Watch the video:

0:00 - Explanation
0:12 - Basic & Better PC performance tips
0:40 - Best Display Settings MW2 (2022)
3:54 - FSR, DLSS, NIS -- What's best?
6:00 - Best Quality Settings in MW2 (2022)
8:46 - Drastically improve visibility
9:08 - Best View Settings for MW2 (2022)

We all know why we’re here

There is no need to introduce an optimization guide, but here’s one to keep the article format. Optimizing games is a crucial step for FPS gamers. Getting the most out of your hardware is critical to maintaining an edge in-game. This guide covers getting the most out of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Beta/Open Beta and applies to the full game release.

You should see a dramatic increase in FPS. However, everything is hardware-dependent. Customize everything further - including DLSS/NIS/FSR after this guide for even more performance.

Optimizing your PC

I have created multiple guides to get the most out of your PC. Make sure to follow them or other directions for even more performance. You only need to do this once, and it helps literally every game on your PC.

• Windows 10 Optimization
• Windows 10 Nvidia Optimization
• Windows 11 Optimization
• Windows 11 Nvidia Optimization
• Optimize startup programs

Optimizing MW2

Open Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and head to the Settings > Graphics screen.

DISPLAY

• Display Mode: Fullscreen // Fullscreen Borderless. Set the display mode to either fullscreen borderless or full screen on Windows 11. Otherwise, if you’re on Windows 10 for the best FPS set it to fullscreen.
• Constrain Mouse to Game Window: OFF. If you find yourself looking around too fast and when you click you get tabbed out of the game simply turn constrain Master game window on; otherwise, leave this off
• Display Monitor: The screen you want to play the game on
• Display Adapter: The best GPU in your system. Likely Nvidia or AMD - not your integrated graphics, if possible.
• Screen Refresh Rate: The highest available/Supported by your monitor
• Display Resolution: Highest supported for your monitor. While you can lower this for more FPS: This should be an absolute last option.
• Dynamic Resolution: Off, without a doubt.
• Aspect Ratio: User preference // Automatic
• V-Sync (Gameplay): Off
• V-Sync (Menus): Off. Both V-Syncs should be OFF unless you’re getting screen tearing. Having this on usually results in much more input latency.
• Custom Framerate Limit: Custom
  • Gameplay …: 300 (highest)
  • Menu …: 60
  • Out of focus …: 30 or lower. The lower this option, the more performance you’ll see when tabbed out in Windows.
• Display Gamma: 2.2 (SRGB) for monitors, 2.4 (BT1886) for TVs.
• Focused Mode: Off. This just blacks out your other screens when in-game. Unnecessary. Just close distracting programs for even more performance!
• High Dynamic Range: User preference // Automatic

QUALITY

• Quality Presets: Whatever. This will be custom as soon as we change anything.
• Render Resolution: Whatever matches your monitor. Lower will result in blurry gameplay. Higher: a loss of FPS.
• (We’ll return to the upscalers later)
• Anti-Aliasing: Set this to the lowest option available. Currently, this is SMAA T2X.
• Nearby level of detail: High

AI and upscaling

NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA IMAGE SCALING (NIS), and AMD FSR 1.0 are all ways of using AI, or other methods to artificially improve your FPS by lowering the render resolution and raising it using magic.

Leave all these set to OFF, and only customize them after everything else. Using these upscalers could result in artifacts, but they all should raise FPS.

• If you have an RTX 20+ series card from NVIDIA, turn FidelitFX CAS Off, and set NVIDIA DLSS to your preferance.
• Avoid NVIDIA NIS. Instead use AMD FSR 1.0**, or just FidelityFX CAS.
• For AMD users, use ** AMD FSR 1.0** or FidelityFX CAS - whatever you prefer.

For the average user, just use FidelityFX CAS and set the sharpness to around 75. For any of these you should have your sharpness relatively high to cancel out the blurry effect that the forced-on anti-aliasing gives us. No more need for glasses, thanks to AI! – Just let us turn off AA, please.

DETAILS AND TEXTURES

• Texture Resolition: Set this as high as your VRAM allows – See the bar in the bottom-left of the game window.
• Texture Filter Anisotropic: High. This has almost no effect.
• Particle Quality: High. Low effect overall. Random FPS drops with action? Lower this later.
• Bullet Impact & Sprays: User preference // On
• Shader Quality: Low
• Tesselation: Off
• On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off. While this is a good idea, it is more stable and consistent with having this disabled.
• Streaming Quality: Low

SHADOW & LIGHTING

Set everything to low for the most part.

• Shadow Map Resolution: Low. Very low is distracting
• Spot Shadow Quality: Low
• Cache Spot Shadows: On - if you have 8+ GB RAM
• Cache Sun Shadows: On - Same as above
• Particle Lighting: Low
• Ambient Occlusion: Off // Low
• SSR: Off // Low

POST PROCESSING EFFECTS

• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: This depends on your PC. If you are CPU limited, choose ON + BOOST. If you’re GPU limited, choose ON or OFF. This will need some testing on your part.
• Depth of Field: Off
• World Motion Blur: Off
• Weapon Motion Blur: Off
• Film Grain: 0.00

These last settings are essential. Without setting them to off, you’ll feel the constant need to put on glasses while playing the game to see further. Having motion blur assists in helping you snap to targets while you’re looking around. It looks fantastic, but it does nothing to help your performance - both FPS and personally.

VIEW

Everything in here is a user preference. FOV is a debated topic. “Raise it for better fps”, “Lower it for better fps”. Do what feels best for you. Frames don’t matter. If you find it challenging to play and look around, then your personal performance is going to suffer a lot more than it would with lower FPS. You can sacrifice a handful for better vision and feel.

Final notes

With that comes the end of this guide. You can quickly get even more by lowering settings further or pushing FSR or DLSS settings higher for a lower resolution and more FPS - But it’s easy to go overboard and start seeing unavoidable artifacts.

If you haven’t already: Now is the best time to optimize your Windows installation while you’re at it. You will notice a difference - especially if you’ve never done something like it. The links to guides are above.