As you can read in my previous article there are dozens of problems plaguing the latest entry in the Call of Duty franchise on the PC. These vary from heavy stuttering in multiplayer games even on the most capable gaming systems to ridiculously low performance in singleplayer. In this guide I’ll cover several ways to improve your gameplay experience until Treyarch gets around to releasing some comprehensive patches.
The focus of this guide will be on Black Ops’ multiplayer component, because that’s the most crucial part of the game for most players and it’s also where most of the problems are being reported. It’s not a performance guide that covers every possible tweak to get more FPS out of the game, mainly because that’s counter-productive. It’s actually better to get the game running in high detail so that it offloads more work to the graphics card which in turn reduces the multiplayer stuttering caused by heavy CPU load.
Anyway, let’s get to it!
Singleplayer Performance
You will probably encounter unusually low framerates in singleplayer upon first starting the game. This is caused by a configuration file that sees the default values reversed for multi-core processor and multiple graphics card support. As a result it only employs a single processor core and attempts to use two video cards in SLI/Crossfire by default. This is how you manually fix the problem:
- Navigate to the C:/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/call of duty black ops/players folder on your PC.
- Open the config.cfg and config_mp.cfg files with notepad. The former is for singleplayer the latter for multiplayer and they’re generated after starting the respective components.
- Press Ctrl+F and type in the phrase “multi” then search for that phrase.
- Change the value for multiGpu from 1 to 0, unless you have two video cards in a SLI or Crossfire setup.
- Search for the next hit on “multi”.
- Change the value for multithreaded_device from 0 to 1. This will enable multi-core processor support and greatly improve performance.
- Save both config files.
Another commonly mentioned workaround is to put Steam in offline mode. This prevents Steam from hogging your CPU during gameplay, but comes with some major drawbacks like disabling your friends list, Steam community in-game, achievements and zombie co-op mode. It also doesn’t work for multiplayer, because that requires Steam to be in online mode.
At least the new item purchase system and emblems are nice
Multiplayer Stuttering
This is really the main problem that all players are suffering from in Black Ops. There are actually numerous small tweaks you can employ to greatly reduce, but not eliminate, the stuttering in multiplayer. It’s important to understand that these tweaks tackle either the massive CPU load caused by Steam or the improper networking configuration settings shipped with the game, but those are likely mere side-effects of an underlying problem and thus these tweaks can only do so much.
The key change here comes in the form of another tweak to the multiplayer configuration file:
- Navigate to the C:/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/call of duty black ops/players folder on your PC.
- Open the config_mp.cfg file with notepad.
- Press Ctrl+F and type in the phrase “maxpackets” then search for that phrase.
- Set the value for cl_maxpackets to 100.
- Save the config_mp file.
But you definitely also want to employ better process utilization in Task Manager to greatly reduce CPU load. This also works for singleplayer performance as an alternative to putting Steam in offline mode:
- After starting the game press Alt + Tab or Alt + Esc to get back to your desktop.
- Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to open your Task Manager and navigate to the Processes tab.
- Find the Steam.exe process, right click and set the priority to Low.
- While you’re at it set the Steam.exe process’ affinity to a single core.
- Find the Black Ops process, right click and set the priority to Higher than Normal.
- Exit Task Manager and Alt + Tab back into your game.
Some people also claim that disabling Steam Community In-Game or Steam Cloud Synchronization for Black Ops can greatly reduce this stuttering, but in my experience these changes have had no effect other than being very inconvenient. Should you wish to try it then you can access these settings in the properties menu found by right clicking on Call of Duty: Black Ops in your Steam game library.
Similarly people have claimed to fix the stuttering issue by setting their sound card to 24 bits, 48KHz or by going into their Nvidia Driver 3D settings and turning pre-rendered frames down from 3 to 0. Again these fixes seem to work for a very small percentage of people, whereas a majority (myself included) see no or very little effect. They’re still well worth giving a go in the name of stutter reduction. Who knows, you might get lucky.
