Call of Duty Warzone best multiplayer graphics options – all video settings benchmarked

System Requirements

Optimum 1080p PC Build

Low vs Ultra Screenshots

GPU Performance Chart

CPU List That Meet System Requirements

GPU List That Meet System Requirements

Comments

Call of Duty Warzone

PC Demand

#100+

Rate this game

User Rating
7.16 user review score. Average score out of 10, based on 216 review scores” style=”background: #dddd22″>
7.16

Ok

Not Ok

Optimisation
2.1 optimisation score. Average rating, based on 238 user ratings” style=”background: #dd2222″>
2.1

Warzone is the free to play version of Call of Duty. They naturally didn’t want to miss out on the Battle Royale first person shooter game space that is doing so well for companies like Epic. Make no bones about it, this is a fully loaded Call of Duty engine title, with the graphics options to match. We have put together a guide of the best Warzone multiplayer graphics options, as we explore the performance frame rate costs to your graphics card. Some graphics options will help your competitive online game of Warzone and some will be worth turning off and down low to gain those valuable frames per second.

We will do this by testing and recording the frame per second loss that occurs on every graphics option, one by one, as we turn them up to ultra setting.

So if you are looking to get this game running smoothly then this graphics setting guide for Call of Duty Warzone will help you understand which options to turn down low to get a few extra frames per second and which options you can turn up to Ultra to get Warzone looking beautiful for a minimum performance impact.

If you are looking for some benchmark guides across different PC’s and hardware configurations then pop over to our Warzone benchmark article to see how well your PC hardware setup might run it.

Right, onto the graphics settings. There is a handy feature at the top of the Warzone graphics option page, we have seen it on a few other games, that lets us know what the required VRAM is for every Warzone graphics setting. So, while using the Nvidia GTX 1060, we lowered all the graphics settings to “Off” or “Low” and took note of the minimum VRAM Warzone would require on a screen resolution of 1080p (1920×1080).

The minimum video card VRAM needed to run Warzone in its lowest graphics setting configuration at 1080p screen resolution is 1480 MiB.

Also check out our Warzone graphics card benchmark article to see what sort of FPS you might get with a variety of modern graphics cards when playing Warzone.

We will now adjust each COD Warzone graphics setting up to max and taking note of the performance impact that graphics setting would have on our VRAM, visuals, and overall frame rates.

Call of Duty Warzone baseline FPS

To give us a comparable FPS baseline for Warzone Frame Rates achieved when all Warzone’s graphics settings are on lowest or OFF.

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3

Next is a quick glance graph that shows the relative impact of all Warzone graphics options on your video card. The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics setting is when switching from Low to Ultra, or whatever equivalent is used for that particular graphics setting in Call of Duty Warzone.

Call of Duty Warzone All Graphics Settings Benchmark Guide

Call of Duty Warzone comes with a variety of graphics settings to tweak to your heart’s content. There’s plenty to mess around with if you’re trying to squeeze out a few extra frames and fine-tune Warzone’s PC performance for online competitive play. We’ve provided both a score for the performance hit as well as a priority score designed to recommend which graphics settings you should prioritize turning up (the higher the number, the better). Obviously these scores are subjective and we really do encourage you to share your thoughts below on what you think are the best Warzone graphics settings for competitive online gameplay. Or perhaps you know some options need to be turned off, as they get in the way of you being able to compete effectively.

Texture Resolution

Texture Resolution Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Texture Resolution	91.8	75.3	113.9	59.1	11.6

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Texture resolution option range: Very Low, Low, Normal, High

Texture Resolution VRAM cost per option

Very Low base VRAM requirement: 1480Mb Low VRAM requirement: 1640Mb Normal VRAM requirement: 2310Mb High VRAM requirement: 3480Mb

Performance impact: 4/5

Priority: 3/5

Texture Resolution graphics option report: If you increase the resolution on this option then it will also increase Warzone’s surface colour detail. You can tell that if you take this performance hit and turn the option on, the game doesn’t look like a bag of wet spaghetti. This in turn means you actually enjoy playing the game of Warzone. So its certainly worth getting this option up some of the way past Very Low. Probably worth turning it on to Normal setting if you can. In Multiplayer Warzone getting Texture Resolution up to Normal will probably help you see enemy characters when they are stood against a wall and not just appearing as a massive pile of hard to distinguish pixels.

We would love to hear your thoughts about Texture Resolution setting in the comments section below, especially if you feel it can help or hinder multiplayer Warzone gameplay. 

