Modern Warfare 4: Best PC Settings and System Specs

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives on PC on October 23, with Campaign Early Access opening October 16 for anyone who has digitally pre-ordered. Activision and PC lead developer Beenox published the full official requirements alongside a dedicated PC trailer and tech breakdown on September 29, and it is worth reading closely: this is a three-tier spec sheet with a hard security requirement that will stop the game from launching at all if you skip it. Here is every setting and system check worth making before you install.

01Know Your Tier: Minimum, Recommended and Ray Tracing Specs

Modern Warfare 4 ships with three official spec tiers instead of the usual two, and all three ask for an SSD with 115 GB free at launch (Activision notes that mandatory updates can push that figure higher).

• Minimum: Windows 10 64-bit, AMD Ryzen 5 1400 or Intel Core i5-6600, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 470 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or 1060 / Intel Arc A580 with 3 GB of video memory.
• Recommended (90 FPS in multiplayer on High settings): Windows 11 64-bit, AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7-8700, 16 GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti / Intel Arc B580 with 8 GB of video memory.
• Ray Tracing (High quality, 4K upscaled): Windows 11 64-bit, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel Core i7-10700K, 32 GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti with 16 GB of video memory.

Every tier also calls for DirectX 12 compatibility, a broadband connection, and an Intel or AMD processor with the AVX instruction set — older CPUs without AVX support are not compatible at all, regardless of clock speed.

02TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot Are Not Optional

The single most important line in the requirements has nothing to do with your graphics card: TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are mandatory for every PC player, and the game will not start without both enabled. They back the hardware-based protections inside RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, alongside server-side detection and account security measures like two-factor authentication. Most PCs built in the past several years already support both, but they are frequently switched off by default in the BIOS or UEFI menu, so this is worth confirming well before launch night rather than discovering it on October 16. Activision's support site has a walkthrough for enabling both manually if your motherboard has them disabled.

If you are not sure whether your rig clears every one of these bars, a deeper rundown of drivers, storage and TPM prep walks through the same checklist from a hardware-first angle, which is useful if you have not touched your BIOS settings in a while.

03Grab the Recommended Graphics Driver

Activision is publishing specific driver versions to pair with launch: AMD 26.7.1, Intel 32.0.101.8974, and NVIDIA 616.56, with a separate NVIDIA driver built for Advanced Shader Delivery compatibility landing October 21, just before full release. Installing the current driver for your card now avoids a last-minute update fighting for bandwidth with the 115 GB game install on launch day. Intel Arc owners also need Resizable BAR enabled in the BIOS, since Arc GPUs will not meet spec without it.

04Choosing an Upscaler: DLSS 4.5, FSR Redstone and XeSS 3

PC players get four upscaling and frame-generation options rather than being locked to whichever vendor made their card. NVIDIA GeForce RTX owners can run DLSS 4.5, AMD Radeon owners get AMD FSR Redstone, and Intel Arc owners can use Intel XeSS 3; all three use a trained model to reconstruct a lower-rendered frame into a sharper, higher-resolution output, and all three are supported across Campaign, Multiplayer and DMZ. Filmic SMAA T2X remains available as the default post-process anti-aliasing pass for anyone who would rather render at native resolution. The game is built to run ray tracing in every mode for PCs that clear the Ray Tracing spec tier, so turning it on does not require a special settings menu buried in an options submenu — it is a toggle available wherever you already play.

05Enhanced FOV, HDR10+ and the New Visibility Settings

Infinity Ward and Beenox also reworked several visibility settings specifically for PC. Enhanced FOV is a PC-exclusive option that uses physically accurate lens effects to widen your peripheral awareness near the edges of the monitor without changing the field of view at the center of the screen — useful if you like a tighter center FOV for aiming but still want situational awareness at the edges. Players on an HDR10+ display get real-time contrast and lighting adjustments tied to the screen's own brightness, cutting down on the need to hand-tune brightness sliders. Beyond those two, expect a new global sharpness slider that works with any upscaler, a reworked shading-quality option, and separate Screen Space Reflections and Shadow Filtering Quality settings for players chasing specific frame-time budgets. Depth of Field is also split into two independent settings — World Depth of Field and Weapon Depth of Field — so you can keep the environment sharp while still getting a realistic blur when aiming down sights.

