Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Settings [2023]

Like many others, are you also experiencing terrible visuals and low FPS in Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War? Well, we have been there but don’t worry because, In this guide, we are going to highlight the best Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Settings PC Settings For High FPS.

Released earlier this month, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War features three playable modes that include Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies. In our review, we did rate Graphics and Optimization a decent number. However, we did mention that multiplayer visuals were awful; enemies were hard to spot, fps were inconsistent, and in short, nothing add it up.

Our guide is partitioned into three segments. The first one will be all about In-Game Settings, while the second will emphasize Nvidia Settings, and the thirds all about necessary Windows Optimizations.

Best Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Settings

Here at exputer, we spent a tremendous amount of time finding the best Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War PC settings to ensure decent FPS while still maintaining competitive visuals. I know it took us a bit long, but it had to happen, considering the game has one of the most detailed graphics options ever.

Texture Quality: Medium

Although in our starting tests, we were quite adamant about testing textures at High and ultra-high. However, when going for multiplayer across all maps, we notice that ultra was becoming unnecessary as it gave too much graphical importance to elements we didn’t care of. This only made all the textures become too high definition, and spotting enemies had gotten troublesome. Not to mention, the effect on Graphics Card Usage was also the most significant. It’s best to keep it medium because you will get suitable frames and the best visuals.

Model Quality: Medium

This feature is kind of useless for If you are keen on playing multiplayer. The essential explanation is that Model Quality adds additional number of shapes that are completely futile.  These additional shapes only create conflict in visuals and further impact performance.

Special Effects Quality: Medium

Special Effects Quality is another detailing and texture option that provides a further enhancement to the gameplay. All it does is that it adds special effects to grenades, fires, vehicles, and more. The feature can be helpful if you are using mediocre headphones and can’t locate the enemy fire. We suggest keeping it at medium since it’ll assist with spotting adversaries through gun flash. I use high-end headphones, so this isn’t for me.

Screen Space Reflection (SSR): Low

In some maps like Miami, screen space reflection makes an enormous difference, but the feature does not correctly blend in other maps. We benchmarked the graphics with all three options, Disable, Low, and High. All we noticed was that it became difficult to spot enemies in high because the reflection from surfaces was all over the place. Besides, there were also new lighting that didn’t make any sense. The impact on performance was zero to none.

Object View Distance: Low

Changing Object View Distance will only add and render additional elements to make the map look fancy. This certainly has a decent impact on performance and provides no value in multiplayer. Also, there’s a lot of confusion about whether Object View Distance has anything to do with rendering enemy players in the distance.

That is a misconception because no matter what settings you use, players and bots will always render.

Volumetric Lighting: Low

I really want to disable this option because during our initial benchmarks, as a player, it felt frustrating. The problem with Volumetric Lighting is that sometimes you will aim at the enemy, but you won’t see him properly because sun rays are all over the place. It’s tough to describe, but keeping it low is the most suitable choice for sharp visuals.

Shadow Quality: High

There are two reasons why you should keep Shadow Quality High. The first is that shadows will help you spot enemies in interiors. And the second is that graphics look too washed out without this. You can certainly try it low, but then you will miss the benefit of seeing the enemy player’s shadow and ambient visuals.

Another thing worth noting from the picture above is that when shadows are on low, they are blurry and scattered very randomly.

Dynamic Shadows: Disabled

Dynamic Shadows is another feature that contradicted with our motto, “Sharp visuals.”When enabled, we saw unnecessary shadows and a slight impact on performance. Most Importantly, it became challenging to spot enemies. For those who are interested in the campaign, make sure you have it enabled for better graphics.

Special Effect Shadows: Disabled

Again, this adds unnecessary graphical components and further impact performance. Keep it disabled.

Weapon Shadows: Disabled

We did benchmark the graphics with both enabled and disabled. The performance difference wasn’t noticeable; however, at the same time, the feature felt unnecessary. If you want to get high fps and stay top of your competitive circle, the Weapon Shadow feature isn’t for you.

