Last Updated on June 29, 2021
Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War – Fix Lag and FPS Drops: COD BOCW is yet another hit title from Activision. The game has finally released the users have started facing the Fatal Error. In today’s article, we will find out how to get rid of this issue.
Similar to every AAA title, Black Ops Cold War also suffers from performance-related issues. People have started complaining about the same on the forums and Reddit threads. Developers are actively looking into the issues and should be pushing out patches to fix them shortly. Until then, you can use this article to fix your problems for a while.
So far we’ve encountered issues related to compiling shaders, fatal errors, safe mode, freezing and stuttering, check out the guides for fixing them. Let’s move on to fixing Lagging and FPS Drop in Black Ops Cold War.
How To Fix Lag in Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War System Requirements
Below are the requirements:
Minimum:
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-bit (v.1803 or higher)
- CPU: Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD 7950
- RAM: 8GB
- HDD: 50GB (multiplayer-only) or 175GB (all game modes), at launch
Recommended:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1660 Super or AMD Radeon R9 390 / RX 580
- RAM: 12GB
- HDD: 175GB, at launch
- Video preset: Medium
Recommended for 60FPS (Ray-tracing enabled):
- CPU: Intel i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 1800X
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
- RAM: 16GB
- HDD: 175GB, at launch
- Video preset: Medium
As you might have figured out already, the game isn’t exactly light and won’t run well on computers with mediocre hardware. In order to run it well in all game modes, you need at least 1660TI to be able to run Cold War on Medium Settings. However, users only looking to get into multiplayer shouldn’t worry much as multiplayer gameplay is better at low settings (look at pro settings).
Enough about the game and the requirements, let’s find out how to fix issues related to lagging and FPS Drops:
Change Graphic Card Settings
Below are the settings for AMD and Nvidia graphics card users, apply these settings for the best performance.
For Nvidia Users
- Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel
- Click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings
- Find “Yakuza Like a Dragon”, you can manually add the game if it’s not in the list
- Now, make the following changes:
Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
Threaded optimization: On
Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering – Quality: Performance
For AMD Users
- Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
- Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
- 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
These settings should be good enough for you. Try tweaking a bit with the priority of the application, this also tends to give a little FPS boost.
Update Device Drivers
Whenever a new game makes it’s arrival, especially when it’s a AAA title, Nvidia is known for pushing their optimized updates for the best performance with their graphic cards. I am not sure about AMD because I’ve never used an AMD card. Below are the links for downloading the latest drivers.
Since this is a AAA title, I am sure Nvidia will be pushing an update with compatibility for this game. Make sure to keep an eye on your device driver updates.
COD Black Ops Cold War 2020 Lagging Fix
Another thing to check is, open up the task manager and check your memory and disk usage. Close all applications (non-windows) that are eating your memory and using disk drive. If you are still stuttering with everything looking fine then you should probably wait for the hotfix update, which should be pushed out shortly.
These problems are mostly caused due to high disk usage and can be fixed immediately by moving the game to SSD or closing apps that are using “disk”.
Disable Full-Screen Optimization & High DPI in Windows 10
Full-screen optimization and DPI settings come pre-configured with Windows 10. These are known for causing trouble with games leading to several issues. To disable:
- Locate the game installation
- Find the .exe file of the game
- Right-click > Properties > Compatibility Tab
- Tick the “Disable Full-Screen Optimizations” tab
- Now, click the “Change high DPI settings” button
- Tick “Override high DPI scaling behavior” and select “Application” from the drop-down menu
- Save Settings.
Tone Down Game Settings
The general rule of thumb for every game is if you are lagging it is always recommended to tone down the settings. Play around a little bit with the settings, turn down shadows and textures, this should help.
Turn off Game Mode
Windows says that the Game mode helps in optimizing all-around windows processes, windows updates and other windows related stuff while running games if you have the game mode enabled. But this isn’t factually true, the game bar has been known for causing issues related to FPS. So it’s better to turn it off if you are not using it.
- Click Start > Settings > Gaming
- On the Game Bar, set “Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game bar” to off.
- Now head to the Captures tab set the “Record the background while I’m playing a game” to Off.
- Lastly, click on the Game Mode tab, and turn it off.
P.S. Nvidia’s Shadowplay is better for capturing game clips.
Update Windows
The recent couple updates were weird and broke a lot of games, to fix those issues, Windows has already pushed out hotfixes and you can download them right away. If you are running an older version of Windows, I’d recommend you to download the updated version.
There was also an update that caused windows to use up a lot of RAM for its search bar’s function called Cortana. This also has been fixed, you just have to update.
Disable Discord in-game overlay
If you are using Discord like me, then I’d recommend you to change a few things. One such thing is, discord overlay, it’s not really something you need at all times. I use a two-monitor setup, so the overlay is useless for me. It is known for causing FPS related issues.
Disable Hardware Acceleration in Discord
- Open Discord
- Click on User Settings > Appearance
- Click on the Hardware Acceleration radio, this will turn it off.
Disable Discord in-game Overlay
- Open Discord
- Go to Overlay under App Settings
- Click on the “Enable in-game overlay”, this will turn it off.
Increase Game Priority
This is an old-school method of boosting FPS in certain games, this only affects the CPU relying Games.
- Press CTLR + Shift + ESC to open task manager
- Find COD Black Ops Cold War and right-click > go to details
- Now right-click on the process’s .exe file and set priority to “high”.
This will prioritize your game over other windows applications and provide you with a little boost.
COD Black Ops Cold War Lagging Fix
Disable Overclocking
For me the culprit was my overclocked GPU, I went ahead and disabled MSI Afterburner, changed all the settings to stock and my game went running smoothly.
The game is also lagging a lot on RTX 2060, I was only getting 50 FPS with Highest settings. The game system requirements have GeForce GTX 1060 as recommended but still, there are multiple issues. Also, the game currently looks blurry with jagged edges all around.
That’s how you can take care of the lagging and FPS drops related issues for the time being. I will be updating this article as I find more information.
