Black Ops 3 PC Tweaks Guide – Best Performance INI Tweaks and Graphics

Black Ops 3 PC tweaks to improve performance and graphics. Learn how to edit INI Config File to improve performance by adjusting graphics.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is now available across all platforms with some serious issues which render the game unplayable on PCs. While there are people who are playing the game perfectly, the performance of the game is extremely inconsistent.

For more help on Black Ops 3, read our Best Weapons and Attachments, Shadows of Evil Fuse Locations, Shadows of Evil Easter Egg Steps and Shadows of Evil Strategy Guide.

Black Ops 3 PC Tweaks

There are multiple memory leak issues, black screen errors, freezing, random FPS drop, and what not.

While we wait and hope that Treyarch will roll out a gigantic patch to fix all these launch problems, we have compiled a list of fixes that will improve your overall gameplay experience and you’ll also get rid of these commonly occurring issues.

This guide covers everything you need to increase Black Ops 3 performance and have a smoother gameplay experience.

Black Screen Issue

In order to fix the black screen issue with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, you need to go to:

Steam\SteamApps\Common\Call of Duty Black Ops III\Players

Once you head to this directory, you need to open up the Notepad, make the changes as mentioned below and save it as config.ini:

Black Ops 3 Gameplay Tweaks

Frame Rate Cap
This option is nothing new to any PC gamer out there. You can either set the maximum FPS to 60 to leave it to unlimited. You can write in ‘0’ to remove the FPS cap:

MaxFPS = “60” // 0 to 1000

Frame Rate on Screen
Should you choose to do so, you can turn off the option of FPS counter appearing on your screen. Choose ‘0’ to turn it off or ‘1’ to turn it on:

DrawFPS = “0” // 0 or 1

Frame Rate Smoothing
This option basically smoothes the FPS spikes – upwards. Choose ‘0’ to turn it off or ‘1’ to turn it on:

SmoothFramerate = “0” // 0 or 1

Horizontal FOV
Field of View in games is either measured vertically or horizontally. Considering the 16:9 ratio, these are the settings that you need to go with. You can notch it up to 120, but you should stick to 80:

FOV = “80” // 65 to 120

Splitscreen Orientation
You can change the splitscreen orientation depending upon what you prefer. You can toggle it and see what works best for you. We recommend leaving it to ‘0’:

SplitscreenOrientation = “0” // 0 or 1

Voice Chat
Depending upon what you prefer, you can turn the network voice chat on or off. We recommend leaving it on, but you can turn it off should you prefer it:

VoiceChat = “1” // 0 or 1

Occlusion of Sounds
This option basically deals with booming of sounds coming from behind various in-game objects. You can toggle between turning it on or off, but we recommend leaving it on for optimal experience:

SoundOcclusion = “1” // 0 or 1

Mouse Smoothing
You can change your mouse smoothing amount from a scale to 0 to 10. Although it comes down to personal preference, we recommend not going beyond ‘0’ for optimal playing experience:

MouseFilter = “0” // 0 to 10

Mouse Acceleration
Mouse Acceleration is another option which you can turn on or off depending upon your preference. You can put in ‘0’ to turn it off or leave it to ‘1’ in order to turn it on. Ask us and we would recommend leaving it to ‘1’:

MouseAcceleration = “0” // 0 to 1

Mouse Sensitivity
I don’t think there would be any gamer not knowing about mouse sensitivity. It basically determines how fast or slow your mouse will respond to your movement.