Ray Tracing: Disabled

This part is a bit complex, mainly because not everybody has RTX Graphics Cards. On top of that, there’s also this question, whether Ray Tracing is worth it in FPS Games. From my personnel experience and benchmarks, we did here at exputer. The difference was noticeable, and the visuals felt sharp. However, it did not fit our criteria of High FPS and stable performance. I think Ray Tracing has a long way to go in terms of optimization before being used in competitive FPS games like Call of Duty, CSGO, and Rainbow Six Siege.

Anti-Aliasing Quality: High

Anti-Aliasing was one of the most prominent graphical features in our benchmark. The setting made a huge difference in terms of visuality. Further, keeping it at high made graphics smooth and ensured that elements appropriately blended in the environment.

Ambient Occlusion Quality: Disabled

Benchmarking it across all options available and comparing everything. We noticed that difference in visuality and graphics wasn’t good at ultra. Although the game says it has a low effect on VRAM, we saw a roughly 10-15 FPS difference in both Ultra and Low. I think the primary reason why there was no difference in graphics was that we configured it through Nvidia Control Panel.

Motion Blur: Disabled

Motion Blur is entirely useless across all FPS games.

Subsurface Scattering: Disabled

This feature is strictly related to the rendering of human faces; therefore, it’s no purpose in multiplayer. Suppose you want to see Adler’s face full high definition in Campaign. Make sure it’s enabled.

Gameplay V-Sync: Disabled

Disable Gameplay V-Sync, or else your frames will be locked on 60, and you will experience terrible input lag.

Menu V-Sync: Disabled

Menu V-Sync is a personnel preference and has no impact on gameplay performance whatsoever.

Render Resolution: 100%

Select your native resolution, and make sure the rendering percentage is at 100%.

Aspect Ratio: Default

Check whatever’s your native aspect ratio through the Nvidia control panel, or test it yourself, keeping in mind that the native aspect ratio won’t have black bars.

Field of View: 103

Field of View is personnel preference, but try to keep it below 105, because above that, you will get very low FPS. This is principally on the grounds that with more Field of View; you are seeing more pixels all at once.

Order Independent Transparency: Disabled

Order Independent Transparency is one of those features that entirely set the performance and graphics meta apart. Thankfully, this feature does not have a lot to do in multiplayer because most of its extra detailing is strictly related to the campaign. We did notice, like the setting’s description writes, “increase the amount of transparency effects and objects that are sorted when looking through them.” The entire Order Independent Transparency thing isn’t helpful when boiling visuals and performance. Keep it disabled.

Nvidia Settings 

Although making in-game settings will help, but they won’t get you accurate visuals. To do that, you will have to further optimize Call of Duty Blacks Cold War through Nvidia Control Panel. These settings add further enhancements, and they are entirely safe.  Just make sure your Nvidia Graphics Card drivers are updated to the latest version because Nvidia has just released the Game Ready Drivers for Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War.

Once you have updated the drivers do the following

1. Open Nvidia Control Panel and under Adjust image settings with preview click on Use the advanced 3D image settings.

   

2. Afterward, go to Manage 3D Settings > Add Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War > and make the following changes.
3. Turn off Image Sharpening.
4. Disable Anisotropic Filtering.
5. Enable Antialiasing – Gamma Correction.
6. Override any application setting under Antialiasing – Mode.
7. Antialiasing – Transparency – Off.
8. CUDA – GPUs – Select Your Primary Graphics Card.
9. Select Ultra under Low Latency Mode.
10. Use Global Settings under Max Frame Rate and Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA).
11. Select Your Primary Graphics Card Under OpenGL Rendering GPU.
12. Choose “Prefer Maximum Performance” under Power Management mode.
13. Enable Shader Cache.
14. Enable Texture Filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization.
15. Allow Texture Filtering – Negative LOD bias.
16. Select High performance under Texture Filtering – Quality.
17. Enable Texture Filtering – Trilinear Optimization.
18. Turn on Threaded Optimization.
19. Turn off Triple Buffering.
20. Disable V-Sync.
21. Use Global Settings for Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames.

You can now expect terrific visuals along with high fps. These Nvidia settings are the most balanced and optimized ones for Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War.

