How to Fix Lag & High Latency in Call of Duty Vanguard (Season 3)

Last Updated on April 27, 2022

It is that time of the year when a new Call of Duty title comes out, this time it is called Vanguard. The game focuses mostly on old-age weapons, a big switch up from the last game Cold War. When the game came out during the closed beta, it was such a mess up the textures felt blurry, and gunplay was very awkward. But seems like they’ve fixed all of that with the official release.

Well, no AAA title is free from problems nowadays. Given how big of a difference is there in every single computer. Problems are sure to arise, but you don’t have to worry. But you can be sure that these things will be taken care of as the developers are very active on both social media and forums such as Reddit.

Update: Season 3 just dropped, and users have again started reporting issues such as keyboard/mouse lag, low FPS, and frustration with the game. We’ve updated a few sections in this article, we have also added a Windows 11 section.

Enough about the game, let’s find out what exactly is causing the problems and how we can fix them.


Fix High Latency or Network Lag in Call of Duty Vanguard

First things first, you have to figure out what is causing the lag. The lag can be due to low-end hardware, wrong settings, or network issues (which was my case).

Update: We’ve figured out a fix for the High Latency issue. Just go to your game settings > Graphics and disable “On-demand Texture Streaming”. After doing this, restart your game and your problem should be fixed.

Fixing the network problems is really straightforward. Just fix your connection, that’s it. I know this sounds wrong, but that is how simple it is. Let’s checkmark a few things to make sure everything is okay from your end:

  • Make sure there are no bandwidth eating apps running on your computer
  • Connect directly via an ethernet cable
  • Disable Wifi for a while and check whether performance improves
  • Check your ping
  • Restart your router

These are a few things that you can look into if you are facing network-related lag.

For Performance-related issues, please continue reading the article:


Fix Call of Duty Vanguard Lag

Here are a few basic tweaks that you can apply to improve your gaming performance:

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 “COD Vanguard”, 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 its 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.

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.


Disable Discord in-game overlay

If you are using Discord like me, then I’d recommend you 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.

Turn off Game Mode & Game Bar (Win 10)

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, 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, Nvidia’s Shadowplay is better for capturing game clips.

  • 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.

Fix COD Vanguard Lagging in Windows 11

These steps are specific to Windows 11 users.

Disable Core-Isolation on Windows 11

Core Isolation is a new feature built-in Windows 11 that protects your PC from untrusted applications and drivers. The tradeoff is obviously the performance. But this is not going to be an issue for anyone that doesn’t download anything from untrusted sites.

Here’s how you can disable it:

  • Click on Start Menu button and select settings
  • Click Privacy and Security > Windows Security > Device Security
  • Here you will find Core Isolation, click on Core isolation details
  • On the next screen, you will find a radio button for “Memory Integrity”, just turn it off.

You’ve successfully disabled VBS on Windows 11. Many users on Reddit have reported this to significantly improve performance for many games. We’re talking about improvements of about 20-30 fps straightaway.

Enable Game Mode

We’ve noticed huge improvements in the Game Mode in Windows 11. For Windows 10, we suggest disabling both Game mode and game bar, whereas this option should be enabled on Windows 11.

To Enable: Just type game mode in search and enable it.

Use Compatibility Settings

Of course, not all the titles are optimized for the new operating system yet. This should change soon. Until then you can use Windows’s inbuilt compatibility setting. To do so:

  • Right click on the app’s exe file
  • Go to properties > Compatibility
  • Under Compatibility mode, select “Windows 10”
  • Also click on “disable fullscreen optimizations” checkbox
  • Click Apply and close the box.

One more thing suggested by Reddit users is doing a clean Windows 11 install, rather than upgrading it from Win 10. Also, DX12 optimized games are getting benefited while older ones are taking a hit.

Note: Make sure to follow the tips given before the Windows 11 section, some of them also apply to the newer operating system.

That’s all for fixing performance and network-related issues in Call of Duty: Vanguard. Hope this helped you out.

Photo of author

Written by Vikas

Hey, I am Vikas. I've had a longstanding passion for computing and gaming for over a decade now. With a computer science degree under my belt sparking my initial interest in the industry from a young age, you'll often find me immersed for hours in the latest PC titles, especially enjoying multiplayer online games, while also enjoying sharing my insights and reviews. My work has been featured on IGN, Kotaku, MSN and Forbes to name a few. In my spare time, I read books and play with my cats. You can read more about me here. My favorite games are Destiny 2, Warframe, COD Cold War, and Minecraft.

Share on:

5 thoughts on “How to Fix Lag & High Latency in Call of Duty Vanguard (Season 3)”

  1. This is for PC users mostly. What you DID address about xbox settings I did, and still can’t ping in under 110! Never had problems until Vanguard came along. I guess you can’t just go out and buy a gaming console and take it home, plug it in and turn it on and have fun anymore. You have to be a PC wiz to do it. My xbox one is becoming a VERY expensive paper weight and I’ll never buy one again.

    Reply
    • Exactly the same issue as me. I love how when I contact Activision, they say it’s on my end OR an Xbox live issue. I literally have low Ping on everything else. Only with Vanguard. Smh

      Reply
  2. Same problem here, I’ve played all the cod games and never had a problem unit I started playing vanguard!
    Totally rediculous!

    Reply
  3. The latency issue is so bad in vanguard my soldier keeps flying up and into the air about every 30 seconds then drops back to the ground. This is absolutely absurd!

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.