how much it consumes in the graphics menu). It takes up space on your hard drive, streaming in assets as you play. This is a setting you should keep on, but note that you’ll need some extra space on your hard drive to take advantage of it.
As for the GPU, you’ll need at least an RTX 3080, or even the recent RTX 4070 to play at 4K with the Extreme graphics preset. From my testing, the biggest reason for this is not raw GPU power but VRAM. As I will soon dig, modern warfare 3 There is a lot of demand on your VRAM at high settings, and this is only exaggerated at higher resolutions like 4K.
Is 8GB VRAM enough for Modern Warfare 3?
you can play modern warfare 3 With 8GB of VRAM, but you’ll want more if you plan to run games at high resolutions with the highest texture settings. The Extreme preset can consume up to 7GB of VRAM at 1080p and over 9GB at 4K. For reference, lowering the texture quality one notch reduces the VRAM requirements to about 4GB and 6GB for 1080p and 4K, respectively.
Testing with the RTX 2060 Super, which has 8GB of VRAM, there were some worrying drops in high graphics modes. VRAM didn’t always come in handy, especially in areas where you were indoors or in closed outdoor areas. But when VRAM was stressed, such as in the cinematic opening mission, I noticed my frame rates halved at 4K.
You can set VRAM target in modern warfare 3, But this does not seem to be improving the performance. From what I can see, this limitation mainly occurs when you’re doing other things on your PC simultaneously while playing, forcing the game to share VRAM with other applications.
If you’re running a GPU with 8GB of VRAM, you can still play Modern Warfare 3. However, you’ll probably need to reduce texture quality, as demanding areas on VRAM can have a massive impact on performance.
modern warfare 3 benchmark
I focused my attention modern warfare 3 Benchmarks on the RTX 2060 Super. Its performance sits between the minimum and recommended system requirements, and it’s a good representation of the mainstream GPUs popular from a few years ago. The good news is that it was great at 1080p and still holds up at 1440p. However, those hoping for 4K will need something more powerful.
Even on the basic graphics preset, I was barely managing more than 30 fps at 4K with the RTX 2060 Super. Thankfully, 60 fps at 1440p was achievable with this graphics preset, although there were occasional dips into the mid-50s. At 1080p, I had no trouble sitting comfortably above 60 fps, even on the extremely demanding Extreme graphics mode.
Note that these benchmarks were run without any upscaling. Although upscaling shows diminishing returns at 1080p, it can still massively improve performance at 1440p, and even more so at 4K. You can easily crack 60 fps at 1440p with an RTX 2060 Super with some upscaling help, and maybe even get close to 4K if you dial back some graphics settings.
I tested three presets modern warfare 3, But the game includes five. There’s an Ultra mode just below Extreme, as well as a Minimal mode below Basic. Minimum mode is reserved for the weakest systems, as its main feature is to reduce the render resolution by 50%. Basic mode already takes most settings to their minimum values.
DLSS vs FSR vs XESS in Modern Warfare 3
modern warfare 3 Supports almost every flavor of image reconstruction you could want, almost to a fault. Some options are redundant, which can make navigating the Upscaling tab a bit confusing. Here are all the options in the game:
- DLSS 2.x
- FSR 2.x
- XeSS
- DLAA
- FSR 1
- NIS
- FidelityFX CAS
- In-game dynamic resolution
For most people, we’re just focusing on the top three: Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling, AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2, and Intel’s XESS. FSR1 supports some older GPUs, but it doesn’t look as good, and NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling) is in a similar situation. CAS actually has a performance hit and means a faster pass at native resolution. Similarly, Nvidia’s Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA) is an option for RTX owners running at native resolution.
If you are not able to get the desired performance, then DLSS is the best option for you. As you can see in the chart below, DLSS, FSR 2, and XeSS all hover around the same level of performance with their Balanced presets, but DLSS is the overall winner by a few frames.
More importantly, DLSS looks like Best ever. It actually appears to be better than native resolution due to its built-in TAA, so I would recommend turning on DLAA even if you’re already running at native resolution on an RTX GPU. XeSS and FSR 2 are mostly on the same level, but I recommend most players stick with XeSS between the two.
Similar to FSR 2, you can use XeSS on most GPUs. In a still image it looks almost the same as the FSR 2, but the FSR 2 looks much brighter in motion. This isn’t a big issue on the Quality or Balanced presets, but in Performance mode it can be distracting. XeSS maintains image stability better, and it delivers the same level of image quality and performance.
As far as FSR1, NIS, and in-game dynamic resolution are concerned, you should avoid them if possible. It’s nice to have these options for legacy support, but they aren’t useful for most PC gamers. They provide solid improvements in performance but don’t look very good. If you have a relatively modern GPU – something from the last six or seven years – stick with DLSS, FSR 2, or XeSS.
At lunch time, modern warfare 3 Does not support any type of frame creation via Nvidia’s DLSS3 or AMD’s FSR3. However, it does support Nvidia Reflex to reduce latency.