Windows 10 Optimizations For Black Ops Cold War

If you have a low to mid-range PC, make sure you are following this section. By default, Windows 10 has many settings that compromise on performance for unnecessary and fancy animations. To get the best possible FPS in Black Ops Cold War and stay at the top of your competitive circle. You will have to configure these few sets of settings.

Get Ultimate Performance

At number one, we have the Ultimate Performance setup, which In my opinion, makes the most significant performance improvement. To understand the Ultimate Performance Plan, all you should know is by default Windows 10 relies on a balanced power plan that does not allow the hardware to run at its full potential.

Through the Ultimate Performance Plan, you will remove all sorts of power limitations and allow your hardware to deliver max performance. Doing this can result in a somewhat 5-10 FPS increase.

Here are the steps to enable the Ultimate Performance Plan.

1. Under Start > Search and Open Windows PowerShell.

   

2. Now Copy and Paste this set of code and enter.

   

3. powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02 -d5df -448d -aa00 -03f14749eb61

4. Once done, go to start again > Edit Power Plan > Power Options.

   

5. Checkmark Ultimate Performance Plan.

   

Disable Unnecessary Animations

Another key feature that requires disabling is animations. These luxurious animations are always using a chunk of power, and disabling them can make a huge difference. The majority of these animations are for better visuals, which are relatively unnecessary in gaming.

1. Open Start > Search View Advanced System Settings > Open It.

   

2. Proceed to the Advanced Tab and Click on Settings > Checkmark the following and click on apply.
3. “Show thumbnails instead of icons.”
4. “Smooth edges of screen fonts.”
   

   

From now on, not only will you experience speed and rapid response. But, you will also see a slight increase and consistency in your frames.

Get Rid Of Hardware Acceleration

Hardware Acceleration is another vital factor that can hurt your performance. The feature is mostly enabled in third party applications that allow it to run creatively to unpack resources more efficiently. While this does improve the application quality, it nowhere makes significant changes. On top of that, it’s also worth noting that it’s enabled across applications like Google Chrome, Battlenet, and Discord, where it’s useless because the core task of that program does not change.

Here is how you can disable it across the common gaming applications.

1. Open Discord > Settings.

   

2. Under Appearance, scroll down and disable Hardware Acceleration.

   

3. Now Open Battle.net > Settings.

   

4. Under General Select Exit Battle.net and Exit Battle.net completely in Window Section.

   

5. Scroll down and now uncheck “Use browser hardware acceleration when available.”

   

6. Make sure to click on done, once you make the changes.

Last but not least, also disable Enhance Pointer Precision under Windows 10 Mouse Settings. This can make an instant difference in gameplay because when Enhance Pointer Precision is enabled. It automatically changes your DPI every second; therefore, you are never consistent with your aim. Moreover, you will also save some performance when disabling this.

Disabling Hardware Acceleration across all these applications will get you a tremendous FPS Boost. I’ve only shown you how to disable it in most common gaming apps; now it’s your job to disable it in other applications as well.

Set Graphics Card Priority To High For Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War

Do you want max performance out of your GPU when playing Black Ops Cold War? Well, it’s not hard; all you have to do is add the game in Graphics Settings and then set its priority to high. This setting is entirely safe, and it’s available within Windows 10 itself.

Make sure you aren’t adding any other unnecessary applications, though.

1. Under Start > Search And Open Graphics settings.

   

2. Click on Browse and Add BlackOpsColdWar.exe

   

3. Now click on options, and under Graphics Preference, Select High Performance.

   

4. You will now see dramatic FPS boost and eye-catching smooth gameplay in Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War.

Black Ops Cold War Optimization Thoughts

Overall, I’d say Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is pretty well optimized. However, the settings are way too many, and for those who plan on getting decent frames at high refresh rate monitors. There’s a lot to configure. On the bright side, if you plan on playing the campaign mode only. Just go with all high or ultra, because with majority hardware, it’s very likable the game will run at 60 FPS. Last but not least, this Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War PC Setting guide was made in the same month as the game release, so there’s hope that more optimization might be on its way.

Update #1 – 2022: The Guide has now been updated with additional methods, while others are changed recognizing the updates.