Settings in Call of Duty: Warzone handle two things at once: making the game run smoothly and giving you the information that decides battle royale fights, like where footsteps come from, how much you can see to the sides and who you’re actually playing against. We’ll go through both as principles, not as a list of numbers to copy. Values from your favorite streamer’s video won’t fit you anyway, since you have a different monitor and a different mouse.
Performance: what actually adds FPS
In the vast majority of cases, your frames get eaten by the resolution the image is rendered at. The biggest lever is therefore render resolution and upscaling: DLSS, FSR or XeSS depending on your graphics card. The game reconstructs the image from a lower resolution, and the difference is usually bigger than all the other options combined. The order in which it makes sense to cut further:
- Shadows and volumetric effects. Smoke, fog, light shafts and shadow quality are among the most expensive things on screen and have almost no effect on whether you see an opponent.
- Turn off ray tracing and reflections. In a competitive game they don’t give you information, they just cost frames.
- Textures based on VRAM, not ambition. Texture quality on its own doesn’t eat performance as long as it fits into your graphics memory. Once it stops fitting, the game starts stuttering in irregular hitches that look like a network problem.
Frame generation is a special case. The image looks smoother, but input latency doesn’t go down, because generated frames don’t respond to your mouse. In battle royale you’re better off lowering the details and getting more real frames.
After every big patch, also let the game finish compiling shaders. Stuttering in the first minutes after an update is often down to this. How much you can afford depends on what’s in your PC; we cover the demands in the system requirements.
What won’t add FPS, even though people say it will
- A completely uncapped frame rate. The card runs flat out, gets hotter and throttles. A cap slightly below what your rig can handle keeps frame times even, and you notice that more than the absolute number.
- Optimization programs and registry tweaks. They add nothing and sometimes break the anti-cheat.
- Settings copied from someone else. Their profile is built on their hardware and their monitor.
A hundred frames without drops plays better than a hundred and sixty that fall to seventy in a firefight.
Sensitivity and controller deadzone
Pick one sensitivity and stick with it for several weeks. Readjusting it every day is the fastest way to hit nothing. If you regularly miss, lower it in small steps. Then set the ADS sensitivity multiplier separately: moving around the map wants a faster camera, fine-tuning at range a slower one.
The deadzone is the range in which stick movement isn’t registered. The principle: use the lowest value at which the camera doesn’t move on its own. If the view drifts to the side even when you’re not touching the controller, the stick is worn and you need to raise the value.
Aim assist belongs to the controller, not the mouse. On top of that, in Black Ops 7 you only get the full strength of rotational aim assist when you’re actively tracking a target with the right stick; with the stick at rest it stays at its minimum (as of 12 September 2026). So it’s not an autopilot.
Audio: footsteps are information
In battle royale, most fights are decided before you see anyone. So set up audio as an information channel, not as an experience:
- An audio mix for headphones. Bass-boosted presets sound impressive, but it’s exactly the bass that drowns out footsteps and reloads. Pick a mix made for headphones and leave it alone.
- Turn the music down. It’s no use to you in a match and takes up the space where footsteps should be.
- Try spatial audio, but don’t trust it blindly. On some headphones it helps you tell which floor a sound is on, on others it blurs the direction.
- Proximity chat works both ways. You hear nearby opponents, and they hear you.
HUD and minimap
The interface is tuned in the settings under the in-game HUD section, and there’s only one rule: keep on screen only what you actually notice during a match. Minimap, compass, armor status and cash, yes; decoration, no.
Then learn to read the minimap like a second screen. Besides teammates and contracts, it also shows unsuppressed gunfire. Most beginners have it turned on and never look at it.
Field of view
Field of view can be set from 60 to 120 and is available on consoles just like on PC. A low value enlarges the image and helps you focus on what’s in front of you, but you’ll miss an opponent just outside it. A high value gives you more awareness, makes targets smaller and costs frames on a weaker rig.
A value of around a hundred degrees suits most people on a monitor at a normal distance. On a TV across the room, go lower, otherwise distant characters will disappear into pixels. Change it a few degrees at a time and give a new value a few matches before you reject it.
Crossplay: who you’re actually playing against
Crossplay comes in three forms in the settings: on, on for consoles only, or off. The “console only” option keeps you out of lobbies with PC players, but you pay for it with longer queue times: the narrower the pool you choose, the fewer people the game can match together.
The difference between controller and mouse isn’t one-sided, though. According to Activision, the controller comes out slightly ahead at close range, where a quick flick decides the fight, while keyboard and mouse have the upper hand at long range.
Keyboard and mouse on console
Call of Duty supports keyboard and mouse natively on both PlayStation and Xbox, no adapters needed. You connect them via USB (typically through a hub so both fit) or wirelessly, the game recognizes them on its own and the controls can be fully remapped.
What matters is that you choose your input before entering matchmaking. You can’t switch from mouse to controller during a match. In the menu you can use both, but for playing you decide in advance. So check which device the game has set as the one you aim with, so you’re not surprised that aim assist doesn’t work: it works with the controller, not the mouse.
Does that mean the game will put you in with PC players? Not automatically. Who you play with is decided by the crossplay setting, not by what you have plugged in; none of the official crossplay options filter by input device. If you keep crossplay on “console only” and play with a mouse, you’ll stay in console lobbies.
FAQ
The resolution the image is rendered at. Turn on upscaling (DLSS, FSR or XeSS depending on your graphics card) and only then cut shadows and volumetric effects. Turn ray tracing off completely.
No. Without a cap the card runs hotter and throttles, so you get a higher peak and a less consistent frame rate. Set the cap slightly below what your rig can handle.
The range is 60 to 120. On a monitor at a normal distance, a value of around a hundred suits most people. On a TV across the room, go lower so distant characters don’t disappear.
Yes, natively and without an adapter. You connect them via USB or wirelessly and can fully remap the controls. Your input for playing is chosen before matchmaking, though, and you can’t switch it mid-match.
Not because of the mouse. Who the game puts in your lobby is decided by the crossplay setting: the u0022console onlyu0022 option keeps you with console players regardless of what you control the game with. Without a controller, though, you lose aim assist.
Information verified as of 12 September 2026. What each rig can handle is covered in the system requirements. If you’re just starting out, go through our tips for your first matches, because settings alone won’t win fights for you. Where to find people to team up with is in our community article, and the rest of the guides are in the Warzone section.