————-

 

Texture Filter Anisotropic

Texture Filter Anisotropic Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Texture Filter Anisotropic	98.9	77.6	117.3	68.2	10.9

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Texture filter anisotropic option range: Low, Normal, High

Performance impact: 1/5

Priority: 5/5

Texture Filter Anisotropic graphics option report: Raising this option will improve texture quality of surfaces when you look at them at an angle in Warzone. Putting this up to Normal or higher means you aren’t looking at a plain depth-less landscape. In terms of multiplayer Warzone benefits, it isn’t an obvious graphics setting to help or hinder your gameplay, but during our testing it seemed to have a low FPS cost, so you might as well crank it up.

————-

 

Particle Quality

Particle Quality Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Particle Quality	95.7	81.9	136.5	69.6	53.4

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Particle quality option range: Low, High

Performance impact: 2/5

Priority: 2/5

Particle Quality graphics option report: This will obviously set the particle effects detail that we get from various explosions in Warzone. There is a frame rate hit with it, but this happens when there are more on screen explosions and dust clouds thrown up into the air. The thing with Warzone is that this happens a lot. But this is one of those personal preference options especially as the performance cost is relative. In some cases it can be argued that having particle quality turned to high could obscure your vision in online gameplay more than if it is set to low. It’s a subtle visual improvement when turned on.

But we would love to hear your thoughts on this below, do you think Particle Quality set to low or high is better for online multiplayer Warzone gameplay.

————-

 

Bullet Impacts & Sprays

Bullet Impacts & Sprays Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Bullet Impacts & Sprays	98.7	71.9	132.5	59	26.8

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Bullet impacts & sprays option range: Disabled, Enabled

Performance impact: 1/5

Priority: 5/5

Bullet Impacts & Sprays graphics option report: If you leave this option off then you will miss out on the bullet holes left on surfaces. This can be useful to tell you where fights have just occurred. Worth enabling and the options performance impact is in the negligible range. 

For online competitive play you need Bullet Impacts & Spray turned on and it doesn’t really cost anything extra in terms of hardware performance.

Let us know your war stories and if having this bullet impact option turned on has helped you in any way. Or have any options turned on or off in online Warzone helped or hurt you for that matter.

————-

 

Tessellation

Tessellation Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Tessellation	93.9	76.6	129.8	68.9	63.1

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Tessellation option range: Disabled, Near, All

Performance impact: 3/5

Priority: 4/5

Tessellation graphics option report: As you can see Tessellation improves object depth. It has a bit of a performance cost to it and you can probably live without it if you are hungry for the extra FPS.

————-

 

Shadow Map Resolution

Shadow Map Resolution Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Shadow Map Resolution	87.5	71	114.7	61.1	19.3

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Shadow Map Resolution option range: Low, Normal, High, Extra

Shadow Map Resolution VRAM cost per option

Low base VRAM requirement: 1480Mb Normal VRAM requirement: 1482Mb High VRAM requirement: 1528Mb Extra VRAM requirement: 1625Mb

Performance impact: 4/5

Priority: 3/5

Shadow Map Resolution graphics option report: This cleans up the quality of the displayed shadows. Shadow map resolution is one of the bigger performance cost graphics options in Warzone multiplayer. But as you can see from the comparison screenshots for SMR it can deliver some nice visuals. This is again one of those graphics options where its a balance between cleaning up the graphics quality to help you see the gameplay more clearly, versus getting some extra FPS to help you react to the online Warzone challenges quicker.

Let us know in the comments section below where you sit with this option and if turning it up to Extra settings helps the multiplayer aspect of Warzone in any way for you? 

————-

 

Cache Spot Shadows

Cache Spot Shadows Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Cache Spot Shadows	92.6	77.9	108.1	68.8	58.4

Cache Spot Shadows option range: Enabled, Disabled

Cache Spot Shadows VRAM cost per option

Disabled VRAM requirement: 1480Mb Enabled base VRAM requirement: 1544Mb

Performance impact: 4/5

Priority: 2/5

————-

 

Cache Sun Shadows

Cache Sun Shadows Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Cache Sun Shadows	101.3	87.6	120.8	72.6	63.2

Cache Sun Shadows option range: Enabled, Disabled

Cache Sun Shadows VRAM cost per option

Disabled VRAM requirement: 1480Mb Enabled base VRAM requirement: 1484Mb

Performance impact: 1/5

Priority: 3/5

————-

 

Particle Lighting

Particle Lighting Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Particle Lighting	94.8	81.8	135.7	69.9	57.4

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Particle Lighting option range: Low, Normal, High, Extra

Performance impact: 3/5

Priority: 3/5

Particle Lighting graphics option report: Particle lighting is a mid weight graphics option in terms of performance impact and priority in Warzone. We would slot it in mid way for a graphics option priority, as there are a lot of explosions and particles around the game that are enhanced with this turned up, but you wont miss it if it is always turned down low. Multiplayer Warzone gains nothing that we can see from having Particle Lighting turned up to max or down to low, so basically use this setting to help you gain the right balance with visuals and performance.  

