Modern Warfare 4's PC trailer confirms DLSS 4.5 and a 90 FPS target

Activision has published the Modern Warfare 4 PC trailer alongside a full technical briefing, and it is a more detailed picture than Call of Duty usually gives PC players before launch. Beenox, the studio that leads the franchise's PC work, built this version with Infinity Ward, and the game lands on 23 October for Xbox on PC, Battle.net and Steam.

What's actually going on

The headline number is 800-plus customisation options spanning graphics, gameplay, input devices and interface. The game reads your hardware and configures itself, so the enormous settings list is optional rather than a homework assignment. Display support runs from 1080p through 1440p to 4K and covers ultrawide panels.

Upscaling is hardware-agnostic: AMD FSR Redstone, NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, Intel XeSS 3 and Filmic SMAA T2X are all selectable, and ray tracing is supported across Campaign, Multiplayer and DMZ rather than being locked to one mode. A built-in benchmark runs a simulated multiplayer sequence and reports average frame rate, processor and graphics load, ping and input latency, then breaks the results down per zone with suggestions for what to change.

The performance target is 90 frames per second at Recommended Specs with no manual tweaking. RICOCHET anti-cheat now leans on hardware: TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are mandatory to play on PC, alongside two-factor authentication and email verification. Only Intel and AMD processors with the AVX instruction set are supported at launch.

The features PC players are actually getting

Enhanced FOV is exclusive to PC and uses physically accurate lens effects to widen peripheral vision without changing the centre field of view, which suits players who prefer a tighter centre but still want awareness at the edges. HDR10+ reads your screen's brightness in real time and adjusts contrast and lighting without slider fiddling.

Two smaller changes will matter more to competitive players. Depth of Field splits into separate World and Weapon settings, so a sharper world no longer forces you to lose the aiming effect. Bullets are now fired from the weapon's barrel position rather than a randomised cone of effect, which changes how both aim-down-sights and hipfire behave, and an optional laser attachment shows where those shots are heading.

Loading is being treated as a feature too. Advanced Shader Delivery, previously Shader Preloading, ships precompiled shaders ahead of time through the Xbox PC app so the game starts faster and stutters less after updates. Updates no longer force a restart at game boot, and the menus have been streamlined to get players into matches faster.

Collateral, preloads and pre-orders

The briefing also confirms Collateral, a new Multiplayer mode aimed at Search and Destroy players. Teams alternate between attacking and defending two bomb sites, everyone starts with a pistol and earns cash through kills and objective play to buy armour, perks, equipment and better weapons between rounds. There are no respawns, killstreaks, automatic health regeneration or custom loadouts, and money carries over between rounds even if you die.

On timing, digital pre-orders can preload on PC from 15 October at 9am PT. Campaign Early Access opens on 16 October, and the full launch follows on 23 October. NVIDIA driver 616.56 is listed as the minimum, with an Advanced Shader Delivery compatible driver due on 21 October.

Our opinion

This is the most transparent PC briefing Call of Duty has published in years, and the upscaling list deserves credit: naming FSR Redstone, DLSS 4.5 and XeSS 3 side by side treats PC players as one audience rather than three marketing brackets. The honest caveat is that a 90 FPS target at Recommended Specs is a mid-range promise, not a headline, and the TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirement will quietly retire older rigs that could otherwise still run the game. Bullets firing from the barrel position is the change I would watch most closely, because it alters muscle memory built over a decade of Call of Duty rather than just adding a toggle.