How to increase FPS in CoD Black Ops Cold War: video settings
The video settings of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War can be optimized to increase your FPS and improve your gameplay.
On the web, you can find several configuration files to replace yours and boost the fps. Honestly, I don’t like this approach because I want to know exactly what I am changing, so I decided to review all the options in this article.
These adjustments are useful if you are struggling to reach an acceptable amount of fps as you are using a low-spec PC, but also if you have a monitor with a high refresh-rate as you bought it to gain an edge in a competitive shooter such as Call of Duty.
Video settings
Launch CoD Black Ops Cold War, select Settings at the bottom left (or press F3 on the keyboard), and open the Graphics tab. I will show you how to set up each setting for maximum performance.
Hardware
Display Mode: Fullscreen or Windowed (FullScreen).
Fullscreen is the best choice performance-wise, but you might prefer Windowed (Fullscreen) if you have a multi-monitor setup and you wish to move quickly on another display.
Note: you can switch from Fullscreen to Windowed (Fullscreen) by pressing Alt+Enter on the keyboard.
Monitor: select your monitor.
Refresh Rate: your monitor refresh rate.
Gameplay V-Sync: Disabled.
Menu V-Sync: Disabled.
Render Resolution: 100.
I warmly recommend to not change this setting unless you really need more fps. Decreasing the value below 100 will grant more performance at the cost of blurred textures.
The visual effect at 90 is acceptable, and 75 is the minimum value you should consider. Generally, decrease the Display Resolution first, and use the Render Resolution as the last resort.
Display Resolution: use your native one.
Using your native resolution is desirable for a better view, but if you badly need a performance boost, decreasing the resolution will greatly improve your fps. 720p is usually a solid compromise between quality and performance.
Aspect Ratio: use your native one, or select Automatic.
In the screen below, the setting is 21:9 because I play on an ultrawide monitor. Your display should have a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Display
Field of View: it depends on your preference.
ADS Field of View: it depends on your preference.
I published an article about the best FoV in Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, containing the results of a survey and detailed explanations on each setting.
A higher field of view (FOV) increases your peripheral vision, but at the same time all the targets are smaller, and it can cause a fisheye effect. In any case, lower values will improve your performance.
Framerate Limit: your monitor refresh rate.
If you have a G-Sync or G-Sync compatible monitor, I suggest selecting a global cap about 3-4 FPS below your refresh rate in the Nvidia control panel. For example, my monitor has a refresh rate of 160hz, so I selected a framerate limit of 156. In this way, you don’t have to tune manually each game.
Details and Textures
Texture Quality: High.
This setting depends mostly on the VRAM available on your graphic card, so it barely affects your fps.
You can reduce Texture Quality to lower values, but I suggest keeping it at High for a better viewing experience.
Texture Filtering Quality: Medium or High.
Texture Filtering Quality has a very small impact on the fps, so you might consider using High even on older machines.
Model Quality: Medium.
Special Effects Quality: Medium.
Screen Space Reflection: Disabled.
This is one of the most expensive settings in Call of Duty.
Object View Distance: Low or Medium.
Shadow and Lightning
Volumetric Lightning: Low.
Shadow Quality: Low.
Dynamic Shadows: Disabled.
Special Effect Shadows: Disabled.
Weapon Shadow: Disabled.
Shadow and Lightning effects have a big performance cost in any game. Disabling them you can gain even 20-30 FPS depending on the system and resolution.
Post Processing Effects
Nvidia Reflex Low Latency: Enabled (Boosted).
Enabling this option reduces the system latency, so the game feels smoother. Setting it to Normal is sufficient, however, Boosted provides slightly better results because it forces the GPU to maintain higher clocks even in CPU bound scenarios.
Anti-Aliasing Quality: Lowest.
SMAA T2X and Filmic SMAA T2X are quite expensive, but they are the recommended options to avoid visual noise and artifacts.
As we want to achieve more fps, I suggest using FXAA because nowadays it has a very small impact on the performance. If you have spare frames, set Anti-Aliasing Quality to Medium for a better view.
Ambient Occlusion Quality: Disabled.
Ambient Occlusion does improve the graphic quality of the game (depending on the location), but at a high fps cost. I could not disable it on my machine because the setting was locked.
Motion Blur: Disabled.
I turn off Motion Blur in all games as it generates visual effects that influence negatively your gameplay.
Subsurface Scattering: Disabled.
Order Independent Transparency: Disabled.
Config.ini file
To find your config file, press Win+R and then imput the following line:
Documents\Call Of Duty Black Ops Cold WarSelect the “players” folder, press the right mouse button on config.ini. and open it with WordPad or another text editor. I use Notepad++.
There are several options, but most of them have been already set up via the in-game settings.
If you are experiencing stutters and frame drops (it affects mainly AMD video cards), a potential fix is changing the fraction of video memory usage to target from 0.80 to 0.65:
//Fraction of video memory usage to targetvideo_memory = "0.65" // 0.5 to 1
After you finish editing the file, press the right mouse button on it, go on Properties, General, Attributes, and mark it as Read-Only. If you don’t, it may be overwritten as soon as you start the game, and you will lose all the changes.
If you need to alter your in-game settings in the future, it is necessary to uncheck read-only. Afterwards, you can change the settings, edit manually the config.ini file, and set it as read-only again.
Note: The user settings found in players/config.ini will be applied on boot and will be overridden by the config.ini settings found in the user profile directory once the user is logged in to Battle.Net. Any manual edition of the user settings in this file should be followed by a copy of the config.ini file in the proper user profile directory.
Header image: Activision
