Black Ops 7 PC Performance Guide: FPS Benchmarks, Ray Tracing and GPU Tuning

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 arrives on PC as one of the strangest entries the series has ever seen. On the one hand, it is a fast, effects-heavy shooter with all the technical bells and whistles PC players expect in 2025: ray tracing, multiple upscalers, frame generation, detailed graphics menus, and a surprisingly robust benchmark tool.

On the other, its new four-player co-op campaign takes place inside the mind, crams in surreal bosses and supernatural enemies, and often feels so detached from classic Call of Duty structure that many long-time fans ask whether they are even playing the same franchise any more.

If you loved the grounded chaos of the original Modern Warfare games, Black Ops 7 can feel like a different universe entirely. The campaign has scored solid review scores for its mechanics and spectacle, yet its identity is divisive. You are not trudging through war-torn streets following a grizzled squad leader; you are running through mental constructions, facing bizarre enemies, and tackling huge boss encounters that look more like an action-horror hybrid than a military shooter. For some players it is a bold reinvention. For others, it is a flashy distraction stapled onto the Call of Duty logo.

However, this piece is not a story critique. This is a deep dive into how Black Ops 7 actually runs on PC: which GPUs hit 60 fps and beyond, which settings matter, how AMD and Nvidia stack up, how aggressive ray tracing is on performance, and whether those new AI-powered reconstruction features are worth toggling on. The short version: the game is technically impressive, extremely scalable, and brutal when you turn everything to the max with ray tracing reflections. With careful tuning, though, both high-end and mid-range rigs can enjoy smooth, high-refresh gameplay.

The IW 9.0 engine and what it means for PC players

Black Ops 7 is built on the latest evolution of Infinity Ward’s long-running engine, now commonly referred to as IW 9.0. This tech stack traces its roots all the way back to the early days of the series, when the developers forked id Tech 3 and started customising it for cinematic, high-tempo shooters. Over the years, that codebase has been refined, rewritten, and modernised repeatedly. At this point, it shares little with its origin besides a genealogy chart, but the heritage shows in how responsive the gunplay feels and how aggressively the engine targets high frame rates.

On PC, IW 9.0 brings modern rendering features: advanced physically based materials, complex volumetrics, improved water simulation, shadow improvements, and of course ray tracing for reflections. The engine also exposes a huge amount of control to the player. Rather than hiding everything behind a couple of presets, Black Ops 7 gives you detailed control over resolution, scaling, upscalers, frame generation, and individual visual toggles. That depth cuts both ways. Enthusiasts will love it; casual players might feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of sliders and acronyms.

Graphics menus explained: Display, Quality, View and Benchmark

The graphics options are split across four main sections: Display, Quality, View, and a built-in Benchmark. Learning what lives where is the first step to optimising your performance.

The Display tab handles the fundamentals. Here you select display mode (fullscreen, borderless, windowed), choose which monitor Black Ops 7 should use, pick the GPU if you have more than one, and set refresh rate and resolution. You can lock the aspect ratio, tweak gamma, and adjust the brightness curve. Nvidia Reflex low latency support is present, letting supported GeForce cards shave off a bit of input lag, which is always welcome in a competitive shooter.

Below the basic screen parameters, you will find power and frame limiting controls. There are pre-made modes focused on efficiency and low power consumption, which adjust v-sync behaviour in menus and gameplay, cap frame rates, and lower menu render resolution. If you are running on a laptop or a power-limited desktop, these modes can keep your GPU from constantly slamming into its power limit just sitting in the lobby. A custom set of sliders lets you define your own frame rate caps for gameplay, menus, and cutscenes, and you can flag the game to pause rendering or drop quality when the window is not in focus.

High Dynamic Range support is also tuned under Display. HDR can be left on automatic or manually calibrated with proper black and white point settings for your display. When dialled in, highlights like explosions and muzzle flashes punch harder, while darker scenes retain more detail than with standard dynamic range.

The Quality tab is where things get serious. Instead of a single generic preset, the game offers global quality profiles ranging from Minimum and Basic up to Balanced, Ultra, and Extreme. These presets adjust a long list of individual settings at once: texture resolution and filtering, depth of field, particle effects, shadow quality, volumetrics, water, terrain, deferred physics, weather grids, screen-space reflections and lighting, and more. In practice, the difference between Ultra and Extreme is subtle, while dropping all the way down to Basic or Minimum visibly strips away detail and density. Most players will be very comfortable living between Balanced and Ultra.

