Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War PC Performance Review & Optimisation Guide

Graphical Settings Comparisons – Do you need Ultra settings?

Like all recent Call of Duty titles, Black Ops: Cold War is designed with multiplayer in mind. As such, you will see that event the game’s lowest settings do not remove major environmental details from the game at low settings. No distant cover is removed due to draw distance restrictions and no major work details are removed. Textures change, and model details change, but the core scene remains the same. 

At very low, textures are traded for low-resolution versions to make the game playable on graphics cards with small frame buffers. The detail levels of some distant objects have changed, as well as the game’s shadow quality. In basic terms, the lowest settings within Black Ops Cold ware is lowering the details it can while keeping the majority of the scene intact. 

Even at mostly low settings, Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War can look good, though aspects like shadow resolution and the quality of distant models remain compromised. It looks good, not great. 

(Very Low VS Low)
  

Medium settings deliver a significant graphical uplift over the game’s low settings, increasing shadow detail across the game world while also increasing the detail of distant models.  

Textures also see a notable boost in quality, though this change will be most noticeable on high-resolution displays. While these are not the best visuals that Black Ops can offer, Medium settings do deliver a great experience. 
 

(Low VS Medium)
  

 
At high, Cold War’s distant objects become increasingly detailed and distant shadows continue to increase in resolution and accuracy. Textures also see further increases in detail, and even nearby objects become more geometrically detailed. 

(Medium VS High)
  

 
At Ultra, textures become sharper and further increases in detail become harder to spot. Ambient occlusion appears to be more detailed, though the difference is minor. Dropping from Ultra settings to high settings will be a hard change to spot, with the game’s Ultra textures being the largest addition. That said, players will need to judge for themselves whether or not these high detail textures are worth the settings impact on Cold War’s install size. 

(High VS Ultra)