Call Of Duty (COD) Modern Warfare 2019 – Fix lag, FPS drops, crashing and stuttering [Updated 2020]

COD Modern Warfare lag fps drops crashing stuttering – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, not to be confused with Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare that was released in 2007, is a first-person shooter video game by Activision. You can call this a reboot of the Modern Warfare series with the COD MW 2019 being the sixteenth installment in the Call of Duty series.

The 2019 version of Modern Warfare takes a more realistic and modern approach. The single-player campaign will heavy rely on realism where the decisions you make will affect the end of each level. The game is set to take place in a realistic and modern environment. Players will have to make quick judgements based on the actions of the various NPCs and determine whether they are a threat or not. This feature is called threat assessment and this will determine your score and rank at the end of each round.

Now that the basic summary about the game is out of the way, lets talk about the performance of the game. It is obvious that Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 is a AAA title and most of the AAA titles this year have not been free from problems. Titles like Borderlands 3 had horrible performance issues during launch. People were complaining about lag, low frame rates, sudden fps drops, random crashes, freezes every 5 seconds, etc. It was a total mess. Unfortunately, COD MW 2019 too has some of those problems.

While players who are using high-end gaming rigs are not facing as many issues, low-medium end users are experiencing some good amount of problems. That is why we decided to come up with a basic lag fix guide that will show you some simple tweaks that you can try in order to fix the performance issues that you are having. Here is how to fix lag, fps drops, crashes and stuttering in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019.


Call Of Duty (COD) Modern Warfare 2019 – Fix lag, FPS drops, crashing and stuttering

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 1

Check the hardware specifications of your PC

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is a very demanding game so check the system requirements for the game and compare them with the specifications of your PC. Here are the system requirements of COD MW 2019:

Minimum
  • Experience : 1080p 30 FPS
  • GPU : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1650
  • CPU : i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
  • RAM : 8GB
  • HDD : 175GB free space
  • OS : Win 7 SP1 64-bit
Recommended
  • Experience : 1920×1080 60 FPS
  • GPU : GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1660
  • CPU : Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X
  • RAM : 12GB
  • HDD : 175GB free space
  • OS : Windows 10 64-bit
Recommended (W/ Ray Tracing)
  • Experience : 1080p 60 FPS with Ray Tracing
  • GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
  • CPU : Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X
  • RAM : 12GB
  • HDD : 175GB free space
  • OS : Windows 10 64-bit
High/Competitive
  • Experience : 1920×1080 144 FPS
  • GPU : GeForce GTX 1080 / RTX 2070 SUPER
  • CPU : i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 1800X
  • RAM : 16GB
  • HDD : 175GB free space
  • OS : Windows 10 64-bit
Ultra
  • Experience : 4K 60 FPS with Ray Tracing
  • GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
  • CPU : Intel i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 2700X
  • RAM : 16GB
  • HDD : 175GB free space
  • OS : Windows 10 64-bit

You can see that you need at least a GTX 1650 to run this game at only 1080p 30 fps at the lowest settings. You can pretty much imagine how demanding this title really is. Though the minimum CPU requirement given is an Intel i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300, I doubt that these processors would be able to even run this game. Then there is that whopping HDD free space requirement.

So always check the system requirements of the games first then go for the purchase. Especially for the ones that cost over $60. You might end up getting stuck with a game you cannot even run on your system. Not every launcher has a refund feature like Steam.

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 2

Download the latest graphics driver optimized for Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2019

If you didn’t know, both Nvidia and AMD have released their latest graphics card drivers bringing launch-day support for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019. You can download them from the links given below:

  1. Nvidia Drivers
  2. AMD Drivers

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 3

Best or Optimal Graphics Settings for Call Of Duty (COD) Modern Warfare 2019

We decide to fiddle with the in-game graphics settings of COD MW 2019 on our trusty medium end gaming PC. Here are the specifications of our game rig:

  • CPU : Intel i3 8100
  • GPU : MSI GTX 1050 ti 4 GB
  • RAM : 16GB DDR4 2400mhz
  • HDD : 1 TB 7200 rpm
  • Monitor Resolution : 1920×1080