Render resolution and dynamic resolution scaling are controlled in this menu as well. You can run native resolution, set a static resolution scale, or let the game dynamically lower internal resolution to hold a target frame rate. On top of that, Black Ops 7 supports an unusually complete set of upscalers and sharpeners: Nvidia DLAA and DLSS, Nvidia Image Scaling, AMD FSR 1, FSR 3.1.5, FSR 4, Intel XeSS, plus FidelityFX CAS. Once enabled, you can pick between quality modes, adjust sharpness, and for DLSS specifically you can choose whether the game uses a classic CNN model or the newer Transformer-based model for reconstruction.

Frame generation sits just below those options. Black Ops 7 supports GPU-based frame generation via FSR 3, FSR 4, and DLSS. Nvidia users get access to multi-frame generation modes that can push up to a 4x effective frame rate, which is particularly useful for owners of 4K high-refresh monitors hunting for well over 200 fps. There are also controls for VRAM scale target and variable rate shading, giving you the option to reduce memory pressure and shading cost in a way that is less visually obvious than simply brute forcing low presets.

The heavy hitter within Quality is ray traced reflections. The game offers a simple trio of options: off, low, or high. In practice, even the low preset is demanding, particularly at higher resolutions. Ray traced reflections affect a wide variety of surfaces, especially in wet or glossy environments, and can add visual richness. But as we will see, they come with the steepest performance penalty in the entire menu.

Next, the View tab is aimed squarely at comfort and competitive play. Field of view starts at 90 degrees but can be pushed up to 120, which many PC players prefer for better spatial awareness. Camera and motion blur controls live here too. You can separately adjust world motion blur and weapon motion blur, or turn them off entirely if you want a crisp, no-frills image that is easier to parse during intense firefights.

Finally, there is the built-in Benchmark menu. Black Ops 7 includes an internal test that runs a one-minute sequence and outputs detailed performance statistics for your chosen settings. Oddly, you need to be in Multiplayer mode to launch it, which feels unnecessary, but once you know where to click it is a very handy tool. If you are experimenting with new GPUs or moving from native rendering to upscaling, this benchmark is an easy way to compare changes without trying to replicate live match scenarios every time.

Test setup and methodology

For this analysis we used a high-end PC to remove CPU bottlenecks as much as possible and expose the raw scaling between graphics cards and settings. The system was built around an Intel Core i9 13900K installed on an MSI MEG Z790 ACE motherboard, paired with 32 GB of fast DDR5 7600 memory using CL36 timings. This kind of configuration is overkill for most players, but it gives the GPUs room to stretch their legs and makes differences more meaningful.

Driver versions were up to date at the time of testing: Nvidia 581.80, AMD 25.11.1, and Intel 32.0.101.8250 for the Arc card. These are important details because new Call of Duty launches often receive quick driver hotfixes, and performance on day one can look very different from performance a few weeks later.

We focused on the in-game Extreme preset as a baseline, then layered ray tracing and various upscaling and frame generation combinations on top. Tests were run at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K native resolutions, with and without ray tracing, and then repeated with DLSS or FSR and frame generation enabled where available. Our goal was to answer a simple question for each resolution tier: which cards can deliver a solid 60 fps or more, and what changes do you need to make if you want to push into very high refresh territory at 120 fps and beyond.

Visual presets and ray tracing: where the frames go

Before talking individual GPU results, it is worth understanding how much visual quality shifts when you swap between presets. On Black Ops 7, the jump from Balanced to Ultra to Extreme is surprisingly modest in real game play, especially in the heat of combat. Texture detail, particle density, and subtle lighting changes improve as you climb, but the overall look is similar. Only when you hit the lighter Basic and Minimum presets do you see obvious cuts in environment detail, shadow resolution, and environmental effects that make the game start looking flat and older than it is.

Ray tracing, however, is a night-and-day switch in terms of performance. Using Extreme as a reference, enabling high ray traced reflections can drop frame rates by close to a factor of three in the most demanding 4K scenarios. In other words, if a configuration is doing around 150 fps without RT, you may be looking at roughly 50 fps once you flip RT reflections to high. Even the low RT preset does not buy you a huge amount of performance back compared to high; it remains a significant GPU load. If you are an esports-focused player chasing 144 or 240 Hz consistency, RT is the first setting you should consider disabling.

