Warzone 2 stuttering and fps drop – This optimization or performance guide will help eradicate performance issues like stuttering and fps drops that are currently present in the PC version of Warzone 2.
I don’t think there is a doubt regarding the fact that Warzone 2 is an AAA Battle Royale title, and most of the AAA titles released till now on PC have had extreme performance issues.
Warzone 1 has performance issues during release as well. In fact, I remember it being quite horrible. It took the devs many months to optimize it for low-end PCs. The problem with Warzone 2 is even worse. This time both low-end GPU users are high end GPU users are constantly facing performance issues like random stutters, freezing, and fps drops.
That is why I decided to form a basic performance 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 fps drops and stuttering in Warzone 2.0.
Fix Warzone 2 Stuttering and FPS Drops
First, look at the minimum and recommended requirements of Warzone 2:
Download the Drivers Optimized for Warzone 2
For Nvidia users, the recommended GameReady Driver version is 526.86. You can find the links below:
For AMD users, the recommended Driver version is Adrenaline 22.11.1. You can find the links below:
If they end up causing you trouble, download the previous driver versions recommended by IW:
- Game Ready Driver version 516.59.
- AMD Adrenaline 22.9.1.
Make sure you are using Settings that are best suited for your GPU
To get rid of the stutters and fps drops, you can obviously go ahead and set everything to low. But, where is the fun in that?
- Render Resolution: 100
- Upscaling or Sharpening: FidelityFX CA
- Anti-aliasing: Filmic SMAA T2X
- Anti-Aliasing Quality: Low
- Video Memory Scale: 85
- Texture Resolution: Low
- Texture Filter Anisotropic: High
- Nearby Level of Detail: Low
- Distant Level of Detail: Low
- Clutter Draw Distance: Short
- Particle Quality: High
- Particle Quality Level: Low
- Bullet Impact and Sprays: Low
- Shader Quality: Low
If you want a detailed guide on the settings, I have made a Guide for this. You can check it out, as it will probably help you make a better decision with your settings.
Close all Demanding background applications and services
Check whether you have useless applications running in the background or not. You can also decide which applications you want to start automatically when you boot your system and prevent the useless ones from starting.
- Launch your Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del.
- Click on the Startup tab.
- Keep the essential applications, Enabled.
- Disable the rest
Disable Windows Background Recording or Nvidia Instant Replay
If you do not have a powerful processor and at least 16 GB RAM. Which a lot of Gaming Laptops still don’t. Then I suggest you turn off features like Nvidia Instant Replay or the Windows Background Recording. These both do the same job and might cause unnecessary stuttering in demanding titles.
You need to disable the Xbox Game Bar and Game Mode too.
Windows Background Recording:
- Go to your Windows 10 settings menu.
- Select Gaming.
- Select Captures from the left.
- Turn off Background Recording from there.
Nvidia Instant Replay:
- Press Alt+Z [You obviously have Nvidia in-game overlay enabled if you are using instant replay].
- Click on the Instant Replay block.
- Turn it off from there.
Tweak the Discord settings properly
Judging from the fact that Warzone 2 is a Battle Royale title, it is pretty obvious that a lot of you will be playing it with your friends.
Since Discord is the most commonly used application for communication on PCs. I would recommend that you make a few tweaks to stop Discord from reducing the performance of your system.
In that case, Here is what you need to do:
- Open Discord.
- Click on the ‘User Settings’ button in the app’s bottom-left corner.
- Go to User Settings.
- Select ‘Voice & Video’ from the left sidebar.
- Scroll down to the Advanced section.
- Turn off ‘OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.’
- Turn off ‘H.264 Hardware Acceleration.
- Scroll down further.
- Disable ‘Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority’.
- Select ‘Advanced’ from the left sidebar.
- Disable ‘Hardware Acceleration.
- Click on ‘Game Overlay’ from the sidebar.
- Disable ‘Enable in-game overlay.’
- Restart Discord
Make sure that you are not using a ton of overlays
Believe it or not, overlays are services that can consume a lot of resources if not kept under check. Warzone already eats a ton of RAM. Almost close to 16 GB, at 1440p, on low settings.
Before you start playing Warzone 2, close all the different overlays you have enabled on your system. That includes:
- Steam
- Discord
- Nvidia GeForce Experience
- AMD Adrenalin Overlay
- Razer
- Logitech
Overlays are known to cause stutters in many games. So try to avoid them if your system is not high-powered.
Warzone 2 NVIDIA Settings
You should first 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.
- Select the ‘Program Settings’ tab.
- Click on the ‘Add’ button
- Select Call of Duty HQ from the list.
- Now tweak the following settings:
- Low Latency Mode: Off
- OpenGL rendering GPU: Select your Dedicated GPU
- Power Management Mode: Prefer Maximum Performance
- Texture filtering – Quality: Performance
- Threaded Optimization: On
- Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 2
Warzone 2 AMD Settings
Click on the ‘Settings’ button in the app’s top-right corner, and click on the ‘Graphics’ tab.
- Radeon Anti-Lag: Disabled
- Radeon Chill: Disabled
- Radeon Boost: Disabled
- Radeon Image Sharpening: Off
- Radeon Enhanced Sync: Disabled
- Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off, unless the application specifies
Click on ‘Advanced’.
- Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled
- Anti-Aliasing: Use Application settings
- Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
- Morphological Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
- Anisotropic Filtering: Disabled
- Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
- Surface Format Optimization: Enabled
- Tessellation Mode: Use application settings
- OpenGL Triple Buffering: Disabled
- 10-Bit Pixel Format: Disabled
Now, click on the ‘Preferences’ tab, and uncheck everything.
Make sure you are using the right GPU (For Nvidia Laptop users)
If your laptop features an Nvidia graphics card inside, then you need to make sure your laptop is using that instead of the low-powered integrated one.
- Just open Nvidia Control Panel
- Click on Manage 3D settings located on the left side
- Select the Program Settings tab
- Under “Select a program to customize” select Call of Duty HQ
- If it is not there, then click on Add and then select it
- Now set “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program” to “High-performance NVIDIA processor”
I wrote exactly what I followed myself. Every single method mentioned above has been tested by multiple users over the years. Some methods have been used since the launch of Warzone. They were impactful then, and they are impactful even now.
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 issue you are facing is serious, then the best option would be to contact Activision support. I suggest you look at the official Warzone 2 Reddit, or the Warzone 2 Steam discussions page. You will find a lot of players discussing these exact same issues.
If you think this guide has helped, then let us know in the comment section below. And for more Warzone 2 guides, keep an eye on Frondtech. We will be covering every single technical issue and bug of the game. Good luck!
That’s all, folks!
Last Updated on April 12, 2023
Shoaib, 30, is a simple guy who loves to play video games, and enjoys new cuisines sporadically. He has been gaming since he was 7 years old, and with an experience of 22 years, under his belt, there is not a single AAA game in this world, that he hasn’t played. Despite being a MBA Graduate he decided to follow his passion. And because of his love for gaming, Frondtech came into existence.