————-

 

DirectX Raytracing

DirectX Raytracing Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
DirectX Raytracing	86	74.8	103.3	66.1	59.7

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Ray Tracing option range: Disabled, Enabled

Ray Tracing VRAM cost per option

Disabled VRAM requirement: 1480Mb Enabled base VRAM requirement: 2047Mb

Performance impact: 5/5

Priority: 2/5

DirectX Raytracing graphics option report: This is a luxury graphics shadow option. Ray Tracing in warzone is only the Shadow enhancing version of Ray Tracing. When it is on and you spot its effects, it certainly adds a realism to the games visuals, but comes with a performance price tag in Frames Per Second and graphics card VRAM. To get Ray Tracing working in Warzone, not only do you have to have a modern Nvidia RTX graphics card, but to risk turning it on during multiplayer Warzone, you are really going to want one of the more powerful RTX cards to lessen the significance of the frames per second drop you will suffer.

Enable Ray Tracing in COD Warzone and it will create real-time ray-traced shadows for local lights using DirectX Ray Tracing tech, accelerated by Nvidia RTX. 

————-

 

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Ambient Occlusion	78.6	59.8	94.9	56.8	48.9

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Ambient Occlusion option range: Disabled, Static Objects GTAO, Dynamic Objects MDAO, Both

Ambient Occlusion VRAM cost per option

Disabled VRAM requirement: 1480Mb Static Objects GTAO VRAM requirement: 1530Mb Dynamic Objects MDAO VRAM requirement: 1521Mb Both VRAM requirement: 1530Mb

Performance impact: 5/5

Priority: 3/5

Ambient Occlusion graphics option report: This one always gets me. It’s a hefty price to pay for the un-impressive sounding “corner shadows”. As it happens those corner shadows really provide a good bit of character and depth to the visuals of any game, but they always come at a price. Ambient Occlusion performance cost us both extra VRAM and frames per second. But there must be something in it otherwise why would every game have it as an option, right?

Turn it on if you got the graphics card horse power, otherwise turn it off and save yourself a bunch of performance impact. Having Ambient Occlusion turned off doesn’t cause any noticeable problems when competitively playing Warzone either. But if you have any reasons to suggest otherwise please share them in the comments below and we will publish them in the article as well.

The same goes for any suggestions you have for the best graphics settings to turn on in Warzone competitive online play.

————-

 

Screen Space Reflections

Screen Space Reflections Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Screen Space Reflections	82.5	69.8	95.4	63.7	54.6

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Screen Space Reflections (SSR) option range: Disabled, Low, Normal, High

Performance impact: 5/5

Priority: 2/5

Screen Space Reflections (SSR) graphics option report: This warzone setting reuses rendered graphics data to calculate reflections in areas like muddy puddles or wet floors or in windows or mirrors. As a graphics setting in Warzone Screen Space Reflections seems to be responsible for quite a drop in frames per second during our tests. There are a number of windows and puddles in COD Warzone. We suggest turning Screen Space Reflections off to save yourself some much needed FPS, especially in the levels that have more water around on the ground. Part of the reason for the higher FPS requirement is that SSR needs Anti-Aliasing set to Max (filmic SMAA T2x) to work. So while SSR does not constantly hit your frame rate AA does. And so screen space reflections only drops your FPS when its trying to render reflections in real time in watery surfaces and windows that are on screen.

SSR is a tough one because arguably having it turned up high means you may notice more in online competitive warzone gameplay, as perhaps an enemy is reflected in a window, when you wouldn’t normally notice them, perhaps similarly you identify a thrown grenade or a tiny bit of movement reflected in some surface that you can then react to. It’s all rather subtle but in the heat of the fight you will be surprised what your brain can do with some blurry images, as it fills in the gaps of a fast action round of COD Battle Royale.

Screen space reflections looks nice if you can have it on, but you may miss the FPS if you don’t turn it off. On the flip side, if you have the hardware, perhaps you might get more of an advantage with this option turned up max and you focus on playing maps that have lots of windows. We would love to hear your thoughts on whether this is even a thing or not. Discuss below in the comments area about the Warzone SSR option and whether better hardware actually really helps you do better in a round to this granular level or if thats over thinking it?

————-

 

Anti-Aliasing

Anti-Aliasing Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Anti-Aliasing	87.8	74.4	107.5	65.5	45

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Anti-aliasing option range: Off, SMAA 1x, SMAA T2x, Filmic SMAA T2x

Anti-aliasing VRAM cost per option

Off VRAM requirement: 1480Mb SMAA 1x VRAM requirement: 1480Mb SMAA T2x VRAM requirement: 1522Mb Filmic SMAA T2x VRAM requirement: 1522Mb

Performance impact: 4/5

Priority: 5/5

Anti-Aliasing graphics option report: No one likes jaggies. They make Warzone looks cheap and nasty. AA smooths out the edges on every surface or corner of a building or gun. Without this Anti-aliasing option turned on, Warzone looks cheaper and in fact harder to play online. When the jaggies appear in every part of the game they can give the impression of movement when they are being rendered. In extreme circumstances this can distract you during competitive multiplayer warzone gameplay. Perhaps meaning you miss a gun nozzle poking around a corner, which could cost you dearly. Turn this on even to low and suffer the FPS hit, is our advice, but know that you can turn it off if extra FPS are desperately needed in CODs Warzone Battle Royale.  

