CoD MW2 FPS drop: How to fix the lag error?

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1 CoD MW2 FPS drop: How to fix the lag error?

Today we explain how to fix CoD MW2 FPS drop. The latest game, Modern Warfare 2, isn’t flawless as usual. Players frequently experience input latency, FPS drops, and lagging. In this article, I’ll go over a few changes you can make to address this problem.

Every year, Call of Duty is the most eagerly awaited game, and players all around the world wait for its release. In all honesty, I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed the last two Call of Duty games; the studios in charge of Cold War and Vanguard performed poorly. The greatest Call of Duty game to date is Modern Warfare 2. I also thought highly of the marketing.

Check out how to play hardcore in MW2?

Since years ago, AAA titles frequently experience launch-day issues. Given that Call of Duty was developed by large developer studios, these problems shouldn’t exist. Devs, on the other hand, are quick to notice and repair them. I’m still baffled as to why beta testing of titles like COD encounters issues.

If the drops occur suddenly or just last a few seconds, a bottleneck that can be easily rectified may be to blame. However, if your FPS is consistently low, you may need to make the adjustments I discuss in the article’s following section.

These are the most typical bottlenecks:

In the background, your GPU is working on other tasks. How much CPU even Desktop Windows Manager needs could surprise you (The module that enables hardware acceleration to render the graphical UI of Windows).
A CPU-intensive process is now active in the background.
You are using a 5400RPM HDD: Slow hard drives are the blame for the erratic FPS decreases and stuttering. It’s 2022; switching to an SSD is recommended. Comparing SSDs to HDDs, a lot of functions are available.
The game cannot be properly run on your hardware. You will have to make a graphic compromise if this is the case.
High temperature of GPU or CPU: The hardware automatically starts to be underclocked whenever the temperature reaches a certain threshold in order to avoid it from becoming overheated and burned. CoreTemp and Task Manager can be used to check the CPU and GPU temperatures.

You can use Task Manager to discover these background tasks. Determine if these apps are useful to you by sorting by usage. Remember that even if vital apps are consuming excessive amounts of resources, you cannot terminate them.

The campaign also had a few minor flaws when it first launched, including hazy graphics, a game-launching bug, a shaders optimization bug, and more. But now that multiplayer is here, a fresh set of issues has emerged.

You can play the game if your computer satisfies the system requirements even just a small bit.

Change game graphic settings

I’m aware that many gamers are still unable to obtain the 30 series cards. The most popular GPU is still the GTX 1060, according to the Steam Hardware Survey.

Five pre-sets are available for the game: Minimum, Basic, Balanced, Ultra, and Extreme.

Display

Display Mode: Fullscreen
Display Monitor: Your primary monitor
Display Adapter: Your GPU
Screen Refresh Rate: Refresh rate of your monitor. Since my machine cannot keep 240 continuously, I want to cap it at 180.
Resolution: Native
Aspect Ratio: Auto
V-Sync (Gameplay & Menus): Off
Custom Frame-Rate Limit: Depending on your monitor.
Focused Mode: On
HDR: Off

Quality

Global Quality

Quality Preset: Custom
Render Resolution: 100 – Any other setting will cause the game to appear fuzzy.
Upscaling / Sharpening: DLSS Quality with Sharpness 60.
Anti-Aliasing: will be greyed out if DLSS or FSR is enabled.
Video Memory Scale: 85

Details & Textures

Texture Resolution: Medium
Texture Filter Anisotropic: High
Nearby Level of Detail: Low
Distant Level of Detail: Low
Clutter Draw Distance: Short
Particle Quality: Low
Particle Quality Level: High
Bullet Impact & Sprays: Off
Shader Quality: High
Tessellation: All
Terrain Memory: Minimum
On-demand texture streaming: Off (those with high internet speeds can turn this on)
Streaming Quality: Normal
Volumetric Quality: Low
Deferred Physics Quality: Low
Water Caustics: Off

Map visibility is enhanced by lowering the volumetric quality setting.

Shadow & Lighting

All of these options have to do with shadows, which are quite demanding and place a lot of strain on GPUs. Switch them off.

Shadow Map Resolution: Normal
Screen Space Shadows: Off
Spot Shadows: Low
Spot Cache: Medium
Particle Lighting: Normal
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Screen Space Reflection: Off
Static Reflection Quality: Low
Weather Grid Volumes: Low
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: On+Boost
Depth of Field: Off
World Motion Blur: Off
Weapon Motion Blur: Off
Film Grain: 0.05

View

Field of View (FOV): Personal Preference
ADS Field of View: Affected
Weapon Field of View: Default
Vehicle Field of View: Default
1st Person Camera Movement: Default
3rd Person Camera Movement: Default

You should experience a big increase in FPS with these settings. Continue reading the article if you want to see more improvements.

Change graphic control panel settings

For NVIDIA Users:

Launch the Control Panel for NVIDIA. Desktop right-click > NVIDIA control panel
Navigate to Manage 3D Settings. Programming Options
If “MW2” is not on the list, you can manually add the game.

Make the following adjustments now:

Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
Threaded optimization: On
Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering – Quality: Performance
Low Lateny Mode: Ultra (High or Ultra makes sense only for PvP Games)

For AMD Users:

Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
Morphological Filtering: Off
Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
Surface Format Optimization: On
Wait for V-sync: Off
OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
Shader Cache: AMD optimized
Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
GPU Workload: Graphics
Chill: Off
Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled

Update device drivers & Windows

NVIDIA and AMD drivers are here.

However, updating Windows makes sure you receive all performance improvements. Microsoft enhances the operating system’s speed and effectiveness with each subsequent version. For instance, when Windows 11 was released, Microsoft made a number of modifications to enhance speed, including quicker startup times and better graphics processing.

Enable High-Performance Mode for Modern Warfare 2

Most people have this setting set to High Performance by default. But if the setting is set to Let Windows Decide, Windows may occasionally switch it to Power Saving. Reddit forums have reported a few instances of this happening, mostly in relation to gaming laptops.

Go to Graphic Settings > Search for Graphic Settings in Windows Search
Click on the result
Now from the newly opened window, located graphics performance preference
Search for MW2
Click on the App > Options
Select “High Performance” and check “Don’t use Auto HDR” (Applicable for HDR Monitors)

Fix MW2 lagging on Windows 11

These steps are specific to Windows 11 users.

Windows 11: Disable Core-Isolation
Core Isolation is a new feature that Microsoft has incorporated into Windows 11 to safeguard your computer against unreliable drivers and software. Performance is the trade-off. For those who do not download anything from dubious sources, though, this won’t be a problem.

Here’s how you can disable it:

Click on the Start Menu button and select settings
Click Privacy and Security > Windows Security > Device Security
Here you will find Core Isolation; click on Core isolation details
On the next screen, you will find a radio button for “Memory Integrity”, turn it off.

You’ve effectively turned off VBS on Windows 11. This has been cited as dramatically enhancing performance for various games by numerous Reddit users. We’re talking about gains of 20–30 frames per second right away.

Enable game mode

The Game Mode in Windows 11 has seen significant enhancements, in our opinion. While this option should be enabled on Windows 11, we advise disabling both the game mode and game bar on Windows 10.

To enable: Search for “game mode” and turn it on.