Go to Options > Graphics

Display Mode : Fullscreen

Render Resolution : 100

Sync Every Frame (V-sync) : Disabled

Custom Framerate Limit : Disabled

Texture Resolution : Normal

Texture Filter Anisotropic : High

Particle Quality : High

Bullet Impacts : Disabled

Tessellation : Disabled

Shadow Map Resolution : Medium

Cache Spot Shadows : Enabled

Cache Sun Shadows : Enabled

Ambient Occlusion : GTAO

Particle Lighting : High

Anti-Aliasing : SMAA T2X

Filmic Strength : 0.00

Film Grain : 0.00

The frame rate were hovering over 55-60 most of time with drops to 45 at certain instances. But the experience was smooth for the most part. We tried single-player as well as multiplayer and the game ran fine in both modes.

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 4

For Nvidia Graphics card users

The first thing you should do is click on ‘Adjust image settings with preview‘ located on the left side under 3D settings and make sure that ‘Use the advanced 3D image settings‘ is selected. Now:

  • Open Nvidia Control Panel
  • Click on Manage 3D settings on the left bar
  • Click on the Program Settings tab
  • Locate Call of Duty Modern Warfare from the drop down menu under “Select a program to customize”
  • If you don’t see the game on the list then click on the Add button and another list will appear
  • If you still cannot spot the game then you need to add the .exe file manually.
  • Click on Browse
  • Locate the folder where you have installed the game
  • Select the executable file or the .exe file which in this case should be Modern Warfare Launcher.exe
  • Once you have successfully added the game, you will then see the program settings become available for the game
  • Now tweak the following settings:
    Threaded Optimization : On
    Power Management : Prefer Maximum Performance
    Low Latency Mode : Off
    Texture filtering – Quality : Performance

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 5

For AMD Graphics card users

Go to AMD Control Center or control panel.

  • Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
  • Anti-aliasing Method: Multi-sampling
  • 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

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 6

Update your OS if you are using Windows 10

If you are a Windows 10 user then you should definitely consider updating your OS. The recent Windows 10 updates have already caused loads of problems for a lot of AAA titles. The Windows 10 KB4512941 update that was released few days ago gave some serious trouble to gamers all over the world. From high CPU usage to constant stuttering while playing games or running heavy applications, people had to face everything.

Thankfully, Microsoft has already released an update that fixed the problem mentioned about. But who knows, there might still be some users who have not updated their Windows since then out of fear and are still facing performance issues. So check whether you have pending Windows updates or not and then update your OS. Here is how to do it:

  • Go to Settings
  • Go to Update & Security
  • Click on Check for updates
  • Wait for the updates to get installed
  • Restart your PC

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 7

Scan and repair

Battle.net launcher users have the feature to scan and repair a game available on the launcher. Same goes with COD MW 2019. This feature will verify the in-game files of the game and download the missing ones. Here is how to do it:

  • Launch Battle.net
  • Select Call of Duty : MW from the left side bar
  • Click on Options
  • Select Scan and Repair
  • Wait for the process to be done
  • Restart the launcher

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 8

Use Windows Game Mode

If you are a Windows 10 user then you are probably already aware of the Game Mode feature in Windows 10. What Game mode does is it prevents Windows Update from performing driver installations and sending restart notifications and it also helps your system towards achieving more stable frame rates depending on the specific game and system. Here is how to turn on Game Mode:

  • Press the Start button
  • Click on Settings
  • Select Gaming
  • Now select Game Mode for the side bar
  • Turn Game Mode On

How to fix lag, fps drops, crashing and stuttering – Step 9

Avoid GPU overclocking to fix crashes

If by any chance you are witnessing random crashes and freezes in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 then chances are it is being caused by an overclocking application or utility running in the background. A lot of games have been suffering from crashes lately due to applications like MSI Afterburner or Zotac firestorm. So it is best to stay on the safe side and run your graphics card on default speeds.


These are all the steps or methods that you can follow in order to fix performance issues like lag, low frame rates, etc. One thing to keep in mind, none of these methods are advanced and are pretty basic. There is no guarantee that these steps will fix your problem 100%. If the problem you are facing is a serious one then the best option would be contacting the support.

If you think this guide had helped you then let us know in the comment section below. Also, If you are facing problems that are not mentioned on this article then also you can comment below. We will try come out with a fix. Good luck!


That’s all folks!

Last Updated on July 4, 2020