————-

 

Depth of Field

Depth of Field Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Depth of Field	101.9	81.4	129.4	68.9	49

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Depth of Field option range: Disabled, Enabled

Performance impact: 1/5

Priority: 2/5

Depth of Field graphics option report: Depth of field blurs out scenery around the edges of your guns sites, keeping the point you are focused on looking sharper and the peripheral vision blurry. For competitive Warzone multiplayer we say, don’t bother losing visuals for no reason, even if it looks a little better. You might as well see up close clearly as well as far away. the performance impact of this option is not really noticeable in the moment to moment gameplay so its up to you if you play better or worse with Depth of field on or off.

————-

 

Filmic Strength

Filmic Strength Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Filmic Strength	98.7	76.7	114.9	68.7	61.6

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Filmic Strength option range: 0.00 to 1.00

Performance impact: 1/5

Priority: 1/5

Filmic Strength graphics option report: Similar to above, Filmic Strength seems like an odd option, especially for multiplayer Warzone. You turn this option on to reduce the visual clarity of something. Filmic Strength doesn’t really have an impact on the average frame rates you will get in Warzone so turn it on if you like the visuals it delivers. What do you guys think about this option and some of these other ones in Warzone? Let everyone know how you set up your graphics settings for Call of Duty Warzone, especially in multiplayer, in the comments section below.   

————-

 

World Motion Blur

World Motion Blur Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
World Motion Blur	95.9	81.7	116.7	70.1	61.6

 

Performance impact: 2/5

Priority: 1/5

World Motion Blur graphics option report: Personally I wouldn’t turn this on for multiplayer Warzone gameplay, as it makes it much harder to see anything as soon as you move. And because you will be doing a lot of moving, well then you are likely at a disadvantage with World Motion Blur turned on, plus it costs FPS to have this option turned on.

————-

 

Weapon Motion Blur

Weapon Motion Blur Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Weapon Motion Blur	93.3	84.4	108.4	69.5	59.3

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Weapon Motion Blur option range: Disabled, Enabled

Performance impact: 4/5

Priority: 1/5

Weapon Motion Blur graphics option report: For multiplayer Warzone I suggest turning this option off ass it gets in the way of clarity of visuals.

————-

 

Film Grain

Film Grain Ultra setting performance impact:

	Avg FPS	Min FPS	Max FPS	1% Low	0.1% Low
Baseline	102.5	74.3	134.3	68.7	64.3
Film Grain	97.9	81.9	122.4	69.7	61

(slide your cursor over the images to compare. Click to enlarge)

Film Grain option range: Disabled, Enabled

Performance impact: 2/5

Priority: 1/5

Film Grain graphics option impact report: Film grain is the sort of option you reserve for single player immersive titles. Warzone is of course, largely competitive, online, battle royale and lowering the visual quality to make the game a little more atmospheric is probably going to lead to you getting dead a bit quicker. So consider that if you apply it in anyway.

————-

 

Aspect Ratio

You can set the fixed aspect ratio for the game’s rendering with this option, and by changing this you may lower framerates further and experience graphical artifacts if you get this out of sync with your screen resolution.

 

Warzone graphics option performance impact overview

The graphics engine used in Warzone is IW Engine, which is basically short for Infinity Ward (the developers) and the same game engine used in the other recent Call of Duty titles. Consequently the graphics options available are comparable with those titles and they are pretty comprehensive, but a lot of the options are great for single player Call of Duty but overkill for Multiplayer Warzone. However, it is definitely nice to have the visual options, so we can tweak the graphics settings in Warzone to meet our PC hardware spec.

While we have added a few insights and thoughts on how to turn on and off the graphics settings for Warzone and what sort of visual you might expect to see, we would really like to hear your thoughts on the options available in this COD title. Which graphics settings would you turn off in Warzone to help your frame rate performance but which options would you always like to see turned on?

You don’t have to be signed in to vote on our Best multiplayer Warzone graphics options poll below and everyone gets 3 selections, so get involved and please let people know why you selected what you did in the comments area at the bottom, it really is great to hear what different people think about how to set up graphics setting to play a game like Warzone online.

[Public anyone can vote – 3 votes each]

Our Favorite Comments

3

“I’m still having to install shaders every time i boot up the game. Its getting really annoying tbh.”

bichoxxx –