The fastest way to raise your frame rate in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is to set Graphics Quality to Custom, turn every ray tracing option off, drop Shadow Quality, Volumetric Quality and Particle Resolution to Low, set VRAM Scale Target to 80 (70 on an 8 GB card), cap your frame rate a few frames below your monitor's refresh rate, and let Background Shader Preloading finish before you queue into a match.
On Xbox Series X|S, the equivalent move is enabling 120 Hz output in the console's video settings and selecting the 120 Hz game mode, which roughly doubles your frame rate in multiplayer at the cost of internal resolution.
Everything below explains why those choices work, what they cost, and how to adapt them to the hardware you actually own. Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2, with Campaign Early Access for digital pre-orders starting October 16. It does not run on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.
What does Modern Warfare 4 actually need to run?
Activision published the PC requirements alongside the August beta. The floor is lower than most people expected for a current-generation-only title, but three requirements apply at every tier, and none of them are optional.
| Tier | CPU | GPU | RAM | VRAM | OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Ryzen 5 1600 / Core i5-8400 | GTX 970, GTX 1060, RX 470 or Arc A580 | 12 GB | 3 GB | Windows 10 64-bit |
| Recommended | Ryzen 5 3600 / Core i7-8700 | RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT or Arc B580 | 16 GB | 8 GB | Windows 11 64-bit |
The three non-negotiables:
- An SSD. Modern Warfare 4 streams assets continuously. A mechanical drive produces constant hitching, no matter how strong your GPU is, and a spinning disk will not clear the requirement at all.
- TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot. Ricochet anti-cheat verifies the boot path, and online play is blocked without both enabled. Turning them on can mean a BIOS change and, on some systems, converting your boot disk from MBR to GPT — check this weeks before launch, not on launch night.
- A current GPU driver. The beta listed NVIDIA 610.47, AMD 26.7.1 and Intel 32.0.101.8861 as minimum recommended versions. Expect a launch-day driver from all three vendors.
Also worth knowing: playing on Steam requires a mobile number linked to your Steam account, and Xbox purchases cover both console and PC through Xbox Play Anywhere at no extra cost.
Which settings actually cost you frames?
Modern Warfare 4 exposes dozens of graphics options, but four of them dominate frame time. Fixing those four gets you most of the way; the rest is fine-tuning.
- Ray tracing. Reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion and volumetrics all have ray-traced modes this year, and they are available across campaign, multiplayer and the larger Big War maps. This is the single heaviest thing the renderer does. Turning all of it off typically recovers more frames than every other quality setting combined, and none of it helps you see an enemy.
- Shadow Quality. The traditional Call of Duty frame killer. Low costs you nothing competitively — you track silhouettes, not shadow softness.
- Volumetric Quality. The god-ray and smoke lighting pass. Expensive, and it actively obscures players inside the smoke. Low is both faster and clearer.
- Particle Resolution. Every explosion, killstreak and smoke grenade routes through it. Low keeps frame times flat exactly at the moments when a spike costs you the fight.
Texture Resolution is the exception. It is nearly free in terms of frame rate as long as it fits within your VRAM, and sharper textures make distant players easier to read. Push it as high as your card comfortably allows, then leave it alone.
Recommended graphics settings
Set Graphics Quality to Custom before anything else — the built-in presets quietly re-enable ray tracing.
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Graphics Quality | Custom |
| Render Resolution | 100 |
| Dynamic Resolution | Off |
| Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS) | Quality, if GPU-limited |
| VRAM Scale Target | 80 (70 on 8 GB cards) |
| Ray Tracing (all options) | Off |
| Texture Resolution | High (Medium on 8 GB) |
| Shadow Quality | Low |
| Volumetric Quality | Low |
| Particle Resolution | Low |
| Screen Space Reflections | Off |
| Depth of Field | Off |
| Motion Blur (world and weapon) | Off |
| Film Grain | 0.00 |
| Display Mode | Fullscreen Exclusive |
| V-Sync (gameplay and menus) | Off |
| NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency | On + Boost |
| Background Shader Preloading | On |
What is VRAM Scale Target, and why does it cause stutter?
VRAM Scale Target caps how much of your graphics card's memory the game can use to store streamed assets. Left at 100, Modern Warfare 4 will essentially consume all of it, leaving nothing for the display driver, the Windows compositor, or your overlays. The result is texture thrashing — a repeating hitch every time you round a corner into a new area, or textures that load in blurry and sharpen a second late — while your average FPS counter still looks healthy.
| GPU VRAM | VRAM Scale Target | Texture Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| 6 GB | 70 | Low |
| 8 GB | 70 | Medium |
| 10–12 GB | 80 | High |
| 16 GB or more | 80 | High |
If you are diagnosing stutter, this is the first setting to change — before you touch resolution, upscaling or anything in the quality tab.
How should you cap frame rate and set refresh rate?
An uncapped GPU queues frames ahead of the display, and that queue is felt as input delay even when the frame counter reads beautifully. Capping a few frames below your refresh rate keeps the queue short and the game responsive.
| Monitor refresh | Custom Frame Rate Limit |
|---|---|
| 144 Hz | 141 |
| 165 Hz | 162 |
| 240 Hz | 237 |
| 360 Hz | 355 |
Set it under Display → Custom Frame Rate Limit, keep both V-Sync options off, and leave G-Sync or FreeSync enabled at the driver level. Field of view is a separate trade-off rather than a performance dial: 100–105 is the balanced competitive range, 105–110 suits fast movement and the larger maps, and anything past 115 shrinks distant targets enough to hurt your accuracy.