After tweaking it a bit Black Ops plays a lot better and it's much easier to get those killstreaks
No matter how many tweaks you employ, there will almost certainly remain some stuttering until Treyarch comes out with a comprehensive update for the game. Until then these changes should tide you over well enough to have a perfectly smooth singleplayer experience and marginally playable multiplayer component. I’ll continue to update this with more potential fixes as I find them, so bookmark this guide if you want to stay updated.
Performance Update!
GameServers.com has just deployed a new update for its dedicated servers which sets the rate value on these servers to the correct value of 25000. This results in much smoother gameplay with only minimal stuttering for most players, but the servers need to be restarted before the changes take effect so only a few servers actually benefit from this update thus far.
I’ve also stumbled across another major performance improvement workaround in the game’s configuration files. This works for both single- and multiplayer, but requires that you know your system specifications. This will greatly improve your performance and can slightly reduce stuttering:
- Navigate to the C:/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/call of duty black ops/players folder on your PC.
- Open the config_mp.cfg file with notepad. You can also open the config.cfg file to apply these changes for singleplayer.
- Press Ctrl + F and search for “configureGHz”.
- Set the value of configureGHz to your processor’s clock speed in GHz.
- Set the value of sys_sysMB to your system’s total RAM in MB.
- Save the file.
- Right click on the config_mp.cfg file and open Properties.
- Set the file to Read Only and apply changes.
Update 11 November
Treyarch just released a new patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops that greatly reduces the stuttering in multiplayer. There’s still a bit of stuttering being reported here and there, but it’s much better and now actually playable without too much tweaking. They still need to take a look at the broken menus, friends system and dedicated servers but it’s actually fun to play now that the game plays smoothly.
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Thanks! Worked a treat for me!
how does 2.67Gzh convert to a decimal in that config? I cant figure it out. as 0.0116815 is the default. confuses me.
I have a 2.8GHz processor in my notebook so I set the decimal in that config to 2.8. Similarly you could set it to 2.67. The default values are indeed a tad confusing.
Thanks, worked a great deal for me aswell.
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How about You Have: Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz? Will it work alright with Call of Duty Black Ops on computer?
No, Black Ops will not run well on that processor. The minimum processor is an E6600 according to Treyarch, which pulls ahead of the E2180 on all fronts (clock speed, cache and FSB). I’d get a PC upgrade before purchasing Black Ops if I were you.
Dual core processors generally don’t do well in Black Ops anyway, with only quad core owners reporting truly smooth performance thus far, so I certainly wouldn’t try to play with a dual core processor below minimum specifications.
My specs are:
Intel Core Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
ATI Radeon HD4800 series 1024 mb ddr3
4 gb ram
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
When I check sites like “Can you run it?” it passes all requirments for Black Ops.
Any idea how it’s possible that I still lagg even on low resolution?
The video card definitely isn’t your problem here, because any HD4800 series cards should be able to run the game in maximum detail in resolutions like 1680×1050 just fine, even with some anti-aliasing. So it sounds to me like you’re suffering from the 100% CPU usage ‘bug’ that most people with dual core processors are experiencing.
There are a few tweaks mentioned in the article that you could try. Particularly the singleplayer performance tweak (multithreaded_device in config) and the Ctrl+Alt+Del process priority tweak. Those should improve the playability a great deal.
There are also a few things you could try over here http://gamedrone.net/2010/11/16/7-tips-for-improving-black-ops-pc-performance
I’m thinking of reinstalling Black Ops, defragmenting game files and disabling background software in particular.
Some people are also reporting that disabling all sound improves performance, but that’s likely just because all sound is handled through the CPU nowadays, regardless of whether you’ve got a sound card installed or not.
Treyarch is also reportedly currently QA testing a patch with further CPU optimizations (and a zombie matchmaking fix) that should be out before the weekend. That may well help a great deal in resolving your singleplayer performance problems.
Thanks for the tips. I’m able to play now although it is on 1024*768 which doesn’t look to good. Still a bit laggy when I try to aim really fast, but atleast able to play :)
It’s good to hear that those tweaks helped you out. I hope you’ve had the same experience with Treyarch’s latest patches for Black Ops, which seem to have resolved the final lingering stuttering issues for most players.
[...] As soon as I did that, the game went from stuttery abortion to blazing bad-assery. If you suffer from these problems in singleplayer and multiplayer, this page helped me out a lot. [...]
