Call of Duty: Ghosts - Game Settings Optimizations

Call of Duty: Ghosts - Game Settings Optimizations

The Call of Duty Ghosts PC Game is now updated to version 3.4.3. In the graphics options terrain detail can now be changed to off, normal or extra whereas before it was just on or off. Also they have added Dynamic Fur and PhysX turbulence settings. Also, SMAA in the game menu is now called 1x SMAA instead. It seems to be a faster version of SMAA.

The best way to get the most kills (for NVidia) is actually to set antialiasing to off in the game, and then enable FXAA with NVidia Inspector. You can crank up the other in-game graphics settings noticeably more when your only antialiasing used is the FXAA which is not the one in the game menu.

The Image Quality on Extra is the big performance-killer, while at the same time it's necessary to have it on to make the game look good.
NVidia WHQL driver 331.82 is out: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us
AMD Catalyst latest driver 11/22/2013 which fixes some issues with Ghosts is here: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

The most important things to notice below here are marked by a green asterisk *.

Advanced Video Menu
Aspect Ratio: Automatic, 4:3, 16:10, 16:9
Screen Refresh Rate: Set to your display's refresh rate.
Sync Every Frame: No keeps your GPU-usage higher.
Image Quality: * Extra
Depth of Field: Off improves performance.
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion: Off will give more performance.
Terrain Detail: Tessellation. Off will give more performance.
Anisotropic Filtering: Low may give a bit more performance.
Motion Blur: Off will give more performance.
Distortion: Off may give a bit more performance.
Antialiasing: 2x TXAA or 2x MSAA.
Shadows: Off will give more performance.
Texture Quality: * Manual, so you can adjust the next 4 things below.
Texture Resolution: * Normal
Normal Map Resolution: * Normal
Specular Map Resolution: * Low
Water Map Resolution: * Low

Config File
The game's config file can be accessed and some things can be modified to speed up the performance of multiplayer.
It is at "C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonCall of Duty Ghostsplayers2config_mp.cfg"


seta cg_chatHeight "4" Default is "3". This determines the number of lines in the chat message area.
seta cg_chatTime "14000" Default is "1200". Time chat stays on screen before disappearing.
seta cl_maxPing " " Default is 800. Decrease this a bit if you want a better-pinging server.
seta cl_packetdup " " The default value is 2. A value of 5 may help aggressive players, and a value of 0 may help the snipers.
seta r_autopriority "0" This is the default value.
seta r_displayMaxHeight " " * Set this to whatever your display height is.
seta r_displayMaxWidth " " * Set this to whatever your display width is.
seta r_elevatedPriority "0" * There's a noticeable improvement by having this on 0.
seta r_distortion "0" Off will give a bit more performance.
seta r_dlightLimit "1" * Default value is 4.
seta r_dof_enable "0" This will give more performance.
seta r_fog "0" Off may give a bit more performance.
seta r_tessellation "0_Off" For more performance.
seta r_texFilterAnisoMax " " Anisotropic Filtering maximum value.
seta r_texFilterAnisoMin " " Anisotropic filtering minimum value.
seta sm_enable "0" For more performance.

Most Kills Settings * * *
Turning off all antialiasing in the game menu, then enabling FXAA in NVidia Inspector is the best-performing option. Otherwise, the following suggested settings are good.
Set Image Quality to Extra, but then put Texture Resolution to Normal, Normal Map Resolution to Normal, Specular Map Resolution to Low, and Water Map Resolution to Low. Anything more than that may cause stagger and lag.
In game menu choose 2x TXAA or 2x MSAA.
Make sure seta r_elevatedPriority "0" is set in your multiplayer config file.
You may see a benefit in uninstalling, or installing, the KB2908279 patch Microsoft released for Windows 8.1. You may see a benefit by running the game in Windows 7 Compatibility Mode.


Alternate Settings - Set Image Quality to High, put Texture Resolution to High, Normal Map Resolution to High, Specular Map Resolution to Low, Water Map Resolution to Low. It performs so much better this way that you can turn on Depth of Field and Terrain Details (Tessellation), get a really nice 3D effect, and get even more kills than the other way listed above. This is because Image Quality on Extra is the big performance-killer.

NVidia Specific
In NVidia Control Panel, the Power Management Mode will probably be better for you if it's set to Adaptive, rather than to Prefer Maximum Performance.



Firewall
In Windows 8.1, by default, your Windows Firewall may not be set to allow communication to the public network.

Problems/Resolutions
Some with SLI problems have found that setting seta r_multiGPU "0" in the config file will let them play the game on a single card. NVidia is probably still waiting for the game developer to provide them with the SLI-heuristics so they can update the driver. A game patch and new driver are expected this next week.
It's reported in the NVidia forums that some who have a GTX 580 card and have been getting a DirectX error, have been able to stop the error by using NVidia Inspector to underclock their cards, in this manner: GPU Clock (700 MHz), Memory (1800 MHz), Shader (1400 MHz).
Microsoft released an update that corrects mouse input problems for games, including Ghosts, on Windows 8.1. You can get the update here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2908279
There may be be an audio conflict between the AMD on board HDMI audio and the game. The AMD HDMI audio can be disabled in Device Manager. There may be a conflict with motherboard onboard audio as well.