Best Call of Duty Warzone settings for PC and Steam Deck

If you follow our guide to the best Warzone settings, you'll find that not only does your game run much smoother, but you might even start hitting a few more of your shots and racking up some wins, too. We also address some of the tweaks you may want to make to general gameplay, including mouse and audio setting adjustments.

The Warzone system requirements show that you won't need the best graphics card from our detailed buying guide to run the game. However, in a competitive FPS like Warzone, frames win games, and you want the best performance possible from your gaming PC or handheld to give you the best chance of winning gun fights.

• Render Resolution: 100
• Dynamic Resolution: Off
• Upscaling/Sharpening: Off
• Anti-Aliasing: SMAA T2X
• VRAM Target Scale: 80
• Variable Rating Shading: On
• Texture Resolution: Normal
• Texture Dilter Anisotropic: High
• Depth of Field: On
• Detail Quality Level: High
• Particle Resolution: High
• Bullet Impacts: On
• Persistent Effects: On
• Shader Quality: High
• On-Demand Texture Streaming: Optimized
• Local Texture Streaming Quality: Normal
• Shadow Quality: Normal
• Screen Space Shadows: High
• Occlusion and Screen Space Lighting: High
• Screen Space Reflections: Normal
• Static Reflection Quality: High
• Tessellation: Near
• Terrain Memory: High
• Volumetric Quality: High
• Deferred Physics Quality: High
• Weather Grid Volumes: High
• Water Quality: All

Using the above settings on our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 testing rig, we achieved an average frame rate of 110fps, with 1% lows of 78fps at 2,560 x 1,440.

We're quite happy with the performance figures and quality of the image, but we're also aware that there are a lot of ways to trim the image quality to push the frame rate higher.

This is best dealt with on a case-by-case basis, depending on the power of your gaming PC, but if you are chasing the highest frame rate possible, you can start by lowering settings like Texture Resolution, Detail Quality, Particle Resolution, and Water Quality.

We actively avoid using Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR in competitive shooters as the scaling process can introduce some image imperfections that are easily avoided. The same goes for frame generation, only the downside to using it is the possible addition of input lag, which is an absolute no-go for an FPS like Warzone.

Best Warzone settings for Steam Deck

Call of Duty Warzone will not run natively on the Steam Deck due to the implementation of the Ricochet anti-cheat. You can get around this by downloading Windows on your Steam Deck, although it would be far easier to use our alternative method.

Rather than downloading a whole extra operating system, you can instead download the native GeForce Now Steam Deck app and play the game via cloud streaming.

Warzone graphics presets

There are five total graphics presets in Warzone. Each one is listed below alongside the total VRAM usage of each profile with no upscaling or dynamic resolution enabled.

• Minimum - 3.25GB
• Basic - 3.75GB
• Balanced - 4.08GB
• Ultra - 4.82GB
• Extreme - 6.32GB

There's quite a big leap between the top and bottom graphics presets, with the balance shifting between image quality and performance. That being said, if you're struggling to find your sweet spot, select the balanced profile and make minor adjustments from there.

Best Warzone audio settings

There are heaps of audio settings profiles to choose from, and they all have benefits and shortcomings. In case you aren't already, make sure you're using one of the best gaming headset picks from our excellent buying guide.

Of the several audio mixes to pick from, we recommend Boost High as the best setting because it increases the volume and clarity of crucial cues like gunshots and footsteps. Footsteps are louder in Boost Low, but it also increases ambient noise, creating a messy soundscape. While other audio mixes can sound better overall, they make picking out precise locations and sounds quite tricky.

It's no secret that the audio tuning in Warzone is very different from other battle royale games, and you can rarely rely on footsteps to reveal an incoming squad's position. So while these audio settings help a little, you'll need to use every tool available to gain intel on enemy positions.

Oh, and one quick tip if you want to save your ears during an air strike or the initial deployment phase: F10 mutes all in-game audio, allowing you to keep talking on Discord in peace.

Best Warzone mouse sensitivity and gameplay settings

• Field of View: 110
• ADS Field of View: Affected
• Weapon Field of View: Wide
• 3rd Person Field of View: 90
• Vehicle Field of View: Wide
• World Motion Blur: Off
• Weapon Motion Blur: Off
• Film Grain: 0

We're not going to dig into every last control and detail about this, as it's highly preferential, and you'll find a huge range of setups at even a pro level. Instead, we'll offer some light suggestions on some of the key points so you can start customising things from there. If you want to consider a hardware upgrade instead, check out our guide to the best gaming mouse options from our buying guide, covering products from a range of prices and purposes (FPS, MMO, etc.).

For mouse sensitivity, we suggest trying somewhere between three and six for a 400 dpi mouse. Modern Warfare is all about twitchy movements and quick reactions, so being able to flick onto heads in every situation is key. You won't find yourself missing many shots as it's relatively low, but you'll still be able to turn a 180 fast enough to win the fight. Keep all of the modifiers at a 1:1 ratio to keep things consistent, although you may want to turn your mouse sensitivity down for vehicles specifically.

ADS sensitivity is very important, as most of your engagements will happen in this view. Again, personal preference is key here, but we find the most comfortable setup is relative as it factors in your monitor size. For the specific breakdown of multipliers, 1.7 works wonderfully; you'll want the transition set to instant and the coefficient at 1.33. In terms of feel, this ensures you can snap around quite easily, which is great for Warzone, as so many fights happen between moving targets, and being able to react to their slides, tac sprinting, and random direction changes is key.

For mouse acceleration, smoothing, and filtering, turn them all down to 0 or off - you want your mouse settings to reflect what you're doing with your mouse movement.

As for movement, set yourself up with a tap to slide, as it allows you to enter and exit slides quickly and have more control over your fast-paced movement. An automatic airborne mantle will save you some muscle memory space, but you need to make sure you're familiar with the mantle system beforehand.

For weapons and equipment, make sure you have a depleted ammo weapon switch enabled with a 0-second delay. This only saves you if you burn through all of your ammo in a given gun, but this happens surprisingly often in Warzone. Make sure the weapon mount is on the toggle, the weapon mount movement exit is enabled, and the delay is 0. ADS and equipment behaviour should be on hold.

Lastly, if you have any Nvidia GeForce GPU from the GTX 900 series onwards, you can make use of Nvidia Reflex. This is a proprietary technology that lowers system latency, otherwise known as input lag, so your shots register that much quicker. Nvidia claims that flicking Nvidia Reflex Low Latency on in the graphics options can improve latency by up to 17%, and with next to no performance overhead, anything is ultimately a free gain. It's worth mentioning that it tends to work better when paired with one of the best gaming monitor picks from our handy buying guide, especially one with a high refresh rate, so you can see the difference more easily.

How we tested Warzone

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Call of Duty Warzone includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration, and MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 and 4K using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Warzone need an SSD?

Call of Duty Warzone doesn't require an SSD, but without one, you're likely to experience long loading times as you get ready to drop into matches. It's highly recommended that you upgrade if you still use a HDD, and a message will pop up in-game stating as such if you try and boot the game on a mechanical drive.

You'll want the best SSD that is compatible with your gaming PC, and our excellent buying guide has options from a range of technologies and prices.

How to monitor performance in Warzone

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Warzone, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

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