Modern Warfare 3 best settings on PC for FPS, graphics, visibility, more

The performance of Modern Warfare 3 on your PC can be greatly affected by your settings. It’s essential to optimize your settings for the best possible performance. Here are the most optimal settings to maximize your experience.

PC users were given access to MW3 for the first time on October 12, alongside Xbox users. All Call of Duty games are resource heavy on PCs. This means that having the right settings to match your setup is essential.

There are three columns of settings that can be adjusted in MW3 – Display, Quality and View. With so many setting options to choose from, it can be confusing to decide which is best and how it may impact your gameplay.

Activision has provided minimum PC specs that determine whether a player’s machine can run the game. Regardless of how well the PC performs, these suggested settings are the best to get the most out of your game.

Display Settings for Modern Warfare 3

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• Display Mode: Fullscreen Exclusive – Best for latency reduction
• Display Monitor: Choose your primary display with the highest refresh rate
• Display Adapter: This is just your graphics card
• Screen Refresh rate: Maximum for your monitor (144hz, 240hz, etc.)
• Display Resolution: Set this to 1080p – If you have a top end GPU, you could use 1440p, but 1080p will be better for FPS. 4K is not recommended as it will significantly impact FPS.
• Aspect Ratio: Automatic (16:9)
• V-Sync: Off
• Custom Frame Rate Limit: Custom
• Gameplay Custom Frame Rate Limit: 300
• Menu Custom Frame Rate Limit: 90
• Out of focus Custom Frame Rate Limit: 30
• Display Gamma: 2.2 (sRGB)
• Brightness: Preference
• Focus Mode: Off
• Invidia Reflex Low Latency: On+Boost

Quality Settings

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• Quality Presets: Custom
• Render Resolution: 100
• Upscaling / Sharpening: FidelityFX CAS
• FidelityFX CAS Strength: 100 – This will make the game sharper without impacting FPS much at all.
• Anti-Aliasing: SMAA T2X
• Anti-Aliasing Quality: Normal – Setting this to Low will improve FPS marginally, but the quality improvement of Normal is probably worth it.
• VRAM Scale Target: 90 – You want to use the max VRAM available.
• Variable Rate Shading: Off
• Texture Resolution: Normal
• Texture Filter Anisotropic: High – FPS barely affected by this higher setting
• Depth of Field: Off
• Detail Quality Level: Normal
• Particle Resolution: Very Low
• Bullet Impacts: Preference
• Persistent Effects: Off
• Shady Quality: Low
• On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off
• Local Texture Streaming Quality: Low
• Shadow Quality: Low
• Screen Space Shadows: Off
• Ambient Occlusion: Off
• Screen Space Reflections: Off
• State Reflection Quality: Low
• Tessellation: Off
• Terrain Memory: Medium
• Volumetric Quality: Low
• Deferred Physics Quality: Off
• Weather Grid Volumes: Low
• Water Quality: Default

View

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• Field of View: 100 – Although this number varies depending on your preference
• ADS Field of View: Affected
• Weapon Field of View: Default
• Vehicle Field of View: Default
• World Motion Blur: Off
• Weapon Motion Blur: Off
• Film Grain: Zero / 0.0

Those are the best Modern Warfare 3 settings on PC to maximize your FPS while still allowing you to enjoying good graphical fidelity.

Alternatively, another way to increase your FPS is to get a more powerful graphics card, so check out our list of the current best GPUs. You should also make sure you have the latest graphics drivers installed.