Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Performance Test

Infinity Ward made me a happy man when they released the first Call of Duty video game back in late October 2003. The gameplay and graphics were awesome. I remember fragging my LAN buddies for countless hours. Those were good times and Activision refused to let them go. CoD's initial success has since ballooned into a multi-billion dollar cash cow with annual refreshes and countless mini-expansions. Despite my interest in the early games, I haven't entirely kept up with the franchise. I played some of Black Ops' single-player campaign last year, but I skipped right over the multiplayer experience. Likewise with 2009's Modern Warfare 2. Don't get me wrong, it's not that they're horrible games, in fact they remain extremely popular but in my book they're just not particularly innovative.
As you've undoubtedly heard, Modern Warfare 3 launched this week and, well, what can we say? The game has reportedly sold a record 9.3 million copies in a single day. It should be noted though that over 50% of those are Xbox copies and less than 4% comprise PC sales, according to VGChartz.

As usual we'll refrain from pretending we've played the game enough to form a comprehensive opinion about it, but external reviews suggest the game is a valid sequel that doesn't bring new elements but instead relies on the same old formula with a few tweaks to deliver an overall fun game to play. PC Gamer concluded about the PC version: "Modern Warfare 3 is linear, badly written and one note. It’s still, from a certain angle, regressive. It’s also fun."
In terms of graphical fidelity, Infinity Ward's latest effort is about as visually appealing as its predecessor, which was about as visually appealing as its predecessor. No, I don't stutter. Unfortunately, the company has focused on optimizing the game for consoles while ignoring PC development for the last five years. If you're itching to see how your DirectX 10 or 11 GPU handles a DX9 engine, then maybe MW3 has something to offer you.

Those playing the game on Xbox 360 will find that it runs at a resolution of 1024x600 with 2x multisample anti-aliasing. Naturally, PC gamers are afforded a broader range of resolutions along with 4x MSAA, but there are few visual enhancements beyond that. Considering our platform of choice, it's disappointing to see the lack of progress.
For obvious reasons we kept Modern Warfare 3 in our shortlist of games to benchmark once it was out. But once we got it, we asked ourselves, should we even bother? We finally decided to give the series one last spin. Let's compare some in-game screenshots before moving on to the benches.

Screenshots: MW2 vs. MW3

Below are some screenshots comparing Modern Warfare 3 to its 2009 predecessor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. You can click each image for a detailed 2560x1600 shot. Because they're two different games, it's impossible to get identical shots, therefore we have done our best to make the comparisons as similar as possible. We understand this is a crude method, but the results speak for themselves.

Here we focused on sniper rifle scopes. Please note that these images are completely unaltered. This is how they appear at 2560x1600. MW3's visuals are near to identical to those of MW2. The texture quality is very much the same and so is sharpness and AA.


Here's a shot of ground textures. While MW2 looks much better in my opinion, the quality of the textures does vary from scene to scene. Overall, they're about even.


MW3's vegetation looks very poor. It could just be because I've recently tested Crysis 2 with high res-textures along with Battlefield 3, but the vegetation seen above is not of 2011 standards. Even when compared to the older version, we feel the graphical quality of MW3 is questionable at best.


The textures used for the environment vary during the game, however I feel there was more detail throughout the MW2 single player campaign -- including the walls seen above. It seems like there was greater care taken to make certain aspects of the game seem unique.


Finally, the character models aren't much different -- though we can admit that they look great for a DX9 title. Graphics aside, it's worth noting that this guy makes an appearance as a sniper in both games. Pure coincidence we're sure.

Testing Methodology

We tested Modern Warfare 3 with 18 graphics cards spanning all price ranges and we installed the latest drivers available -- neither AMD or Nvidia updated their drivers for this game. We hate to keep taking jabs like this, but we imagine it's because they didn't have to.
Fraps was used to measure frame rates during a minute of gameplay from the second single-player mission of the first act. The performance was measured from the beginning of the mission, having played through the first few acts the frame rates here seemed to be about as low as they go.
We tested the game at three resolutions: 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 using the maximum in-game quality settings.
Gamers will want MW3's image quality settings on "native" rather than "extra," which seems counter-intuitive. This setting should actually be called image size rather than quality. "Extra" forces the game to downscale the resolution to 85% and then upscale it to 100%. This is a cheap way of getting extra performance without sacrificing as much quality as you would by permanently lowering the resolution, but it looks extremely blurry and I highly recommend you use native. Also, be aware that reviews showing cards like the GeForce GTX 570 hitting 150fps at 2560x1600 are using the lower quality "extra" setting.

Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7 2600K
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Asus P8P67 Deluxe (Intel P67)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB)
- GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB)
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 560 (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 480 (1536MB)
- GeForce GTX 470 (1280MB)
- GeForce GTX 460 (1024MB)
- GeForce GTS 450 (1024MB)
- GeForce 9600 GT (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6850 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 5870 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 6790 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6750 (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6670 (1024MB)
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.62
- ATI Catalyst 11.10

1680x1050 - Gaming Performance

At 1680x1050, it seems virtually any semi-modern gaming-oriented graphics card can manhandle Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The mid-range, four-year-old GeForce 9600 GT managed to average 37fps. The Radeon HD 6670, which we usually consider too gutless for gaming, mustered 30fps. Even the GTS 450 and HD 6750 earned 46 and 48fps.
Moving up the graph, the results quickly ascend beyond 60fps and there are a few points to note. The HD 5870 outpaced the 6950 by 5fps while the GTX 560 Ti was just 2fps slower than the 6950. The high-end HD 6970 and GTX 480 were just 3fps faster than the 5870, while the GTX 580 captured the top of our performance chart with 110fps.

In comparing MW3 to MW2, we found the older game to be more demanding in our test as the HD 6950 was 10% faster in MW3, while the GTX 570 performed 8% better.

1920x1200 - Gaming Performance

Cranking the dial up to 1920x1200 knocks the low-end HD 6670 out of the picture with only 22fps, while the obsolete GeForce 9600 GT narrowly escaped the 20s frame rates. The GTS 450 and HD 6750 also resided in 30-40fps territory. All three cards delivered less than ideal, but still playable frame rates.
The HD 5870 outranked the 6950 again by 4fps, placing it alongside the GTX 480. While it's interesting to see where the cards land amongst their peers, every modern mid-range or high-end product aced the 1920x1200 benchmark. The GTX 580 claimed the top of our graph with 94fps.

The higher resolution allowed us to record a greater variation in performance between MW3 and its predecessor as the HD 6950 and GTX 570 were 12% and 9% faster in the newer version.

2560x1600 - Gaming Performance

At 2560x1600 most of the budget GPUs are unable to deliver desirable frame rates, though it doesn't take a monster graphics card to achieve playable performance either. The GTX 460 and 560 still crossed the 30fps threshold while the HD 6850 managed 43fps. The GTX 560 Ti, GTX 470 and HD 6870 rendered 50fps while anything on par with the HD 5870 will average more than 55fps. The GTX 580 was the only card to exceed 60fps.

The performance margin between MW3 and MW2 was further exacerbated at 2560x1600. The Radeon HD 6950 was 21% faster in MW3 while the GTX 570 scored 9% better.

A Lot in Common with its Predecessors

Just as we anticipated at the beginning of this article, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 looks identical to its two-year-old forerunner. Considering its current state, we have to wonder if we even need Modern Warfare 3 on PC. At the full retail price of $59.99, I don't believe so. Judging by its graphical progression and overall content, MW3 is more of an expansion than a new game and Activision shouldn't be charging anything beyond DLC rates. Despite my feelings towards MW3's stagnant PC development, it shattered sales records selling 9.3 million copies on launch day. But with a small minority of that representing PC copies, the good news is that few gamers purchased this sloppy console port, and I suspect many who did promptly sought a refund.
If you're still intent buying MW3 on PC, you should be able to scrape by with nearly any modern entry-level gaming hardware. The fact that an $80 Radeon HD 6670 can deliver 30fps at 1680x1050, while the obsolete GeForce 9600 GT provides 37fps, really says it all. If you're aiming for 40 frames or better, you'll only need a $120 GTS 450 or $100 HD 6750.

Those that argue the lower-quality graphics are a good thing because games like Battlefield 3 are too demanding confuse me. There's nothing stopping anyone from playing BF3 on budget hardware, they simply need to lower the graphics to MW3 levels and they will receive similar performance. As we found when testing Battlefield 3 recently, the high quality visuals merely allow those with higher-end hardware to enjoy the game even more.
After all, if graphics are irrelevant, why did we ever leave CoD MW2 (not that it really feels like we have) or even the original CoD for that matter. That game was awesome and they could have just kept producing DLC content forever. As a huge fan of the earlier Call of Duty titles I'm disappointed with this latest release as it continues to head in the same direction as Black Ops -- somewhat of a downward spiral, you could say.