How to Fix Stuttering and Performance Issues in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on PC

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a successful launch and players were quite content with the game’s performance on all platforms. However, the Season 3 and Season 3 Reloaded updates started causing a lot of issues for players. While Infinity Ward has deployed a few patches to address the issues, some players are still affected by the performance problems on PC. Here is a rundown of fixes that you can try to resolve stuttering and performance issues in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on PC.

How to fix stuttering in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 

First of all, make sure that your settings are optimized for the game. Here is a rundown of our recommended settings if you are looking to optimize your framerates.

Display Settings

• Display Mode: Fullscreen Exclusive

• Display Monitor: Your primary gaming monitor

• Display Adaptor: Your graphics card

• Screen Refresh Rate: Refresh rate of your monitor (e.g. 144)

• Display Resolution: Your monitor’s resolution (e.g 1920×1080)

• Dynamic Resolution: Off

• Aspect Ratio: Automatic

• V-Sync (Gameplay): Off

• V-Sync (Menus): Off

• Custom Framerate Limit: Custom

  • Gameplay Custom Framerate Limit: Your monitor’s refresh rate (e.g 144)

  • Menu Custom Framerate Limit: 60

  • Minimized Game Custom Framerate Limit: 15

• Display Gamma: 2.2 (sRGB)

• Brightness: 55

• Focused Mode: Off

High Dynamic Range

• High Dynamic Range (HDR): Off

Global Quality

• Quality Presets: Custom

• Render Resolution: 100

• Upscaling / Sharpening: Fidelity CAS

  • AMD Fideltity CAS Strength: 75

• Anti-Aliasing: Filmic SMAA T2X

• Anti-Aliasing Quality: Low

• Video Memory Scale: 90

Details & Textures

• Texture Resolution: Low

• Texture Filter Anisotropic: High

• Nearby Level of Detail: Low 

• Distant Level of Detail: Low

• Particle Quality: High

• Bullet Impacts & Sprays: On

• Shader Quality: Medium

• Tessellation: Off

• On-Demand Texture Streaming: On – You can turn this off if you’re experiencing packet burst

• Streaming Quality: Normal

• Volumetric Quality: Low

• Deferred Physics Quality: Off

• Water Caustics: Off

Shadow & Lighting

• Shadow Map Resolution: Low

• Screen Space Shadows: Off

• Spot Shadow Quality: Medium

• Spot Cache: High

• Particle Lighting: Normal

• Ambient Occlusion: Off

Post Processing Effects

• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: On + Boost

• Depth of Field: Off

• World Motion Blur: Off

• Weapon Motion Blur: Off

• Film Grain: 0.00

View

• Field of View: 100

• ADS Field of View: Affected

• Weapon Field of View: Wide

• 3rd Person Field of View: 90

• Vehicle Field of View: Default

• 1st Person Camera Movement: 100

• 3rd Person Camera Movement: 100

• 3rd Person ADS Transition: 3rd Person ADS

• Default Spectator Camera: Game Perspective

If you are still facing issues, you can try out a fix that was discovered by the community: 

1. Go to Documents

2. Navigate to Call of Duty > players 

3. Right-click on options.3.3cod22.cst

4. Open the file with Notepad

5. Locate the “RenderWorkerCount” setting

6. You should change the value to half of your CPU threads (We will explain this in detail below)

7. Save the file

When editing the file in Notepad, you want to set the RenderWorkerCount to half the number of CPU threads you have. For example, if you have a Ryzen 5600X CPU with six cores and 12 threads, you want to set the RenderWorkerCount to 6.

If you don’t know how to find the number of threads your CPU has, simply head to the Task Manager, click on performance and check the CPU tab. It will display the name of your CPU and you can Google the number of threads you have.

Once you edit the file, you should no longer face the micro stutters and performance issues in Modern Warfare 2. If the issues persist and you meet the system requirements of the game, there is not much you can do. Infinity Ward is working on the performance issues that players have been experiencing lately and you need to wait for a fix.