Image via Activision

The best PC graphics settings to increase FPS in Modern Warfare 3

Achieve the highest FPS possible

Joey Carr

Published: Nov 13, 2023 07:49 pm

The PC player base in Call of Duty has grown tremendously over the past few years, and Modern Warfare 3 has continued to grow the scene. More players than ever are playing on either Steam or Battle.Net, diversifying the player base to a huge extent. However, PC players have a little more to work out on their end compared to console. Namely, PC users need to use the right graphics settings in Modern Warfare 3 to ensure they can max out their frames per second.

Best PC graphics settings in Modern Warfare 3

To change your graphics settings on PC, find the cog icon in the top right of the lobby screen in MW3. Click on it, and then navigate to the graphics tab. From here, you will see three different sections at the top of the screen: Display, Quality, and View. I will go through each section and list every setting along with what you should put for all of them.

Display

Display Mode: Fullscreen Exclusive
Display Monitor: Your main gaming monitor
Display Adapter: Your primary graphics chip (either your CPU or GPU)
Screen Refresh Rate: The maximum refresh rate (Hz) of your monitor
Display Resolution: 1920×1080 or your preferred resolution
Aspect Ratio: Automatic
V-Sync: Off
Custom Frame Rate Limit: The maximum refresh rate of your monitor (i.e. 60, 75, 144, etc.)
Focused Mode: Off
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: On

This section doesn’t have a ton of imperative settings, but I do recommend turning Focused Mode to “Off.” This is set to 90 by default, and you don’t need it turned to that value unless you’re using an extremely large ultrawide monitor. I would also recommend double-checking your primary monitor’s refresh rate so you know what frame rate to limit your game to.

Quality

Render Resolution: 100
Dynamic Resolution: Off
Upscaling/Sharpening:
- For Nvidia GPUs: DLSS (Balanced or Performance Mode)
- For AMD GPUs: FSR 1 or 2 (Balanced or Performance Mode)
- For users who want a crisper image but slightly less FPS: FidelityFX CAS (Sharpening set to 100)
Anti-Aliasing: Filmic SMAA T2X
VRAM Scale Target: 80
Variable Rate Shading: Off
Texture Resolution: Low
Texture Filter Anisotropic: Normal

Depth of Field: Off
Detail Quality Level: Low
Particle Resolution: High
Bullet Impacts: On
Persistent Effects: On
Shader Quality: Low
On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off
Shadow Quality: Very Low
Screen Space Shadows: Off
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Screen Space Reflections: Off
Static Reflection Quality: Low
Tesselation: Off
Terrain Memory: Min
Volumetric Quality: Low
Deferred Physics Quality: Off
Weather Grid Volumes: Off
Water Quality: Off

This is where things get interesting, particularly with the upscaling settings in MW3. I recommend going with either DLSS or FSR if you need some extra frames, but FidelityFX CAS works wonders on your overall image. If you feel you’re getting enough frames, I would go with that option to make your game look extremely sharp.

The rest of the settings are pretty much set to low or off for frame rate purposes.

View

Field of View: 100-105
ADS Field of View: Affected for aggressive players, Independent for long range players
Weapon Field of View: Wide
Vehicle Field of View: Default
World Motion Blur: Off
Weapon Motion Blur: Off
Film Grain: 0.00
1st Person Camera Movement: Least (50%)
Spectator Camera: Helmet Camera
Inverted Flashbang: On

You are free to mess around with your Field of View settings, and I encourage you to do so, especially with the ADS and Weapon FOV. However, the rest of the settings should be followed to a T, as they improve your qualify of life tremendously.

And there you have it, the best PC graphics settings in Modern Warfare 3 that are guaranteed to improve your FPS by at least a small margin. Hopefully, though, your frames will be soaring and steady throughout your matches.