I’ve done some research on the Black Ops forum and read this thread about how Sound causes the stuttering. And for some reason that is the problem for me, if I turn off all audio devices my FPS is steady. Not really fun to play without sound though…
EDIT: I fixed my problem. I had Realtek audio driver, just uninstalled it and let windows 7 install its own driver. Didn’t have a lot of time to test if it worked, but played one round of S&D on 1680*1050 with AA x16 and no lagg at all :D
Good catch. One of my friends is also reporting that his stuttering ceases when he disables all audio devices, but I’m not sure that it’s working for everyone. Hopefully this is really the underlying problem and there’s something Treyarch can do about it and it’s not just a general outdated driver issue.
My specs are:
Intel Core Duo CPU E8200 @ 2.66GHz
GEforce 9600
3 gb ram
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit
i did all u said above , only 1 problem is , when i change my ghz settings and reopen my cod my screen is at 1024×500 pixels or something.Way to low for my 24″ widescreen so i reset them back to 1920×1600 and it makes a new file with the GHZ form the start etc…
Tried to just run it without changing graphs and still lagging n e ideas what the problem could be?
It’s possible to enforce your preferred resolution in the configuration file as well. Simply look for “r_mode” and replace the value behind that with your resolution, e.g.: r_mode “1920×1080″. This should stop the game from reverting to low resolutions, provided that you’ve actually quit the game prior to editing your configuration files.
In your case the performance problems stem from your system specifications and – to lesser extent – an excessively high monitor resolution. The Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 and Geforce 9600 may have much higher numbers in their names, but they’re practically identical in terms of performance to the absolute minimum specifications listed for Black Ops: the E6600 and Geforce 8600 GT.
This means that Treyarch estimates Black Ops to be playable on your system in minimum detail (everything off or low) while in a manageable resolution. Your resolution is 1920×1080 and that’s anything but manageable for a low-end system. Try setting everything in-game to minimum detail and lowering your resolution to 1280×720. This should make a big difference for your performance.
Also look to this article for some more tips, particularly a few graphics-related configuration file tweaks (like r_glow_allowed and sm_enable) that could really boost your performance: http://gamedrone.net/2010/11/16/7-tips-for-improving-black-ops-pc-performance .
You could also give Stowner’s workaround a try and see how the game runs when you disable sound. To do this right click on the speaker icon in your taskbar, open the playback devices panel and disable all listed audio devices. If that helps then you can simply do as Stowner did in the comment above (uninstall audio drivers and let Windows 7 install its own). Don’t forget to enable your audio devices again afterwards!
Thx for the help or atleast for trying to help :/
Tryed to put everything on lowest quality and still i’m lagging.
Putted my steam on 1 processor and on low and putted my blackops on higher ten normal and it doesn’t work.
Could it be possible it are the servers at some reason?Cuz else i wouldn’t know it anny more.
*EDIT*
“Also look to this article for some more tips, particularly a few graphics-related configuration file tweaks (like r_glow_allowed and sm_enable) that could really boost your performance: http://gamedrone.net/2010/11/16/7-tips-for-improving-black-ops-pc-performance .”
Started to try out this and looks like it’s getting progress.
Getting less lagg ingame so a good point tyvm for the help.
It does look like they’ve broken something again in the latest update. All of a sudden I’m getting a lot of reports from friends on dual core systems that they’re experiencing more stuttering again. Hopefully Treyarch will be able to finally fix it before the year is out, because their focus on marginal console patches when the PC version is broken all to hell is a bit ridiculous.
At least it’s good to know that my performance improvement tips are helping out. The only other thing I could advice would be a hardware upgrade, but that’s a bit expensive for just one game.
I changed video cards and it runs really well but i have a problem, during the loading of each level it takes a really really long time do you know what could be the cause? Also i have done all those 7 tip things on the other page.
also all the menus are really laggy now and when i change settings the whole screen goes yellow and if alt+tab out and back it takes ages to load etc. btw my new video card is nvidia gefore gt 4300 ddr3 1gb
Your PC probably just can’t quite handle Call of Duty: Black Ops.
