Season 4 of Warzone is well underway now and so is the competitive scene in the game. Players are putting in the hours to get used to the new update. Most FPS games are indeed skill-based, and warzone is no exception. If you are good at the game, you will succeed in one way or another.
However, certain factors play a vital role in one’s gaming experience. Having high fps and smooth gameplay can give you the edge that you need in a competitive setting. Here are the 25 settings that you need to change right now to enhance your gaming experience.
To understand what we are aiming for exactly, we need to understand what to avoid and what to get.
Things to avoid: Input lag, jitter, frame drops, low framerate, tearing up between frames, messy visuals, and blocky objects.
Things to get: higher frame rate and clarity in the game.
There are many things that you can tweak in the game’s settings tab. A detailed guide on what to change is given below. All you have to do is boot the game up and follow the steps.
Graphics: Display
1. Display Mode: Fullscreen
There are a few display modes in the game that you can use, fullscreen, Windowed, fullscreen borderless, and fullscreen extended window. The two main modes that you can use to help you get the best frame rate are: fullscreen and windowed.
There is a huge difference between the two and it surely will affect the fps. The general understanding is that the fullscreen mode allows you to play the game in full screen, where the game is not treated as a different window. This means that desktop notifications and other pop-ups will not show on the screen when you are in the game.
Another advantage that you will have when using the fullscreen setting is that the PC itself will not render anything else in the background and maximum resources will be assigned to the game. This means higher framerate and low input lag etc.
The windowed mode, on the other hand, will display the game in another window. This means that features such as minimizing and shifting between open windows will be accessible to you, however, you will be prone to popups, not to mention that the frame rate will drop significantly. So, set this one to fullscreen.
2. Resolution: (1920 x 1080)
The resolution of the game affects the frames as well as the image clarity. What you need to do is check the maximum resolution that your monitor supports, and set the in-game resolution to that. You can do this by going to the display settings of the computer, or by simply choosing the last option.
1080p (1920x1080) is the world’s most common screen resolution. It gives you the much-needed clarity, while not exerting a lot of stress onto the GPU. Most GPUs nowadays are designed to play games on this resolution, so the exertion on the GPU is low and the gaming experience will always be sublime.
3. Refresh Rate: Maximum level
The refresh rate of the monitor refers to the number of times that the monitor refreshes the image being shown on the screen. A lower refresh rate means that the video/game will be jittery.
To get the best experience, you can set this to the maximum possible value. Do note that this setting will not cause any lag in the game as this is completely monitor-dependent.
A higher refresh rate makes the game smoother, with less tear between frames and close to no jitter. So, if you have a monitor that supports higher refresh rates, then make sure that you change this setting to maximum.
4. Render Resolution: 100%
The render resolution is not the same as the regular resolution, let me explain. The native resolution (which we set to 1080p) is the overall resolution of the game, which includes menus, tabs, text, etc. The render resolution refers to the resolution of only the 3d objects in the game.
A lower than 100% render resolution (for instance 50%) will run the game itself in the native resolution (e.g. 1080p), but the objects, such as that one camper with an HDR in the new ATC tower, will be rendered in 50% resolution.
In short, the images will appear blocky and weird instead of sharp and clear. So, avoid this at all costs and set this to 100%.
5. V-Sync: DISABLED
Okay, I can’t stress this enough. The V-sync is a setting that synchronizes the refresh rate of the monitor and the frame rate. Now when you enable it, the game may appear a bit smoother, but this has a major drawback.
The drawback is input lag. What is input lag you may ask? Well, to make it simple, there is a delay between you pressing a button, and the monitor displaying your player’s consequent action. For example, if you shoot that camper in the ATC with an HDR of your own, you will see the shot and the well-deserved gulag visit for the camper just a slight bit later.
See how this can be a bit annoying when it is the other way around and someone is shooting you? In a way, the real-time game is a few milliseconds ahead of you, putting you at a disadvantage. This may not seem much at all, but it matters, trust me. Keep this disabled.
6. Brightness: 55
Now a lot of people might skip this setting and leave this to the player to set for themselves, but this is important. The default setting on Warzone is 50, but it is a bit dark. If you are rushing into a room, you might not see the guy crouching in the darkest corner of the room.
What you want to do is turn this up a notch. This will improve the overall visibility and you will see players and other objects (in dark places) a lot better. And as you know, there are a lot of dark places on Caldera, and a lot of enemies loom around there. So, set this to 55.
7. Nvidea Reflex Low Latency: Variable
This feature works with Nvidea GPUs only, so if you have an AMD GPU, you can skip this one.
What this feature essentially does is that if you have a medium-end CPU but a higher-end GPU, you can make the game more GPU intensive. This will allow you to grab a few more frames per second.
If you have such configuration, (low CPU and higher GPU), you can set this to the Enabled + Boost option. This will run the game smoother and with low input lag.
However, if you have a balanced system or you have a strong CPU, set this to Enabled. It will give you a few extra frames and will optimize the game for input lag.
