Best Graphics Settings for MW2 on PC for FPS and multiplayer

Make the most out of MW2 with these graphics settings

Table of Contents Table of Contents

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 may have been out for a while, but finding the right settings for your PC can be tricky. With MW2 and Warzone 2 Season 3 drawing closer, there’s never been a better time to tweak your settings and unlock more performance from your rig.

Whether you’re looking for pure FPS performance on multiplayer or lean towards higher-fidelity graphics, we’ve compiled what we believe are the best settings for MW2 on PC – striking a balance between both. Before we start, if you’re using an Nvidia card we would highly recommend switching on DLSS. This will massively improve performance – at a minimal impact to visual fidelity.

A caveat. The below settings are based on a mid-range PC playing at 1440p resolution on a mid-sized monitor – which is the most popular set up to play MW2 competitively on PC. As multiplayer relies on reactions, our below settings sacrifice some visual fidelity to strike a balance between performance and aesthetics. At the end of the article, we walk you through the DLSS options available – and what we would recommend. If you’re playing at 4K or on a larger screen, we would still recommend the below, but would encourage you to play around with DLSS options until you find what works for your hardware and display.

Best graphics settings for MW2 on PC for multiplayer

The MW2 settings menu has loads of graphics options to help you squeeze the most out of the game’s visuals and configure your controller or FOV settings. Below, you’ll find each of the visual options you have at your disposal and our recommendations. Remember, the larger the screen, the more the effects of reducing graphics quality will be noticed.

The below configuration leans towards FPS, and reduces the overall quality of the image slightly, which on smaller displays will not be too disruptive. Most notable will be degraded particle effects and volumetric quality, however the game will still look serviceable. As mentioned prior (and explained later on), please make sure DLSS is enabled if you have an Nvidia graphics card.

Best MW2 Display settings

• Display mode: Fullscreen Exclusive
• Display monitor: Primary
• Display adapter: Make sure it’s your best graphics card
• Screen refresh rate: Check your monitor’s max, then set it to that
• Display resolution: 1080p
• Dynamic resolution: Off
• Aspect ratio: Automatic
• V-Sync gameplay: Off
• V-Sync menu: Off
• Custom frame rate limit: Custom
  • Gameplay: 300
  • Menu: 90
  • Out of focus: 30
• Display gamma: 2.2
• Brightness: Based on your preference
• Focus mode: Off

Best MW2 Quality settings

• Quality presets: Custom
• Render resolution: 100
• Upscaling/sharpening: FidelityFX CAS
  • Strength: 65
• Anti-aliasing: SMAA T2X
• Anti-aliasing quality: Normal
• Video memory scale: 90
• Texture resolution: Low
• Texture filter anisotropic: Normal
• Nearby level of detail: Low
• Distant level of detail: Low
• Clutter draw distance: Short
• Particle quality: High
• Particle quality level: Low
• Bullet impacts & sprays: On
• Shader quality: Low
• Tessellation: Off
• Terrain memory: Max
• On-demand texture streaming: Off
• Streaming quality: Low
• Volumetric quality: Low
• Deferred physics quality: Low
• Water caustics: Off
• Shadow map resolution: Low
• Spot shadow quality: Low
• Cache spot shadows: On
• Spot Cache: Low
• Cache sun shadows: On
• Particle lighting: Low
• Ambient occlusion: Off
• Screen space reflections: Off
• Static reflection quality: Low
• Weather grid volumes: Off
• Nvidia reflex low latency: On
• Depth of field: Depends on your preference
• World motion blur: Preference
• Weapon motion blur: Preference
• Film grain: 0.00

Best MW2 View settings

• FOV: 110 or depending on your preference
• ADS FOV: Affected
• Weapon FOV: Wide
• Third-person FOV: Around 80-100
• Vehicle FOV: Default
• First-person camera movement: 100 or depending on your preference
• Third-person camera movement: 100 or depending on your preference
• Default spectator camera: Preference

You can right-click an option to add it to the Quick Settings menu. This menu gives you quick and easy access to the settings that you use the most often, and you can even remove stuff that’s put in there by default. It’s a great resource for on-the-fly settings adjustment. If you notice any stuttering errors , you might be experiencing a common bug. We have a page that can help you to fix the problem.

How to turn on Nvidia DLSS in MW2

Modern Warfare 2’s DLSS feature can give you a huge boost in framerate. To switch it on simply follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have a compatible Nvidia graphics card
2. Launch the game and head to Settings
3. Click the Graphics tab and select Quality 
4. This will open the Upscaling/Sharpening drop down menu – and then click Nvidia DLSS

While Quality or Balanced settings will be most popular for those at 1140p, we would highly recommend using Performance or Ultra Performance to maximize your FPS.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are my MW2 graphics fuzzy?

If your MW2 graphics are fuzzy, this is an indication that it isn’t well optimised and needs to be fixed on resolution according to your monitor and system.

Is MW2 well optimised? 

MW2 is well optimised, given it’s a triple A (A-AAA) game, Activision have managed to well optimise the game so it’s less of a hassle to optimise according to your system.

Should I use upscaling in MW2?

In general, it’s recommended to select the upscaling option that matches your GPU. For instance, if you have an Intel GPU, choose the Intel option, and the same applies to AMD and Nvidia. Once you’ve made your selection, you’ll be presented with four additional presets: Ultra Performance, Performance, Balanced, and Quality.