06Input Devices, Mouse Polling and Display Support

Beenox is also pitching Modern Warfare 4 as a PC-first experience for anyone coming from a mix of input devices rather than just mouse-and-keyboard veterans. The game adds sub-frame mouse polling, which samples mouse movement more frequently than the render frame rate so aim tracking stays precise even at lower FPS, alongside broader support for a wider range of controllers and peripherals out of the box. On the display side, Modern Warfare 4 is built to scale from 4K down to 1440p and 1080p, and from standard 16:9 panels up to Ultrawide monitors, with the engine adjusting UI layout and field of view automatically rather than leaving players to stretch or letterbox a 21:9 or 32:9 screen. If you play on an Ultrawide setup, the official PC trailer below was specifically cut in Ultrawide and HDR to show how the extra horizontal space is used in practice.

Weapon handling got a PC-relevant settings pass too. Bullets now fire based on a weapon's actual barrel position rather than landing randomly within a cone, which Infinity Ward is calling Weapon Bloom, and you can attach a Laser Attachment to read exactly where those shots are headed in both hipfire and ADS. Muzzle flash effects are also dynamically masked at your point of aim through Weapon VFX Masking, so the visual noise of rapid fire does not bury the target you are tracking — a detail worth knowing if you were planning to turn off motion blur or reduce particle density for competitive clarity, since this replaces some of the strain that used to fall on those sliders.

07The Built-In Benchmark Tool

Rather than guessing at settings, Modern Warfare 4 ships with a built-in Benchmark Tool that runs a simulated multiplayer sequence and reports Average FPS, CPU and GPU load, ping, and input latency in real time. After the run finishes, it breaks results down by map zone and suggests specific settings to adjust in the zones where your system struggled most. Run it once after a clean driver install and once more after you have settled on an upscaler, since the before-and-after comparison is the fastest way to tell whether a setting change is actually helping on your specific hardware rather than just looking better on paper.

08Preloading and Advanced Shader Delivery

Players who pre-purchase digitally on PC can preload the game starting October 15 at 9 AM PT, ahead of Campaign Early Access opening the next day. Modern Warfare 4 also introduces Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD), the renamed and expanded version of the old Shader Preloading system, which compiles shaders ahead of time to cut down on the stutter that normally hits a Call of Duty game in its first few sessions. Installing the Xbox PC app ahead of launch — even if you are buying through Steam or Battle.net — is required to get the full benefit of ASD, since that is where the precompiled shaders get delivered during install and through later updates. Combine that with the driver update above and most of the first-boot stutter should already be handled before you ever load into a match.

Getting Modern Warfare 4 Ready on PC

1. 1Open your motherboard's BIOS/UEFI menu and confirm TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are both switched on — Modern Warfare 4 will not launch without them.5 min
2. 2Compare your CPU, GPU and RAM against Activision's Minimum, Recommended and Ray Tracing tiers to see which settings tier you're actually aiming for.5 min
3. 3Free up at least 115 GB on an SSD — Activision warns mandatory updates can push that figure higher after launch.10 min
4. 4Update to AMD 26.7.1, NVIDIA 616.56, or Intel 32.0.101.8974 depending on your GPU vendor before installing the game.10 min
5. 5Download the Xbox PC app even if you're buying on Steam or Battle.net, since it's required to receive precompiled shaders through Advanced Shader Delivery.5 min
6. 6Digital pre-orders can start preloading at 9 AM PT on October 15, a day before Campaign Early Access opens.varies
7. 7Choose DLSS 4.5, FSR Redstone or XeSS 3 based on your GPU, then run the built-in Benchmark Tool for real FPS, latency and per-zone setting suggestions.10 min

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 | Official PC Trailer in Ultrawide & HDR, uploaded to the Call of Duty YouTube channel September 29, 2026.