Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War Laptop and Desktop Benchmarks
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Technology
Cold War uses an improved version of the engine, which we saw in Black Ops 3 and 4. Some elements were also borrowed from IW 8.0, the engine of Call of Duty Modern Warfare. The Call of Duty Cold War supports DLSS and ray tracing, which can be enabled on Nvidia’s GPUs from the RTX series.
All in all, Cold War offers a lot of graphics settings, which makes navigating through the graphics settings menu somewhat challenging (see screenshots). This is made even more annoying by the fact that the game does not feature any graphics presets, which is why it may take a while to find the proper settings for some hardware configurations.
However, tinkerers will be pleased with such a great variety of graphics settings. In addition to the sliders for render resolution and draw distance, there is also a slider, which is used to adjust VRAM usage. Moreover, gamers can also set a frame rate cap.
As is the case with all the latest AAA titles (Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, …), Cold War needs a lot of video memory. According to the built-in VRAM gauge, on the highest settings the game requires 5 GB of VRAM at 1080p and over 6 GB of VRAM at 2160p with the optional HD texture pack.
The size of the game varies depending on which modes are installed (single-player campaign, multiplayer, zombie mode, …). The full game takes up over 100 GB of storage space. For perspective, with all the patches, Modern Warfare required a mind-boggling 250 GB of free storage space.
Thankfully, all graphics settings can be applied without a restart. The graphics menu contains explanations of what each setting does. Cold War looks reasonably well on medium settings. However, the visuals become truly impressive only on high settings.
Unfortunately, Cold War—just like some other CoD games at launch— suffers from a great many technical issues. Here are some of the problems, which we encountered while benchmarking:
- In the Battlenet launcher, the game only starts after numerous tries.
- We experienced graphics glitches and crashes.
- The setting for screen space reflections is constantly being reverted to low.
- The textures in the game world take several minutes to load in after the initial loading screen, just like in Call of Duty Modern Warfare, in which this issue persisted even after numerous patches.
- There are no cloud saves in the single-player mode, which can help transfer the progress from one PC to another.
- The sign-in process before you get to the main menu can take a while.
- After changing the resolution, the full screen mode functions incorrectly. This issue can only be alleviated through a restart.
- The connection to the servers can sometimes drop, which can throw you out of the game.
Benchmark
As can be seen from our video, our benchmark takes place in the level known as Fracture Jaw
, which is set in Vietnam and features many individuals, vehicles and helicopters. The benchmark lasts 40 seconds and consists of a walk through a US military base. We use CapFrameX to record the frame rates.
Results
FHD (1920x1080)
Graphics cards with 2 GB of VRAM such as the low-end GeForce MX350 and the older GeForce GTX 1050 (Ti) can only handle Cold War at 720p on the lowest settings. To achieve playable frame rates at 1080p on medium settings, users will need at least a mid-range GPU such as the GeForce GTX 1650 or the Radeon RX 5500M. A true gaming GPU such as the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti can run Cold War smoothly on the highest setting at 1080p.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War | |
1920x1080 Highest Settings 1920x1080 High Settings 1920x1080 Medium Settings | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop) | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop) | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop) | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop) | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile | |
AMD Radeon RX 5500M | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile | |
NVIDIA GeForce MX350 | |
NVIDIA GeForce MX330 |
QHD (2560x1440)
Cold War can be played on high settings at 1440p only when using a true high-end GPU. Here, even the GeForce RTX 2060 struggles to hit playable frame rates on the highest settings.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War | |
2560x1440 Highest Settings | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile, i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, i7-7820HK | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile, 6820HK | |
AMD Radeon RX 5500M, R7 3750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile, i7-9750H |
UHD (3840x2160)
No current laptop GPU can achieve playable frames in Cold War at 2160p on the highest settings. Here, Nvidia’s highest-end mobile GPU, GeForce RTX 2080, can only achieve 38 FPS on average.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War | |
3840x2160 Highest Settings | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile, i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, i7-7820HK | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
AMD Radeon RX 5500M, R7 3750H |
Ray Tracing (1920x1080)
We tested ray tracing performance at Full HD. All non-RTX GPUs saw massive drops in performance with ray tracing on. However, RTX cards only saw a roughly 30% drop in performance.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War | |
1920x1080 Highest Settings + Ultra Ray Tracing | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile, i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (Desktop), i9-9900K | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile, i7-9750H | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, i7-7820HK | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK | |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile, 6820HK |
Note
Because benchmarking video games is very time consuming and is often constrained by installation/activation limits, at the time of publishing, we were able only to provide a part of our performance analysis of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Other graphics cards will be added in the coming days and weeks.
Overview
Test Systems
Device | GPU | CPU | RAM | OS |
---|---|---|---|---|
Desktop PC I | MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 2080 (8 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 2070 (8 GB GDDR6) MSI GeForce RTX 2060 (6 GB GDDR6) |
Intel Core i9-9900K | 4 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
Desktop PC II | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB GDDR5X) Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB GDDR5) XFX Radeon R9 Fury (4 GB HBM) Sapphire Radeon R9 290X (4 GB GDDR5) Sapphire Radeon R9 280X (3 GB GDDR5) MSI Radeon R7 370 (2 GB GDDR5) |
Intel Core i7-8086K, Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
Desktop PC III | Nvidia Titan RTX (24 GB GDDR6) Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super (8 GB GDDR6) Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8 GB GDDR6)Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super (8 GB GDDR6)Nvidia Titan X (Pascal) (12 GB GDDR5X) KFA2 GeForce GTX 1660 Super (6 GB GDDR6) PNY GeForce GTX 1660 (6 GB GDDR5) KFA2 GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR5) Zotac GeForce GT 1030 (2 GB GDDR5) Asus GeForce GT 710 AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5700 (8 GB GDDR6) AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (8 GB GDDR6)) AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (8 GB HBM2) XFX AMD Radeon RX 590 (8 GB GDDR5) |
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GT76 | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 (8 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i9-9900K | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GP65 | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 (8 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i7-9750H | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GE65 | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (6 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i7-9750H | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GP65 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6 GB GDDR6) | Intel Core i7-9750H | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GP75 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-9750H | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
Alienware 17 R4 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X) | Intel Core i7-7820HK | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
Asus G752VS | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-6820HK | 2 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GT62VR | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-6820HK | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GE72 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (2 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-7700HQ | 2 x 4 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI GL62 | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 (2 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-7700HQ | 2 x 4 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI Prestige 14 | Nvidia GeForce MX350 (2 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-10710U | 1 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI Prestige 14 | Nvidia GeForce MX330 (2 GB GDDR5) | Intel Core i7-10510U | 1 x 16 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
MSI Alpha 15 | AMD Radeon RX5500M (4 GB GDDR6) | AMD Ryzen 7 3750H | 2 x 8 GB DDR4 | Windows 10 64 Bit |
4K Monitors | Nvidia drivers | AMD drivers |
---|---|---|
Asus PB287Q, Philips Brilliance 329P9H | ForceWare 457.30 | Adrenalin 20.11.1 |