Graphics: Quality
8. Field of View: 120
The field of view, or FOV, is the observable area, or how much you see on the screen. What you want to do is set this to the maximum (120). This will give you that extra visible area on the edges of the screen.
Now, this setting will not affect the FPS a lot, however, it will surely give you a slight edge. You will not miss a lot of people near the corners of the screen.
Advanced -- ADS FOV: Affected
This one is just as important. What this setting does, is that it enables or disables zoom-in while you are aiming down something like an iron sight (anything with less than 3.25x zoom). What you want to do is, set this to affected.
Setting this to affected will not disable the zoom-in entirely. It will make it negligible. Granted that it is a bit harder to aim, and the enemies far away will not be zoomed in, but let's be real here, no one shoots an enemy 200m away with an iron sight.
You don’t want to miss that crucial visibility when you are in a close gunfight, so set this to affected.
9. Camera Movement: Least – 50%
Imagine that you are aiming down on an enemy, and a hand grenade blows up near you. Not close enough to kill you, but close enough. In this scenario, you don’t want the camera to shake violently. This will certainly be a big distraction, and you might lose that gunfight.
To avoid all that and to have minimum camera shaking, you need to set this to the least - 50% setting.
10. Texture Resolution: Normal (for 8 GBs V-RAM GPUs), Low (for less than 8 GBs V-RAM GPUs)
This particular setting will not affect the FPS a lot. What it does is, make the game sharper, and crispier. You don’t want the enemies in the distance to look like a blurry speck on the screen, do you?
One thing to note here is that although it does not affect the overall FPS, it does require additional GPU memory. This is because higher texture resolution requires objects to be rendered at a higher resolution individually, for which they have to be loaded into the GPU memory or V-RAM.
Set this to Normal if your GPU has 8 GBs of memory or more. If you have less, set this to Low.
11. Tessellation: Disabled
Tessellation is linked to 3D images and different angles. This setting, if enabled, will eat up a lot of resources, which you don’t want really. It directly affects the framerate and does not offer any compensation whatsoever. So, set this to disabled.
12. Anti-Aliasing & Filmic Strength : (Variable)
This is one of those rare occurrences when one setting is directly linked to the other. I won’t go into the technical details of everything, as that is unnecessary. However, I will give you an idea as to what these settings are and what they do.
Anti-aliasing sharpens the edges of all the objects (near and far) such that they don’t appear blocky. However, the higher the setting of Anti-aliasing, the lesser FPS you will have.
For low-end PC: Disabled or SMAA 1X, Filmic Strength: 1.00
If you have a low-end PC, you might want to sacrifice graphics for higher FPS. Set this to Disabled for maximum FPS, and if you want a bit of both, set this one to SMAA 1X. Do note that SMAA 1X will cause a slight decrease in the average FPS of the game, but will give you more clarity.
If you have AA set to Disabled or SMAA 1X, set the filmic strength to 1.00. This will reduce the visual noise and the game will appear much clearer.
For Medium to High-end PC: SMAA T2X or Filmic SMAA T2X, Filmic Strength: 0.00
Higher-end PCs can handle the anti-aliasing really well. You don’t want to give up some graphics for an extra few FPS if you are already getting really good FPS.
With this setting, you can reset the Filmic strength to 0.00. You will not experience any visual noise as the game will already be as clear as it can be.
13. Depth of Field, World Motion Blur, and Weapon Motion Blur: Disabled
These three fields don’t need much explanation so I am putting them together. Here is a brief explanation as to what these three are and what to do with them.
Depth of field: Disabled
Depth of field means that the game will focus on one object (what the player is focusing on) and blur the rest of the background. We need this disabled, as we really don’t want to miss out on information that’s behind the enemy player when we zoom in (e.g. another enemy).
World Motion Blur: Disabled
World Motion Blur is activated when the player is in motion, i.e. running or walking. During these actions, everything around the players is blurred to symbolize running. Frankly, this is counterproductive and pretty useless in the real game scenarios, so we need this disabled.
Weapon Motion Blur:
What this setting does is that it blurs the world when the player has the weapon zoomed in and moves to aim at another target. This is pretty useless as well. You really don’t want to miss that flick onto the head of that ATC camper. Set this to disabled like the others.
14. Shadow Map Resolution: Low
As the name suggests, this setting is regarding the resolution of the shadows in the game. A point to be noted is that this does not refer to the objects in the shadow, but to the shadow itself.
This setting does not add much to the game when turned on and affects the framerate slightly. To get the best out of the game, you should set this to low, as there is not much of a difference in graphics, and you will get some extra frames per second.
Note: You can also set this to normal if you want some crispier shadows, but that will come at a cost of a few frames. It is a personal preference, but do you set it to high or very high.
15. Cache Spot & Cache Sun shadows: Enabled
Both of these settings work the same way. They store some of the shadows in the RAM while the game is running. This means that the rendering process will be faster and easier for the GPU, which in turn means more FPS.
Enable both of these settings to get that extra few frames per second. Disabling does not make much sense, as these settings are not intensive for the GPU or any other resources, yet help the framerate quite a bit.