What should you change outside the game?
A meaningful share of Call of Duty's frame-pacing problems live in Windows, not in the graphics menu.
- Switch to the High Performance power plan. Balanced park cores and drops clocks mid-match, which shows up as inconsistent 1% lows rather than a lower average.
- Enable XMP or EXPO in BIOS. Running 5600 MT/s memory at its 4800 JEDEC default is a real loss in CPU-heavy modes like Ground War.
- Check Memory Integrity / VBS. Virtualisation-Based Security costs measurable CPU performance in shooters. Look for "Virtualization-based security: Running" in
msinfo32. - Close overlays you don't use. Discord overlay, browser hardware acceleration, RGB software and always-on capture all compete for the same CPU time as the game.
- Test Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling both ways. It helps on some driver and hardware combinations and hurts on others. Measure your own 1% lows instead of trusting a blanket recommendation.
Why does shader preloading matter more this year?
Modern Warfare 4 moves shader compilation outside the game client. After installing, and again after each major update, you get a "Shader Pre-Loading Will Start" prompt, and the work runs in the background.
Do not queue into a match while it is still running. Compiling mid-game forces severe frame drops, missing textures and, on some systems, a crash. Leaving Background Shader Preloading on and letting it finish removes most of the day-one stutter that has followed previous Call of Duty launches — it is the single highest-value thing you can do on install day, and it costs you nothing but patience.
How do you get the most frames on Xbox Series X|S?
Console players don't get a graphics menu, but they do get two performance modes, and the difference between them is large. Both Series X and Series S offer 60 Hz and 120 Hz modes in the beta build.
On Series X, both modes target dynamic 4K output. The 60 Hz mode maintained a steady 60 FPS during beta testing, with only occasional dips, rendering at an internal resolution closer to 1440p. The 120 Hz mode ran at roughly 110-120 FPS in multiplayer at an internal resolution near 1080p, with the campaign at around 80–90 FPS. On Series S, both modes target dynamic 1440p; the 60 Hz mode is the more stable choice, while 120 Hz multiplayer can reach 120 FPS but also drop to about 70 with internal resolution falling as low as 576p. These are observations from the beta build, not final launch figures.
The practical takeaway: Series X owners should run 120 Hz for multiplayer and consider 60 Hz for campaign; Series S owners are usually better served by 60 Hz unless they strongly prefer motion smoothness over image clarity. Before any of that works, enable it at the console level — Settings → General → TV & display options → Video modes — then enable 120 Hz and, if your display supports it, variable refresh rate. A 120 Hz game mode does nothing if the console is still outputting 60 Hz to your TV.
One scheduling detail matters here. Digital editions unlock Campaign Early Access on October 16, a full week before the October 23 launch, so having the licence attached to your account early is what buys you a calm pre-load window instead of a launch-night download queue. A COD: MW 4 Xbox key redeems through the Xbox guide (View button → Redeem) or at redeem.microsoft.com, and because the purchase covers Xbox Play Anywhere, the same licence works on Series X|S and on PC without buying twice.
What is still unknown
Worth being straight about the limits of this guide:
- The published specs are beta specs. Activision's requirements sheet and the driver versions above were released for the August beta. Launch requirements are usually identical or similar, but they have not been confirmed separately for the retail build.
- Menu labels and defaults may shift. Settings names come from the beta client. Infinity Ward has renamed and reorganised graphics options between beta and launch before.
- Console performance is not final. The Series X|S figures above are third-party beta measurements. Launch-day patches routinely change resolution targets and frame pacing on console.
- Frame generation behaviour is untested at scale. DLSS, FSR and XeSS upscaling are confirmed, but how frame generation interacts with Reflex and with the game's netcode under launch-week server load is not something a beta weekend can answer.
What to do before launch day
Ordered by how much they matter and how easily they can go wrong at the last minute:
- Verify TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot now. This is the one that blocks you entirely, and the fix can involve BIOS changes and a disk conversion. Do it this week.
- Free up SSD space. Budget generously; Call of Duty installs have run well past 100 GB, and updates need room to work on top of that.
- Secure the licence before October 16 so the pre-load and Campaign Early Access window are actually usable. Whether you buy from the platform storefront or pick up a LootBar game key — the store covers digital keys, top-ups and in-game currency across more than 200 titles — what matters is that the code is redeemed to the right account before early access opens, not on the night.
- Install the launch-day GPU driver and let shader preloading run to completion before your first match.
- Set the graphics table above, then verify. Turn on the performance overlay and watch frame time rather than average FPS. A flat frame timeline at 120 FPS feels considerably better than a spiky one at 160 FPS.
Who needs new hardware, and who doesn't
If you are on an RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT or Arc B580 with 16 GB of system RAM, you do not need to upgrade anything for Modern Warfare 4 — that hardware clears the recommended tier and, with ray tracing off and the settings above, should hold 144+ FPS at 1080p in 6v6. Spend the money on a higher-refresh monitor instead; it will do more for your gunfights than a GPU swap at that tier.
If you are at or near the minimum spec — a GTX 1060 or RX 580 class card — you can play, but plan on 1080p with everything Low, upscaling on Balanced, and Render Resolution dropped to 85 if you fall short of 100 FPS. The upgrade that changes the most for the least money at this tier is usually going from 8 GB to 16 GB of system RAM, or moving the install from a hard drive to an SSD if you somehow haven't yet.
And if you are still running a mechanical drive, no TPM, or Windows 10 without a recent feature update, fix those first. Every one of them is a hard blocker or a guaranteed stutter source, and no graphics setting compensates for either.