We don’t usually dedicate PC Performance Analysis articles to remasters of older games, however Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered deserves such an article. Instead of simply adding numerous lighting/special effects – like Bethesda did in the Special Edition of Skyrim – Raven Software updated all character models, used new materials and textures, upgraded the game’s lighting system and implemented modern-day graphical techniques in order to improve the game’s overall presentation. So, and despite the fact that Activision declined sending us a review code, it’s time now to see how this title performs on the PC platform.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i7 4930K (turbo boosted at 4.2Ghz) with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti and GTX690, Windows 10 64-bit and the latest WHQL version of the GeForce drivers. NVIDIA has already included an SLI profile for this title, meaning that PC gamers won’t have to mess around with third-party tools – such as the NVIDIA Inspector Tool – in order to enable it.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered is powered by the latest version of the Infinity Ward Engine, and appears to be scaling well on multiple CPU cores. As we can see below, the game scaled wonderfully on our hexa-core. Despite that, this Remaster does not require a high-end CPU in order to be enjoyed.
In order to find out how the game performs on less powerful CPUs, we simulated a dual-core and a quad-core CPU. Our simulated dual-core system was able to push 60fps constantly, even without Hyper Threading. There were some occasional stutters that were fixed by enabling Hyper Threading, however for the most part the game was enjoyable even on our simulated dual-core system.
On the other hand, our hexa-core and our simulated quad-core systems had not trouble at all with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. Still, we do have to note that Hyper Threading on both of these systems had a negative performance impact. Even though the game ran with a constant 100fps on these two systems (with Hyper Threading enabled), we witnessed scenes in which our GPU was underused. When we disabled Hyper Threading, we saw a 10fps (and in some cases a 60fps) boost in these scenes. As such, we strongly suggest disabling it if you own a modern-day Intel quad-core or hexa-core CPU.
Before continuing, we should address some performance issues we’ve heard that some users are experiencing, even on high-end systems. If you’re having such issues, we suggest disabling the “Fill Memory” and “Cache” options. These options have always caused troubles, and there is really no reason at all enabling them. The “Fill Memory” option will simply allocate your remaining free memory, while the “Cache” options may speed up the sun shadow and spot shadow maps calculations. However, and since we did not experience any stutters when these options were disabled, we suggest keeping them off.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered ran incredibly well on both our GTX690 and our GTX980Ti. Our GTX690 was able to push a constant 60fps experience at 1080p on Max settings (with Textures on High), while our GTX980Ti was able to offer a constant 100fps experience. In 4K, our GTX980Ti handled the game with 50-60fps.
Raven Software has also included one hell of graphics settings to tweak, such as Texture resolution, Shadow map resolution, Shadow caster levels, Particle Lighting, Tessellation and Level of Detail. In addition, PC gamers will be able to enable/disable Ambient Occlusion, Bullet impact, Volumetric lighting and Cache Sun/Spot Shadows. You can view a complete list of the game’s graphics settings here.
Graphics wise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered looks way better than its original version. As said, Raven Software has upgraded almost everything; from the game’s environments to the actual character models. Everything looks better, however the game still feels like an old-gen title. This is mainly due to its lighting system. Although it’s more advanced and accurate than the one used in the original version, it’s nowhere close to the lighting system that is being used in most current-gen games. Not only that, but due to this lighting system, the game feels a bit washed out and blurrier than even its original version.
The graphics/performance ratio leaves also a lot to be desired. For example, there are scenes in which our GTX980Ti was used to its fullest (and were running with only 120fps) that felt visually underwhelming, especially when titles like DOOM, Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 are running similarly with visuals that surpass everything this Remaster has to offer. Not only that, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered was using 5GB of RAM, something we have not witnessed even in more visually impressive titles.
All in all, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered runs quite well on the PC platform. While this isn’t the most optimized game we’ve tested, it’s nowhere close to your usual awful console ports. As said, the graphics/performance ratio leaves a lot to be desired, however Raven Software has included one hell of graphics settings to tweak. The game looks way better than its original version, does not require a powerful CPU for a constant 60fps experience, and will run fine on a variety of PC systems (provided you keep off the “Fill Memory” and “Cache” options).
Enjoy!
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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1. The screenshots make it look like cod ghosts in terms of graphics
2.Infinite warfare is freaking awesome. But haters gonna hate
OHH; dont dare to not like COD, because you will be called “hater”.
Pointless stupid comment filled with idiocy, does advanced warfare look anything like cod? People who played the singleplayer at least said that its the best cod sp so far and the longest and pro hint it does not look like cod. Yet everyone systematically thumbs down the trailer every year.
So i ask does advanced warfare deserve the hatred it gets? There is a difference not liking cod and going out of your way to hate the game, instead of moving on to other games you moron. Finally does this game even look like cod at this point?
NOPE so wtf you want from cod? What does it have to do? Nothing you just dont like it, which begs the question why go out of your way to dislike it so much and not play something else?
So my point is valid and you live in a cave, there are so many cod haters outhere you would think cod screwed their mommy or something.
Wait a minute, are you talking about Infinite or Advanced Warfare? And which one of those 2 “doesn’t even look like cod” whatever that means in your mind?
Not to mention how quite ironic and symptomatic of the cod series this little mix-up of yours is.
In an article about MW remastered.
And please try to refrain from that silly “haters gonna h8” hollow cliché.