16. DirectX Raytracing: Disabled
You will only have access to this setting if your GPU supports Raytracing, that is, it is an RTX card. Raytracing is a technology that has been developed by Nvidea to enhance the lighting in the game. This technology will track the lights from the source and give a realistic image with respect to shadows and reflections.
Although it makes the game look relatively realistic, this comes at a huge price in terms of FPS and smoothness. The game will look better, but the frames will drop all the way down to less than 60, which is a real setback.
Simply disable this setting. You can maybe turn this on to see how the game looks, but definitely turn it off when you are in a competitive game.
17. Particle Quality: Low
Contrary to popular belief, the particle quality actually does not boost the FPS that much. There may be guides online that suggest setting this to high will give you an FPS boost.
The point is that particle quality will give you some extra FPS, in a standard scene. But in a gunfight, when there is muzzle flash and bullets are flying everywhere, particle quality is warzone’s number 1 contributor to frame drops.
There is not much difference between the High and Low particle quality in terms of how the game looks you will probably not even notice it. So, keeping this Low is a safe bet.
Interface
18. Colorblind Type: Deuteranopia
There are various color schemes and pallets that activation allows the users to access. You can disable this option and the game will run in default colors.
If you want the game to pop up a little, that is, be more vibrant, you need to set this to Deuteranopia. This will make the overall game more saturated, giving you a fresh feel for the game. You might also see the enemy players comparatively easily.
You can also check out all the options and choose what is best for you. Deuteranopia is the option that is most commonly used among streamers and professionals of the game.
19. Horizontal & Vertical HUD: 25.00
Now, this may seem like a bit of a stretch, but the HUD really affects the gameplay. What I recommend to everyone is setting this to 25.00. This makes the HUD (ammo count, weapon, compass) come closer to the center of the screen. The HUD will not affect the line of sight with this setting.
Why is it important? Well, it solely helps the players get the information regarding the equipment and loadout faster. Instead of darting around the screen while in a gunfight, the player can check the stats fasters and does not have to look around at the corners of the screen.
Run this setting, and see how it helps the gameplay.
20. Minimap Shape: Square
This one is pretty obvious. Two options are available to the players regarding the shape of the minimap on the screen, circle, and square.
The problem with the circle is that it leaves out a huge chunk of the area and crucial information. Imagine calling a UAV and having a circular minimap, pathetic.
What you want to do, is set this to square. This will take the minimap to its maximum possible size and you can get the best out of the UAV you just called.
Audio
21. Audio Mix: Midnight Mode
Yes, we are talking about the audio settings. The more experienced players will tell you how important it is to hear the footsteps of the enemy players. There are various modes that you can choose from, but I recommend using Midnight Mode.
There are a couple of things that the midnight mode gives you. First of all, the dialogue sound is automatically reduced and muffled.
Secondly, the more quiet sounds in the game such as the most important, footsteps, are enhanced and amplified. If you are going up the stairs in that ATC tower to take out our beloved ATC camper, you will hear him moving around and panicking.
This is important information, as this will tell you exactly where the player is, and you can get a better angle on him.
Keyboard and Mouse - Movement
22. Slide Behaviour: Tap
You may have seen a lot of streamers and YouTubers online that are slide-canceling. This technique is used by almost everyone nowadays and is pretty effective as well.
Slide Cancelling means allows you to maintain your speed after sliding. Let’s say you are running at a tactical sprint. The game will bring you back to the normal speed after a few seconds of cooldown.
To avoid this, and to move faster across the map, you can use the slide cancel technique. You can avoid the cooldown timer that the game sets when your tactical sprint is running out.
To master this technique, you do need to practice, and when you do, you will see that your movement is faster than your enemies, giving you a slight edge in tight spots.
23. Parachute Auto-deploy: Disabled
You may think that it is a safe setting to have the parachute open up automatically. But the problem is that when this option is enabled, the parachute opens up way too early. If you are trying to drop just behind the enemy team, you really don’t want to hang in the air for a few seconds before you can shoot.
To counter that, and to be able to open the chute just before you hit the ground, you need two things. First, you need to disable this setting right now. And then you need some practice with landing and opening the chute.
Keyboard and Mouse - Killstreaks & Vehicles
24. Armour Plate Behaviour: Apply All
By default in the game, you can put on one single armor plate with the click of a button. But let’s just say that you have had a close call with someone and you don’t have any plates on. In this situation, you really don’t want to press the bound key 3 times to insert all the plates.
By setting this to Apply All, your player will insert all the plates one by one, and you don’t have to press the key again. You can easily cancel the application by shooting, reloading, or going ADS.
Keyboard and Mouse - Mouse
25. Mouse Sensitivity
You might note that I have not told you a specific value that you need to set this to. This is because, after years of gaming, you get muscle memory. The flicks and actions are embedded into the mind of the player over time.
What you need to do, is set this to a low setting. This allows for better recoil control of the gun, and better aim. If the aim feels too slow, turn this up a little bit. Keep doing this and vice versa until you are comfortable with the results.
This is one of the most important settings that will help improve your overall aim, and you will not have to adjust your aim a lot. Your mind will automatically aim for you.