4K performance: who can actually handle native 2160p

At 4K with the Extreme preset and no ray tracing, Black Ops 7 is surprisingly kind to modern high-end hardware. GPUs in the class of a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti or an RTX 5060 Ti and above are able to push beyond 60 fps without resorting to upscaling. At the top of the stack, cards like the RTX 5090 and RTX 4090 cruise well into the high triple-digit frame rate territory, while the RTX 5080 and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT sit not far behind. In fact, AMD’s flagship for this generation tracks the RTX 5080 closely at 4K, underlining just how solid AMD’s optimisation is for this title.

Once we enable high ray traced reflections at 4K, the story changes drastically. Even the absolute top-end boards can no longer maintain a locked 60 fps without assistance from upscalers or frame generation. A card that was cruising at over 150 fps on Extreme may land in the mid-50s with RT maxed. Second-tier cards that were comfortably above 60 fps without RT, such as the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB or RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, fall into the low 20s to 30s, making the game feel choppy on high-refresh panels.

The solution at 4K is straightforward: if you insist on ray tracing, you should also plan on using DLSS, FSR, or XeSS, and ideally frame generation. Quality-mode DLSS or FSR combined with frame generation can restore playability on mid- and high-tier cards, while the very top of the stack can return to 100 fps or more. AMD’s RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 XT benefit strongly from FSR 4 with frame generation, bringing them neck and neck with equivalent Nvidia cards even under heavy RT workloads.

1440p performance: the sweet spot for most players

At 1440p with Extreme quality and no ray tracing, Black Ops 7 opens the door much wider. Many more GPUs can deliver a locked or nearly locked 60 fps, and high-refresh performance becomes realistic outside the ultra high-end. Cards like the RTX 4060 and RX 9060 XT can sustain 60+ fps at native resolution, while the midrange GeForce models and AMD’s newer Radeons simply chew through the game. High-end options such as the RTX 5090, 4090, 5080, and RX 9070 XT routinely break into the 150 to 200 fps range at this resolution, even before upscaling.

With ray traced reflections enabled on high, 1440p remains demanding but not as brutal as 4K. A strong upper midrange GPU like an RTX 5070 or RTX 5070 Ti, or an RX 9070 XT, can still land roughly around or above the 60 fps mark. Step below that, and you will want to lean on DLSS, FSR, or XeSS to avoid noticeable dips. The Arc B580 card, while playable at 1440p without RT, shows its limits once you stack on ray tracing, hanging around the lower end of acceptable frame rates.

For many PC players, 1440p is the practical sweet spot. The image is substantially cleaner than 1080p on larger monitors but far less punishing than 4K. If you combine 1440p with a balanced preset, RT off, and a subtle quality-mode upscaler, you can often hit three-figure frame rates even on mainstream GPUs, which is exactly what you want for multiplayer and Warzone.

1080p performance: high fps for almost everyone

At 1080p on the Extreme preset without ray tracing, Black Ops 7 is outright easy for most modern GPUs. Even entry-level cards like the RTX 5060 or Intel’s Arc B580 can achieve 60 fps or higher, while the midrange and above blast far beyond 100 fps. Top-tier cards such as the RTX 5090, 4090, and RX 9070 XT reach into the 200 fps range. At that point, the bottleneck often shifts away from the GPU towards CPU limitations or game engine constraints, particularly in less chaotic scenes.

Turning ray tracing to high at 1080p still costs a lot of frames, but because the base frame rate is so high, the end result is much more forgiving. GPUs in the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and RX 9060 XT tier and above can maintain or surpass 60 fps even with RT enabled. On cards like the RTX 4060, RT at 1080p is technically usable but not ideal if you are sensitive to dips below your monitor’s refresh rate. Once again, image reconstruction and frame generation can bridge the gap, though many competitive-focused players will prefer RT off and a pristine, latency-friendly native or DLAA image.

Upscaling, frame generation, and why they matter in this game

Black Ops 7 might be one of the better showcases of modern upscaling and frame generation technology to date. The combination of DLSS or FSR with frame generation can deliver performance uplifts around 80 percent over native rendering, sometimes even more, without turning the image into a blurry mess. On top-tier cards like the RTX 5090, multi-frame generation modes can push effective frame rates to well above 250 fps at 4K, which is overkill for many screens but a genuine treat for owners of the latest 4K 240 Hz OLED panels.

