TL;DR: If you played Call of Duty: Vanguard on PC, you should probably expect similar performance from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II open beta. Activision has raised the CPU recommendations somewhat but maintained the same GPU requirements as Vanguard.
Activision and Infinity Ward recently released the system requirements for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II open multiplayer beta, which starts this weekend. Customers who pre-ordered the game can play the early access beta now, but it will be open to everyone for free from September 24 to September 26. There is a chance the system requirements could change before the full release on October 28, but any differences likely won’t be drastic.
Like last year’s Call of Duty: Vanguard, the Modern Warfare II beta requires at least an Nvidia GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470 GPU. However, Activision recommends a GTX 1060 or RX 580 for better performance. While Vanguard’s CPU suggestions hung onto the ancient and venerable i5-2500K, Modern Warfare II seems to have moved on, requiring later-generation processors.
Activision didn’t indicate what resolution or framerate goals the specs are supposed to meet. The company also didn’t mention upscaling options like DLSS or FSR, but the full release is likely to include them since DLSS has appeared in the last three COD games, and Vanguard also supported FSR.
The beta requires only 25GB of storage. The whole game will likely need much more space with all game modes installed. The rest of the system requirements are as follows:
Minimum Specs for the Public Beta:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3570 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470
- Video Memory: 3GB
- RAM: 8GB RAM
Recommended Specs for the Public Beta:
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K or AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580
- Video Memory: 6GB
- RAM: 16GB RAM
The settings include master volume, stick sensitivity, mouse sensitivity, and brightness by default. Activision also explained that the beta’s settings menu has a few additional options, including a quick menu where players can save up to 15 settings for easy access in or out of a match.
Modern Warfare II will also allow users to search for functions in the settings by pressing F while in one of the main menu screens, including the quick menu.
The beta will also include settings for the following:
- Sprint behavior
- Automatic airborne mantle
- Walk speed
- Interact/reload behavior
- Framerate limit
- V-sync
- Cache shadows
- Telemetry
- Blocked players
- Text chat
- Profanity filter
- Gore effects
These additions are a testament to the massive array of options in modern Call of Duty games.