You can change it from a scale of 0.1 to 30. For optimal experience, we recommend leaving it somewhere near 2:

MouseSensitivity = “2” // 0.1 to 30

Mouse Vertical Sensitivity
In addition to normal mouse sensitivity, you can also play around with vertical mouse sensitivity from a value of -1 to 1. For optimal playing experience, we recommend something near 0.022:

MouseVerticalSensitivity = “0.022” // -1 to 1

Number of Human Corpses
This is pretty self-explanatory! This essentially determines the number of corpses simultaneously appearing. You can change its value from ‘0’ to ‘32’ and we recommend setting it to maximum i.e. 32:

CorpseCount = “32” // 1 to 32

FPS Drive Enqueues
Setting a lower value of this will ensure that you don’t get any input latency, but at the cost of performance. You can set it to ‘0’ to go with default settings, but it’s better to go with something near 3:

MaxFrameLatency = “0” // 0 to 4

Black Ops 3 Setup Tweaks

When saving your .ini file, make sure to go with these settings as they appear below for most optimal gameplay experience:

  • AutoDetectHasRun = “1” // 0 or 1
  • WorkerThreads = “2” // 2 to 4
  • LastDriverNvidia = “35887” // 0 or Higher
  • LastDriverAMD = “0” // 0 or Higher
  • VideoMemory = “0.95” // 0.75 to 1

Black Ops 3 Display Tweaks

Screen Mode
You can either go with Windowed Mode, Fullscreen Mode, or Fullscreen Windowed Mode depending upon what you prefer. This is the optimal command that we recommend:

FullScreenMode = “2” // 0 to 2

Note that you can go with ‘0’ for Windowed Mode and ‘1’ for Fullscreen Mdoe.

Fullscreen Resolution
Once again, this is not something new for anyone who has played some games in his or her life. The ideal for most of the people out there is 1920 x 1080 for full resolution, but you can go with any number of you want e.g.:

WindowSize = “1920×1080” // any value

Refresh Rate
Ideally, you should always go with the default refresh rate of your monitor to ensure that you get optimal playing experience, but you can go higher if you prefer. For instance, I have a 60Hz monitor so the refresh rate that I should go with should be:

RefreshRate = “59.95” // 1 to 240

As you can see, you can go from 1 to 240, but once again, stick to the one on your monitor.

Vsync
You can toggle between the option of triggering Vsync when the game is in fullscreen or not. For optimal playing experience, you need to set it always on which is:

Vsync = “0” // 0 or 1

Misc. Settings
Some other optimal adjustments that you need to make include:

  • ResolutionPercent = “100” // 50 to 200
  • DisplayGamma = “sRGB” // sRGB, rec.709, or rec.709 – Limited
  • BackbufferCount = “2” // 2 to 3

Black Ops 3 Graphics Tweaks – Adjust For Performance

Level of Detail
When we talk about level of detail on models, you should target lower numbers as they represent the higher quality. You can change it from a scale of ‘0’ to ‘8’ and should stick with ‘1’:

MeshQuality = “1” // 0 to 8

Anisotropic Filtering
This option basically deals with enhancing the image quality of objects which are at extreme distance from the viewing angle. This basically increases the sharpness and crispness of image. You can go with ‘0’ for 2x AF, ‘1’ for pre-material, and ‘2’ for 16x AF:

TextureFilter = “1” // 0 to 2

Mips on Streamed Textures
When we talk about tweaking the Texture Quality, you need to go with the lower value for higher quality. You can change it on a scale of ‘0’ to ‘3’ and should go with ‘2’ for optimal gameplay experience:

  • TextureQuality = “2” // 0 to 3
  • TextureQualityFX = “2” // 0 to 15
  • TextureQualityProbes = “1” // 0 to 16
  • TextureQualityBakedSunShadows = “1” // 0 to 2

Disable Dynamic LightShadows and SunShadows
You have the option of disabling Dynamic LightShadows and SunShadows to create a more optimal playing experience. You can toggle between turning these options on or off. However, we would suggest that you stick to disable them both:

  • DisableDynamicLightShadows = “1” // 0 or 1
  • DisableDynamicSunShadows = “1” // 0 or 1

Motion Blur
When it comes to Motion Blur in video games, different people tend to have different opinions. This options basically streaks the rapidly moving objects in a still. In Black Ops 3, you’ve the option of setting it to ‘Auto’, ‘on’ or ‘off’. While it all comes to how to wish your game to look, we suggest leaving the Motion Blur to Auto:

MotionBlur = “Auto” // Off, Auto, or On

In addition to this, you can also manually adjust Motion Blur quality to suit your needs, but we recommend setting it to Medium.