On the midrange, these technologies are less about showing off silly numbers and more about making ray tracing viable and smoothing out the experience in heavy firefights. If you are on a card like an RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 5060 Ti, or RX 9060 XT, running the game at your monitor’s native resolution with a quality-mode upscaler and frame generation on is a smart default. You get near-native image quality with a substantial fps boost, and because Black Ops 7 is so fast-paced, the occasional reconstruction artefact is far less noticeable than in a slow, cinematic third-person game.

The key is to treat frame generation as a tool, not magic. You still want a reasonable base frame rate, ideally above 60 fps, before enabling the tech. The AI-generated frames smooth motion and increase perceived fluidity, but they do not fix deep stuttering caused by CPU hitches or insufficient VRAM. In that sense, Black Ops 7 behaves like other modern games that have embraced these technologies: they are incredibly helpful, but only once the basics are in order.

VRAM usage: how much memory do you really need?

Black Ops 7’s VRAM appetite is serious but not outrageous by current triple-A standards, provided you understand what each combination of settings is doing. At 1080p with Extreme quality and no ray tracing, usage is just under 9 GB on a high-end card. Bumping up to 1440p with the same settings nudges VRAM use a bit higher, hovering around the low 9 GB range and creeping toward 10 GB once you start layering in heavier effects.

The real jump occurs at 4K with ray tracing enabled and upscalers set to higher quality modes. In those scenarios, peak VRAM usage can rise into the 12 to 14 GB bracket on a high-end card. In one of the most demanding configurations, combining Extreme quality, high RT reflections, and quality DLSS at 2160p saw VRAM allocation climb above 14 GB. That does not necessarily mean the game is fully saturating that memory at all times, but it does mean 8 GB cards are clearly operating with far less headroom and may need slightly trimmed settings to avoid streaming hiccups over longer sessions.

For most players, a 12 GB or 16 GB GPU is the sweet spot for running Black Ops 7 at higher resolutions and quality levels without obsessing over every slider. That said, careful tuning and the numerous power-saving and streaming options in the menus can still deliver a great experience on 8 GB boards, provided you are comfortable using Balanced presets, avoiding ultra-heavy RT, and leaning on upscaling where needed.

Ray regeneration, ray reconstruction, and the AMD vs Nvidia dynamic

One of the more interesting technical wrinkles in Black Ops 7 is the presence of AMD’s new ray regeneration technology, introduced as part of a Redstone driver update, as well as Nvidia’s competing ray reconstruction approach. Both technologies aim to replace the traditional in-engine denoiser used for ray traced effects with an AI-driven model that cleans up noisy RT data more intelligently and efficiently.

In practice, these AI denoisers deliver cleaner reflections and global illumination with minimal or no performance penalty compared with the older denoising path. Instead of being yet another chunk of overhead, they can actually allow developers to use fewer rays or noisier samples and then let the AI fill in the gaps. In Black Ops 7, that means you can run ray traced reflections with less grain and flicker, particularly in motion, while still relying on upscalers like FSR 4 or DLSS to handle the resolution side of the equation.

On the AMD side, Radeon RX 9000 series owners are well-positioned. The RX 9070 XT matches or slightly surpasses the RTX 5080 at 1080p and 1440p, and stays close at 4K. The RX 9060 XT punches well above its weight against cards like the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, especially once FSR 4 with frame generation and ray regeneration is enabled. AMD’s driver work for this title is clearly solid. Plenty of players online joke that the game does not run particularly well on either vendor, or that it simply runs worse on Nvidia, but in our controlled testing AMD’s newer cards genuinely look strong here.

That has not stopped the usual flame wars from erupting across forums and comment sections. Some Nvidia owners argue that their cards are mostly decompressing assets instead of properly flexing their RT hardware, joking about 5070 Ti boards pulling almost 200 watts just to sit at middling frame rates. Others mock older discussions where a Radeon 6900 XT briefly beat an RTX 4090 in specific Call of Duty benchmarks from previous years, calling them good times now that the hierarchy has shifted again.

The truth is more mundane. Black Ops 7 is a heavy, forward-looking game that leans hard on RT and high-quality assets, and both AMD and Nvidia have their strengths and weak spots. This is not a title where a single driver revision magically flips the script completely. What does matter is using the tools on offer: modern upscalers, AI denoisers, frame generation, and smart settings, rather than locking everything to Extreme and RT high and then declaring one vendor trash because the numbers do not match your expectations.

