Call Of Duty Vanguard: best settings for improving performance for optimal FPS, visibility, and more

What are the best settings to use when playing Call Of Duty: Vanguard on PC? Call Of Duty: Vanguard features a daunting number of graphical, audio, and gameplay settings you can adjust to suit your preferences. Graphics settings in particular can have a big influence on gameplay in an FPS with a big online multiplayer component: the last thing you want is to have your system struggling to run the game and stuttering on you at a vital moment during a match.

On this page, we'll take you through the minimum and recommended system requirements to run Vanguard on PC at launch. We also cover the best settings you can apply to improve things like frame rate and in-game visibility, and fixes for some known issues.

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Call Of Duty: Vanguard system requirements

It can be difficult to assess whether your PC is up to running the latest games. We've put together this handy reference guide to the minimium system specs you'll need to run the game, as well as the recommended system requirements for optimal performance.

Here are the minimum and recommended system requirements for Vanguard:

Call Of Duty: Vanguard best settings for optimal performance

Below, we've listed some adjustments you can make to Vanguard's settings to ensure your game runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and to compensate for some known issues.

Best settings to optimise frame rate:

• Frame Rate Limit: Unlimited frame rate gives you the best graphical performance, but can result in your GPU becoming overheated. If this becomes an issue, you can go into the custom options drop-down and set the Menu Custom Frame Rate Limit to 60, allowing you to drop the frame rate where it doesn't matter so much, and without affecting in-game graphics performance.
• Texture Resolution: Leave this setting on Medium to strike the best balance between graphics quality and FPS. You can set it to High (if you're happy to sacrifice frame rate for better graphics), or Low/Very Low (for better frame rate but a significant reduction in graphical quality).
• Shadow and Lighting: To maximise performance, all settings in this category should be set to Low/Off except for Cache Sun Shadows and Cache Spot Shadows, which should be turned On to allow for faster rendering.
• FidelityFX: Many players are reporting that turning FidelityFX CAS on makes a huge difference in sharpness and visibility. Personally I can't see a significant improvement, and moreover turning this on disables your ability to use FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0, which enables you to choose from four different settings that significantly boost your frame rate. My recommendation would be to take Super Resolution over CAS if game performance is your main concern.

Best settings to improve in-game visibility:

• Level of Detail Distance Range: Being able to see over long distances is a major advantage in Vanguard, and while being able to view scenery details isn't technically essential to success, it enhances the overall experience, so be sure to set this to High (the same goes for the Nearby and Distant Levels of Detail options). You can set Shader Quality, Tesselation, Clutter Distance, and Volumetric Quality Level to Low/Off to compensate a little for the effect this has on FPS, or turn the overall range setting down to Standard if you need to.
• Depth of Field: This setting adds a realistic but vision-limiting blur to areas of the screen you're not focussing on, so turn it off for maximum visibility.
• Field of View: At its maximum setting of 120, FOV allows you to see the most, but also means that targets in front of you appear smaller and therefore harder to hit, so personal preference plays a part here. Whatever you set it to, be sure to set ADS Field of View to Affected to keep everything in proportion. Note that if you experience motion sickness, you can also play with FOV some more in the Accessibility Settings menu to combat it.
• Camera Movement: Set this down to Least (50%) to reduce that realistic shaky-cam effect that can mess with your vision and accuracy. This is another good one for motion sickness sufferers, too.
• Motion Blur: Both World and Weapon Motion Blur can be set to Off to improve visibility.
• Particles: Setting Particle Quality Level to Very Low and Particle Resolution to High can improve visibility in snowy maps.

Best settings to minimise input lag:

• Display mode: We strongly recommend that you play Vanguard in default fullscreen (as opposed to fullscreen borderless or windowed) whenever possible to minimise input lag.
• V-Sync: Turn both V-Sync settings (Gameplay and Menus) off unless you specifically need them to fix screen tearing issues, as they can cause input lag.
• Bullet Impacts & Sprays: You can switch this setting to Off in order to save your CPU a lot of bother, though this isn't essential if you really love keeping track of where your bullets have hit the scenery.

Best settings to fix packet burst:

• On-Demand Texture Streaming: Many players who have been experiencing packet burst issues in Vanguard report fixing it by disabling this option, and since it doesn't really add much, you might as well turn it off to start with to prevent issues down the line.

Best settings to fix stuttering:

• VRAM Target Usage: Turning this up to 90% allows you to dedicate as much of your GPU as possible to running the game. However, it can cause performance issues, so turn this setting down by increments if you're experiencing stuttering.

Optimal settings are only the first step: you're going to need to get to grips with the meta if you really want to dominate in Vanguard. Take a look at our guides to the best guns, best loadouts, and best Killstreaks in the game to ensure you're going in fully prepared.