Lighting for Skin
This option basically deals with the lighting that penetrates inside the surface on an object and spreads throughout the surface of that particular object. You can either turn it on or off, but we recommend keeping if off to increase performance:

SubsurfaceScattering = “0” // 0 or 1

Volumetric Lighting
This option basically deals with the technique of adding lighting to 3D models and then rendering it; especially in the field of gaming. There are quite a lot of options related to Volumetric Lighting that you need to tweak which are listed below:

  • VolumetricLightingEnabled = “1” // 0 or 1
  • VolumetricLightingMaxSunSamples = “8” // 1 to 256
  • VolumetricLightingMaxLightSamples = “40” // 1 to 256
  • VolumetricLightingSkipSunSamples = “1” // 0 or 1
  • VolumetricLightingSkipLightSamples = “1” // 0 or 1

Black Ops 3 Performance Tweaks and Fixes

If you’re looking for some improvements to enhance your Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 experience, here are some things that you definitely help you get a smoother gameplay experience:

  • FOV: Higher values smoothes gameplay
  • Vsync: Turn it off to smooth the gameplay
  • MAX FPS: Depending upon the Refresh Rate of your screen
  • Textures: You can turn them up without worrying
  • MaxFrameLatency: Unless Vsync is on, set it to 2
  • BackBufferCount: Should be set to 3
  • Shadows: Must not be on Extra
  • Mesh Detail: Lower this bit to increase performance

Frame Drops and Stuttering
In case you’re constantly getting random frame drops and stuttering issues, you need to use the following workaround.

The first thing that you need to do is to open up the following file in Notepad or any other editor:

Steam\SteamApps\Common\Call of Duty Black Ops III\Players\config.ini

Once you’re inside, you need to change the WorkerThread from 4 to 2 and see if helps your game stuttering issues.

Memory Leak Fix
In order to fix the Memory Leak issues, you can use the following workaround. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

  • Open System and go to Advanced System Settings
  • Click Performance and select Settings
  • Select Advanced tab in Performance and select Virtual Memory
  • Click change and uncheck ‘Automatically Manage Paging File Size for all Drives’
  • Select Custom and put in 4096 in Initial Size and 6144 in Maximum Size
  • Restart the computer and play the game

Fix the Mouse Lag
In order to fix the mouse lag, you need to set the FPS limit to 1-2 FPS less than your refresh rate. If your monitor is 60Hz, you need to go with 58 FPS. Other than this, you need to turn off Mouse Smoothing in the game and set mouse polling rate to 250.

Stuck at Treyarch Logo
What this means is that you have more than one overlay running such as Steam Overlay, FRAPS, MSI Afterburner, etc. In case you have them running, kill those processors and restart the game.

Mouse Input Lag on NVIDIA
In case you’re suffering from mouse input lag with vsync on, you need to follow these simple and easy-to-follow instructions:

First off, turn off vsync off in the game, then close the game, next up open up NVIDIA Control Panel, go to Manage 3D settings, choose Black Ops 3, turn on Vsync from there, and restart the game.

NVIDIA Control Panel Ultra Tips
You need to open up the NVIDIA control panel and make the following adjustments:

  • CUDA – GPUs – All
  • Power Management Mode – Prefer Maximum Performance
  • Texture Filtering Quality – High Performance
  • Texture Filtering Trilinear Optimization – On
  • Threaded Optimization – On
  • Triple Buffering – On

Once all these settings are done, you need to restart your PC and your game will run absolutely fine. However, do note that you’ll lose some of the quality if you have a weak GPU.

If you have any more questions for us, make sure to let us know in the comments section below!

Haider is a freelance contributor, who loves video games, playing guitar, and aviation. He is a competitive FPS player and also enjoys exotic RPG games like Diablo and Xenogears (his favorite game of all time) ...