Campaign design, online quirks, and what it feels like to play

Outside of pure performance, the campaign itself is likely to be just as controversial as the AMD vs Nvidia debates. The entire structure is built around four-player co-op, and that design choice bleeds into every corner of the experience. Teammates can be heard chatting over cutscenes, which absolutely kills the pacing and atmosphere for anyone hoping for a traditional single-player narrative. More frustrating is the online-only nature of the campaign, the lack of conventional checkpoints, and a no-activity timeout that can boot you from a session even if you simply pause for longer than the game expects.

From a purely technical standpoint, the campaign runs well once your settings are sorted. From a design standpoint, it feels like a title that prioritised co-op spectacle and engagement metrics over classic single-player structure. It does not feel like the campaigns that built the franchise’s reputation. Ironically, if you approach it as a separate, non-Call-of-Duty co-op action game set in a weird mental dimension, it becomes easier to enjoy what it actually does well: responsive gunplay, slick boss fights, and visually dense set pieces.

Developers at Treyarch have acknowledged parts of the backlash, and there are hints that future updates may soften some of the harshest edges around disconnects and online requirements. But as it stands today, if you want a focused single-player story with the old-school structure, Black Ops 7’s campaign is going to feel off. If your primary interest is multiplayer and Warzone, on the other hand, then the campaign’s quirks may not matter much at all, and your priority will naturally shift back to frame rates and competitive responsiveness.

Community reactions: memes, trolling, and real concerns

As with any modern Call of Duty launch, the community reaction around Black Ops 7’s PC performance has been a mix of genuine technical discussion, colourful trolling, and full-on meme warfare. Some players insist that the game simply runs badly on Nvidia, arguing that AMD is the only way to get respectable frame rates with ray tracing on. Others roll their eyes and claim that it does not really run particularly well on AMD either, it just runs worse on Nvidia, turning the whole debate into a blame-the-driver circus.

There are posts joking that the game is less rendering frames and more decompressing assets, pointing at power readouts of roughly 190 watts on certain midrange cards as if that alone proves some conspiracy. Users share comparison screenshots mocking allegedly terrible low settings and chase laughs with side-by-side meme images captioned with things like Nvidia 2002 vs Radeon 2025, exaggerating differences for comedic effect more than real analysis.

At the same time, a lot of the commentary hits on real issues. People are noticing that the visual difference between low and high settings in many modern titles, including Black Ops 7, is not as dramatic as it used to be, which makes some wonder why they should pay such a steep performance cost for largely subtle improvements. Others correctly point out that ray tracing remains a heavyweight feature; it is a resource hog by nature, and without reconstruction and aggressive optimisation it will always chew through performance.

Some predict that online campaigns will eventually appear demanding apologies from both AMD and Activision for perceived performance shortcomings on Nvidia cards. That kind of reaction is probably inevitable in a landscape where social media amplifies every grievance. In reality, the situation is more balanced: the game is demanding but fair, AMD has done particularly well this time with its latest Radeons, Nvidia continues to lead in the maturity of its upscaling and frame generation ecosystem, and most PC players can get a great experience with a few minutes of sensible tweaking.

Practical recommendations

Putting everything together, the path to a smooth Black Ops 7 experience on PC is clear, even if the menu maze is not. If you are playing at 1080p, start with the Balanced or Ultra preset, turn off ray tracing, make sure motion blur is off or reduced, set your field of view where you like it, and only bring in upscaling if you want to push your frame rate significantly above 100 fps. Most midrange cards will handle this easily.

At 1440p, treat Balanced or Ultra without RT as your default baseline, and allow yourself to use DLSS, FSR, or XeSS in quality mode if your GPU dips below your monitor’s refresh rate. Turn on frame generation if your base frame rate is already healthy and you want even smoother motion. Consider ray tracing only if you have a strong upper midrange or high-end GPU and are willing to trade some responsiveness for extra eye candy.

At 4K, be realistic. Extreme with ray traced reflections on high and no upscaling is a tech demo for the very top cards, not a sensible configuration for everyday play. If you are on anything below the halo tier, treat upscaling and frame generation as standard tools, not compromises, and keep RT in check. With those constraints, Black Ops 7 becomes what it should be on PC: a fast, brutal, visually rich shooter that rewards careful tuning and makes full use of the latest GPU features from both AMD and Nvidia.