Poor 1080p performance Call of Duty

bobboberts · 2 Dec 2020 at 11:32

My stepson has my old PC - i5-4670K, 16GB DDR3 RAM, GTX970. He runs 2 screens and plays Call of Duty exclusively (in borderless window) on screen one, with Discord open on the second screen (both 60hz). The performance hasn't been great however, with the fps dropping a lot, especially with Discord open. The machine initially only had 8GB of RAM but I recently added another 8GB and, last night, I gave him my old 2070 Super (as I have upgraded my own machine).

For the moment he is back to a single monitor, but Call of Duty still doesn't hit a solid 60fps at 1080p and I don't understand why. According to various things I've seen, on a suitable monitor he should be getting over 100 fps at medium settings - but he's not.

Any ideas why? Even with Discord off I was playing around with settings last night and standing still I was seeing drops to 50-52fps (this is in multiplayer, for what it's worth). It's really frustrating and whilst I know the 2070S is being CPU-bound, it should still be able to handle the game with ease, no?

In the longer-term (i.e. birthday next year) the idea will be to change the CPU (probably move to a Ryzen setup) but that isn't going to be for 6+ months and I feel really gutted that he still isn't getting a solid performance and just want to fix it for him - so all suggestions gratefully received!

Parky · 2 Dec 2020 at 15:33

I don't have the game, but was going to suggest turning a couple of different settings off.

However, going off the last couple of pages in the official thread it seems as though quite a few people are having difficulties, looks like it may be more of a game/driver issue than your actual rig:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/call-of-duty-18-black-ops-cold-war.18896963/page-14

explicit4u · 2 Dec 2020 at 20:39

Which call of duty?

That rig should be better than mine on paper and I have no issues with COD at 1080p.

ViRuS2k · 2 Dec 2020 at 20:45

Have you tried running it in full screen rather than borderless? I have had issues with borderless on other games.

bobboberts · 3 Dec 2020 at 14:23

I did actually switch briefly to fullscreen last night but haven't spent enough time testing it. The boy will be back home from school shortly though and I'm sure he will be only too happy to let me know if it is still dropping frames - Discord obviously doesn't help, but I still think it should be able to multitask across 2 screens, no?

ViRuS2k · 3 Dec 2020 at 14:57

Have you tried putting Dlss to performance mode? Maybe that will help gain some fps? Although this is not a fix for your problem.

bobboberts · 3 Dec 2020 at 15:14

ViRuS2k said:
Have you tried putting Dlss to performance mode? Maybe that will help gain some fps? Although this is not a fix for your problem.

Is that a setting in the nvidia control panel, or something done in-game?

ViRuS2k · 3 Dec 2020 at 16:50

It's done in game.

Freddie1980 · 3 Dec 2020 at 17:39

bobboberts said:
My stepson has my old PC - i5-4670K, 16GB DDR3 RAM, GTX970. He runs 2 screens and plays Call of Duty exclusively (in borderless window) on screen one, with Discord open on the second screen (both 60hz). The performance hasn't been great however, with the fps dropping a lot, especially with Discord open. The machine initially only had 8GB of RAM but I recently added another 8GB and, last night, I gave him my old 2070 Super (as I have upgraded my own machine).

For the moment he is back to a single monitor, but Call of Duty still doesn't hit a solid 60fps at 1080p and I don't understand why. According to various things I've seen, on a suitable monitor he should be getting over 100 fps at medium settings - but he's not.

Any ideas why? Even with Discord off I was playing around with settings last night and standing still I was seeing drops to 50-52fps (this is in multiplayer, for what it's worth). It's really frustrating and whilst I know the 2070S is being CPU-bound, it should still be able to handle the game with ease, no?

In the longer-term (i.e. birthday next year) the idea will be to change the CPU (probably move to a Ryzen setup) but that isn't going to be for 6+ months and I feel really gutted that he still isn't getting a solid performance and just want to fix it for him - so all suggestions gratefully received!

Doesn't the latest CoD game use Ray Traced shadows or something? You might want to try disabling any Ray Tracing options from the graphics menu and see what happens.

bobboberts · 3 Dec 2020 at 21:35

Freddie1980 said:
Doesn't the latest CoD game use Ray Traced shadows or something? You might want to try disabling any Ray Tracing options from the graphics menu and see what happens.

Ray tracing is off by default and I have run the game on low, medium, high, ultra and a mix in between and it sadly remains unable to keep to a solid 60 (usually dropping the low-to-mid 50s).