by The right hardware for Call of Duty Warzone and Modern Warfare 3: PCGH has performed numerous graphics card and processor benchmarks to clarify which GPUs and CPUs enable smooth shooting. Officially available from November 10, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is once again the result of a collaboration between several Activision studios and offers, among other things, a new single-player campaign, this time developed by Sledgehammer Games. The story picks up on the story of the predecessors created by Infinity Ward, but offers a fresh approach with a new, well-known villain, so previous knowledge isn’t really necessary.
In addition to multiplayer provided by Raven Software and a new edition of popular maps, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 also features a zombie mode provided by Treyarch, for the first time in Modern Warfare history. Owners of the Vault Edition (cost €99.99) can join the campaign from November 2nd. The normal edition or the Modern Warfare 3 campaign is available for 69.99 euros. If you’ve already invested time and/or money on skins and operators in Modern Warfare 2, you can carry them over to Modern Warfare 3.
There are various rumors and controversies about the origins of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. It is essentially a world-famous contribution Media reporter Jason Schreier or rumors that a complete, full-priced Call of Duty should appear only in 2024. Only one add-on or expansion for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was planned for 2023. There are reports for and against this theory, which do not we will elaborate here due to the lack of good information. Regardless, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is trading as a full-price product, so it should be classified as such.
In addition to early access, the Vault Edition of Call of Duty MW3, which costs 100 euros, also includes the Battlepass. The content is transferable to Warzone. However, the pass can be upgraded again for 29.99 euros, as we discovered from the store’s extremely prominent location: We almost bought the content by mistake…
Source: PC Gaming Hardware
In CoD Modern Warfare 3 (2023) experience events from the perspective of several series veterans; beloved colleagues from previous parts are back on board. Modern Warfare plays fast as usual, the shooting is quick, simple and satisfying. The story of the campaign, including interspersed flashbacks and perspective changes, takes you to the other side of the world and to fictional areas known from previous parts of MW such as Verdansk or Urzikstan. Despite many similarities to its predecessors, the campaign plays out very differently than previous Call of Duty titles: the new Modern Warfare 3 alternates relatively open “sandbox” levels between familiar, linearly designed and beautifully staged missions. elaborate, strongly reminiscent of Warzone maps with AI opponents. This type of campaign and mission design is not well received by everyone; the basic tenor of Modern Warfare 3’s campaign is devastating. However, many PCGH editors had a lot of fun with the new approach, because the open design brings a playful freedom that is not known from Call of Duty. You can attack opponents head-on in the classic way, or alternatively you can flank the bad guys, run them over with a stationary vehicle, shoot them from a safe distance with a sniper rifle or a drone – the options are fantastic, just not the classic Call of Duty . If you want to know more about the gameplay, we recommend the test from our sister magazine PC Games.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3: graphics and performance
Instead we want to focus on technology and performance. 2023’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 uses IW Engine 9, which was first used for the Modern Warfare reboot in 2019 and also in its direct successor. Technically not much has changed, the only difference is in the support of some features. Modern Warfare 2019 included support for ray tracing shadows and DLSS upsampling for the first time. Modern Warfare 2 gave up the expensive shine, but offered additional support for FSR 1 and Intel’s XeSS. In Modern Warfare 3, the big technical innovation is support for Nvidia’s Frame Generation (DLSS 3.0), which we obviously looked at. The system requirements are identical to their predecessors, so you shouldn’t expect much technical progress:
| Modern Warfare (2019) | Modern Warfare 2 (2022) | Modern Warfare 3 (2023) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | |||
| windows | Windows10x64 | Windows10x64 | Windows10x64 |
| processor | Intel Core i3-6100 / Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 | Intel Core i3-6100 / Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 | Intel Core i3-6100 / Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 |
| RAM | 8 Gigabytes of RAM | 8 Gigabytes of RAM | 8 Gigabytes of RAM |
| graphic paper | Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon 470 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon 470 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon 470 |
| hard disk | 125 GiBytes of available storage space | 125 GiBytes of available storage space | 125 GiBytes of available storage space |
| APIs | DirectX12 | DirectX12 | DirectX12 |
| Advised | |||
| windows | Windows 10 or 11×64 | Windows 10 or 11×64 | Windows 10 or 11×64 |
| processor | Intel Core i5-6600K / Core i7-4770 or Ryzen 5 1400 | Intel Core i5-6600K / Core i7-4770 or Ryzen 5 1400 | Intel Core i5-6600K / Core i7-4770 or Ryzen 5 1400 |
| RAM | 12 GiBytes of RAM | 12 GiBytes of RAM | 12 GiBytes of RAM |
| graphic paper | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 or Intel Arc A770 |
| hard disk | 125 GiBytes of available storage space | 125 GiBytes of available storage space | 125 GiBytes of available storage space |
| APIs | DirectX12 | DirectX12 | DirectX12 |
When you launch the game, you’ll be greeted by the familiar Modern Warfare 2 user interface, including the unrivaled large menu of options. Here you can not only optimize the usual graphics options, activate DLSS etc. or sharpen the image. You can also adjust the controls, field of view (FoV) and interface, configure effects such as film grain and motion blur or change multiplayer settings, as these now apply to both Modern Warfare 3 and its predecessor, as well as to Warzone.
Call of Duty: The Options Menu
Graphically, Modern Warfare 3 (2023) offers the quality we are used to from 2019, minus the ray tracing shadows. As in its predecessors, the faces of the protagonists and their opponents are particularly impressive, the digitized actors act very convincingly and show a variety of details and animations. Unfortunately, this really attractive aspect of the graphical presentation often only comes into play in pre-rendered and crumbly compressed scenes; Stylish real-time sequences are few and far between in Modern Warfare 3.
The presentation of the environments and the animations of the characters create an ambivalent image. In linear missions, which are based on the previous parts of the series, these are at the usual high level. However, in the “Open Combat Missions”, which are reminiscent of Warzone, the graphical presentation drops dramatically. Characters don’t move through environments in the usual fluid, elaborately animated way, but tend to move jerkily in open areas. Here, too, the quality of the assets is significantly lower than in the narrow but detailed aisles typical of series production. Texture resolution and level of detail generally feel a bit outdated; pixelated backgrounds are often muddy or ruined by strong compression artifacts.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3: graphic examples
We’ve sorely missed the big, explosive scenes that Call of Duty is known for. Here and there a bit of the previous grandiloquence shines through: when we go hunting for terrorists in a football stadium and hordes of fans in their colorful jerseys run in panic, it seems darkly similar to Modern Warfare 2 and the “No Russian” mission ” was shocking at the time. However, this mission ends so abruptly and unspectacularly that one wonders whether the developers ran out of money for explosions or whether the development time was simply too short. There are some interesting stealth and infiltration approaches that create some tension visually and in terms of gameplay, but the AI is overwhelmed by the large, open areas, often wandering around foolishly or seeming marked by collective blindness and deafness. Let’s now move on to the performance, because there are mostly positive things to report here.
Image gallery for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in the test: Radeon dominance meets Nvidia frame generation
