Activision has released the latest part in its Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Powered by the latest version of the IW Engine, it’s time to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 581.80, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.11.1 drivers.
Beenox has added more than 300 PC settings to tweak. There are graphics settings for lots of things. Moreover, the game supports Intel XeSS and AMD FSR 4.0. As I’ve already mentioned, there is also support for AMD FSR Redstone’s Ray Regeneration.
Beenox has also added a benchmark tool. However, this benchmark is only for the Multiplayer mode. So, it may not represent the performance of the Campaign. Because of that, I’ll be using the first level of the Campaign for our benchmarks.
COD: Black Ops 7 uses Ray Tracing to enhance its reflections. However, that RT setting is only available on Multiplayer and Zombies modes. It’s not available for the campaign. Those interested can find our DLSS 4 and Ray Tracing benchmarks here.
All our GPUs are able to run the game with over 60FPS at 1080p on Max Settings. Yup, even our dated NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti can push framerates over 75FPS at all times. However, Black Ops 7 is a game that greatly favours AMD’s hardware. As we can see, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT is faster than the NVIDIA RTX 5080, and it can almost match the performance of the NVIDIA RTX 4090. That’s crazy. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT is also significantly faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3080.
At 1440p/Max Settings, most of our GPUs can provide a smooth gaming experience. The only GPU that drops below 60FPS is the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti. The NVIDIA RTX 3080 and the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT are more than enough for gaming at 60FPS.
Finally, at Native 4K/Max Settings, our top five GPUs can provide framerates over 60FPS. The AMD Radeon RX 9070XT and the RX 7900XTX can beat the NVIDIA RTX 5080, even at 4K. On the other hand, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 manages to provide better performance than them. Still, I’m amazed at how fast the game runs on AMD’s hardware.
Graphics-wise, for a rasterized game, COD: Black Ops 7 looks great. It’s not as visually impressive as Battlefield 6. Still, this is a great-looking game. Well, at least for the most part. My biggest gripe with Black Ops 7 is its major pop-in issues. Grass blades will literally change in front of you. Shadows will also form relatively close to the player. There are also areas in which the textures look atrocious. Take this example from the second level. On the left, we have some really high-quality textures. And on the right, we have these awful textures. What’s funny here is that these shots are from the same area (it’s the starting area of the second level). I don’t know why there are textures that look this bad on Max Settings.
For those wondering, there aren’t any major stuttering issues. During my playthrough, I did not notice any at all. There might be some on rare occasions. For the most part, though, the game felt smooth and responsive. I also did not experience any stability or crash issues. Mouse movement is also exceptional, and everything felt great with the KB&M.
All in all, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will run great on a huge range of PC configurations. However, its presentation falls short of what you’d expect from a COD game. COD games used to look mind-blowing. Black Ops 7 does not. It will not “wow” you in any way, and it does not push the graphical boundaries of rasterized PC games. It looks great, but it also suffers from numerous graphical issues (like the awful pop-ins). But hey, at least its performance is amazing, so that’s a positive thing!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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