If you’re relative/friend of some of the developers of cod games, I can imagine it would be very hard to not take criticism personally.
Neither of those looks like cod. Yet people complain, we went from “never changes to BOUHOOOOOOOOUU I DONT LIKE THE CHANGE”
Yet people prefer to re buy mw4 with better graphics.
So yes, haters gonna hate.
if you want to make critisism then by all means, do make critisism.
“HUR DUR COD GRAPHICS SUX”
Yeah infinite warfare has great graphics
“TOO LINEARZ TOO SCRIPTEDZ”
Infinite warfare is less linear.
“TOO SHORT”
It is significantly longer
“RESKIN THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING NEW”
Now its in space and you get to fly around in spaceships, still a better space game than no mans sky.
So i ask you WTF do they need to do? Because i dont see any constructive criticism here, just a blatant hatred for the series and the endless wishing for this series to die.
You know, thats bu11sh ! t, you are at best an hypocrite, I have see you criticizing other games here, with your long 455 comments, and then by your logic I can tell you are a hater and your mom got screwed by those games.
All those stuff you had said to defend the game, you had used to criticize other games, so you are in the “hating” too, dude.
And if someone has been posting idiocy and pointless posts here l is you dude, your post has been at best a mix up bag of b(tthurt1ng and elitism.
Yeah its awesome single player.
Amiga will be playing by himself on the windows store. lmao!
I don’t understand why anyone would want this? Fine its upgraded graphics but 10 steps back in everything else. Funky mouse, P2P servers, zero mod support, ect
It is because is aimed at a different public (read: the public that don’t care about the other features you’ve mentioned).
And they got that audience on a leash.
A stupid nostalgia strucked audience.
console tards 🙁
But i guess had they not released it on PC it would have been the end of the world.
You have always that trend of callind “stupid” to everything else you don agree on?
black ops 3 has mod support and the new cod has great sp, cant say your opinion is any different on the matter
IW’s have not have not had mod support since MW1.
COD having “great” single player, HAHAHAHAHAH.. HA Sure it’s imporved but no COD game had great single player.
Mw2 had great singleplayer for the time, black ops was ok too short, black ops 2 was a big improvement so is black ops 3. As for HA HA HA, do know that the sp of infinite warfare is not 5 hours long, it has space dogfights, it lets you choose whatever mission you want, it has unlockable weapons and upgrades for your ship and has sidemissions with stealth.
But the question here is not wherever god has good sp or not but what you consider a good sp. For example do you consider shadow warrior 2 to have a good sp? Does titanfall 2 have good sp?
I was expecting they announce new AH measures for the game but not even that. Yes its better to stick to old version.
?????????
Excellent analysis John, as always thank you.
I wanted to add this as a PSA as I recently helped someone fix performance issues in this game that they should not have gotten (stuttering even at 1080p with a gtx 1080) . After some troubleshooting, we actually discovered the issue was his very large friends list! I had seen this issue before but only in VR game Raw Data and figured the problem was due to large friends list + friends list being rendered in 3D. But now have seen occurrences in MW: Remastered, and Blk Ops 2. Apparently this looks to be endemic to the steam platform itself.
It’s rare because most PC gamers are no social butterflies, but in certain cases we found people with extremely large friends list 100+ were getting either stutters or having games crash that had no business doing so, with some help from one of the devs (of Raw Data) we found the stutters where occurring whenever the friends list updated. As an experiment, we had a user temporarily reduce their friends list down to 30 and sure enough the issues went away. I’m not sure if the issue is people with large friends lists constantly have people signing on and off triggering the list to update and eating cpu time, or if it’s just the list becomes too large a database and the periodic updates swamp the cpu.
Either way, if you are having performance issues you think you shouldn’t and you have disabled caching like article suggests, if issues persist it might be worth attempting to cull your friends list if it’s overly large.
pcgamingwiki is nice
Oah is that up there already? I honestly didn’t know. I came across this in Raw Data a few months back. If you are saying that I just copied from some wiki, then you are wrong and I can very easily prove it, by giving a link to the thread, which will have my steam user name in it during the inital discovery
“It’s rare because most PC gamers are no social butterflies, but in certain cases we found people with extremely large friends list 100+ were getting either stutters or having games crash that had no business doing so, with some help from one of the devs (of Raw Data) we found the stutters where occurring whenever the friends list updated. ”
Which is why pcgamingwiki is a nice thing.
oah ok, I think I get you. I should probably add an entry about this.
you be surprised how many people play farming simulator. Cod will not get sales when bf1 and titanfall is around.
“Graphics wise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered looks way better than its original version. As said, Raven Software has upgraded almost everything; from the game’s environments to the actual character models. Everything looks better, however the game still feels like an old-gen title. This is mainly due to its lighting system. Although it’s more advanced and accurate than the one used in the original version, it’s nowhere close to the lighting system that is being used in most current-gen games. Not only that, but due to this lighting system, the game feels a bit washed out and blurrier than even its original version.”
— What????? So the remaster looks better than the original game, except for the more advanced and accurate lighting, which makes it look washed out and blurry compared to the original game, which had even worse lighting? How does lighting make something look blurry???
before the patch the performance was horrible, now it is good, maybe thats also because i reinstalled my driver
It was bundled with a turd. Thus it will die soon on PC.
Give it 2-3 months, Activision will release it standalone after all of the sheep have been milked.