Best PC Settings for MW3

Part of enjoying a game to its fullest is optimizing your settings to ensure smooth gameplay and stellar graphics. Here’s a complete list of the best PC settings for MW3 to balance high FPS, great graphics, and improved visibility.

Best PC Settings for Modern Warfare 3

The exact settings you’ll choose while playing Modern Warfare 3 will depend heavily on your system, whether you’re prioritizing graphics or FPS, and personal preferences for aspects like brightness, field of view, and other miscellaneous settings.

With that said, let’s get into the best PC settings for MW3.

Best MW3 Display Settings

• Display Mode: Fullscreen Exclusive
• Display Monitor: Your main monitor
• Display Adapter: Your graphics card
• Screen Refresh Rate: Your monitor’s maximum refresh rate
• Display Resolution: Your monitor’s resolution
• Aspect Ratio: Automatic
• V-Sync: Off
• Custom Frame Rate Limit: Unlimited
• Display Gamma: 2.2 (SRGB)
• Brightness: Your choice, depending on your preference and default screen brightness
• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: On
• HDR: Off

Best MW3 Quality Settings (Low-End)

• Quality Presets: Custom
• Render Resolution: 100
• Dynamic Resolution: Off
• Upscaling/Sharpening: FidelityFX CAS
• VRAM Scale Target: 80
• Variable Rate Shading: On
• Texture Resolution: Low
• Texture Filter Anisotropic: Normal
• Depth of Field: Off
• Detail Quality Level: Low
• Particle Resolution: Low
• Bullet Impacts: On
• Persistent Effects: Off
• Shader Quality: Low
• On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off
• Local Texture Streaming Quality: Low
• Shadow Quality: Low
• Screen Space Shadows: Low
• Ambient Occlusion: Off
• Screen Space Reflections: Off
• Static Reflection Quality: Low
• Tessellation: Near
• Terrain Memory: Medium
• Volumetric Quality: Low
• Deferred Physics Quality: Off
• Weather Grid Volumes: Low
• Water Quality: Default

Best MW3 Quality Settings (High-End System)

• Quality Presets: Custom
• Render Resolution: 100
• Dynamic Resolution: Off
• Upscaling/Sharpening: FidelityFX CAS
• VRAM Scale Target: 80
• Variable Rate Shading: On
• Texture Resolution: Low
• Texture Filter Anisotropic: Normal
• Depth of Field: Off
• Detail Quality Level: High
• Particle Resolution: Normal
• Bullet Impacts: On
• Persistent Effects: Off
• Shader Quality: Medium
• On-Demand Texture Streaming: Off
• Local Texture Streaming Quality: Low
• Shadow Quality: Normal
• Screen Space Shadows: Low
• Ambient Occlusion: Both
• Screen Space Reflections: Off
• Static Reflection Quality: High
• Tessellation: Near
• Terrain Memory: Medium
• Volumetric Quality: Medium
• Deferred Physics Quality: Low
• Weather Grid Volumes: Normal
• Water Quality: Water Caustics

Best MW3 View Settings

• Field of View: 105 (depends on personal preference)
• ADS Field of View: Affected
• Weapon Field of View: Wide
• Vehicle Field of View: Wide
• World Motion Blur: Off
• Weapon Motion Blur: Off
• Film Grain: Zero
• 1st Person Camera Movement: Least (50%)
• 3rd Person Camera Movement: Least (50%)
• Inverted Flashbang: Off

Modern Warfare 3 Minimum and Recommended PC System Requirements

If you’re experiencing suboptimal performance despite changing your settings, you may not meet the game’s system requirements. Below is the complete list of MW3’s minimum, recommended, and 4K system requirements:

MW3 Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update)
• CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
• RAM: 8 GB
• Storage Space: SSD with 149 GB available space at launch (78 GB with COD HQ and Warzone already installed)
• Hi-Rez Assets Cache: Up to 32 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 470
• Video Memory: 2 GB

MW3 Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update) or Windows 11 64 Bit (latest update)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
• RAM: 16 GB
• Storage Space: SSD with 149 GB available space at launch (78 GB with COD HQ and Warzone already installed)
• Hi-Rez Assets Cache: Up to 32 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti / RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600XT
• Video Memory: 8 GB

MW3 Competitive / 4K Ultra System Requirements

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update) or Windows 11 64 Bit (latest update)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
• RAM: 16 GB
• Storage Space: SSD with 149 GB available space at launch (78 GB with COD HQ and Warzone already installed)
• Hi-Rez Assets Cache: Up to 64 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 / RTX 4070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800XT
• Video Memory: 10 GB

Are you interested in diving deeper into MW3? Check out whether Modern Warfare 3 Zombies has PvP, or click the game tag below to browse our growing article collection.