The Geforce GT430 is at best on-par with the Geforce 8600GT that is the minimum video card on which Black Ops is playable, more likely the GT430 is slightly worse than that. This will not only result in poor in-game performance, but also longer loading times.
There are also a few other possible reasons for long loading times:
- The processor might not be able to handle Black Ops. If it’s an older budget processor then this is quite likely. Black Ops has something against dual core processors.
- It’s possible to add RAM to the system. If you’ve already got 4GB in there then this is futile, but changing it up from 2GB to 4GB will result in faster loading times in games.
- A faster hard disk drive can greatly reduce loading times, but only on systems that already have decent processors and video cards to handle all that data.
well my old video card seemed to load fine but was stuttering in game, i find it weird that this one doesnt stutter in game but is slow load time. Do you think i should switch back and just wait for future updates so my old video will not stutter? Or should i stay with this video card and add 2gb ram, I’m 2gb ram atm.
also since in the place where i edited my ghz and ram mb as you told me to above, i put it as read only is the maybe problem that it is configured for my old video card should i make it not read only?
You should remove the entire configuration file and start the game to let it generate an entirely new file. Then reapply whichever config changes you feel are necessary, which likely means all of them given your hardware.
I would recommend against adding more RAM to your system. The truth is that if a Geforce 430GT video card was an improvement for you, then your processor is likely hopelessly outdated as well. I highly doubt that adding more RAM or a better hard disk to the mix would do much good, because your most vital components (processor and video card – even the new 430GT) just aren’t up to scratch. No amount of game patches, tweaking, additional memory or high performance hard disk drives will do anything about that. Only a complete system overhaul / new PC will.
Black Ops is the most demanding game to date in terms of minimum system specifications. It shouldn’t be, considering the rather outdated graphics and poor texture quality, but it is. It’s also known to be extremely tough on processor performance, far more-so than video card performance, which is why I don’t understand why you decided to upgrade your video card instead.
As to whether you should swap the old video card back in: I can’t comment on that without knowing what type of video card the old one is. There’s nothing to say for either one without knowing the model or the actual performance (that’s the in-game framerate, not “stuttering” or “long load times”) of both cards. Otherwise it’s much like asking someone whether you should use a Nokia or Samsung cellphone for average daily use, but only mentioning that one takes longer to start up and the other takes longer to recharge – not actual specifics like model names, capabilities or available providers – i.e.: an unanswerable question.
my computer specs
amd athlon 64×2 dual core processor 4800+ 2.51ghz 2.00gb ram physical address extension
outdated?
Your system is likely capable of playing any other recent PC game fairly decently in low detail, but not Black Ops.
The minimum specifications list: Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 or better. Your Athlon 64 X2 4800+ processor is significantly slower than these processors, which means that it’ll be impossible to get the game to ever run (or load) comfortably. No amount of tweaking or overclocking will make Black Ops run well… better than it does without tweaking certainly, but not smoothly.
Replacing the most vital components (processor, video card) would be necessary. Unfortunately that won’t be cheap, because you’ll likely need a new motherboard as well to support the new processor’s newer socket and new memory because most modern motherboards only support DDR3 RAM. It may even be necessary to look for a replacement power supply to power the new setup.
You could take a look at this article for the system that I recently put together for some inspiration: http://gamedrone.net/2010/11/29/budget-gaming-pc-q4-2010/
Do note that the setup in that article is fairly high-end for Black Ops, so it’s possible to do things a bit less expensively. Something like a Radeon HD5750 video card, AMD Phenom X4 processor and AM3 motherboard setup should suffice to get Black Ops running quite decently. That’s about 290,- euro in all. (not counting RAM / power supply, which would add roughly another 160,- euro should those be necessary)
I wouldn’t opt for anything less than a quad core processor (Phenom X4 or Core i5/i7) because Black Ops is known to stutter ridiculously even on high-end dual core processors that far outperform the listed minimum system specifications, like the Core 2 Duo E8600.
ok thx =]
I’m having huge problems with running Blops. My system specs are below, and I was wondering if anyone can pinpoint what piece of hardware is causing this.
Processor: Intel Q8200 quadcore 2.33Ghz
Ram: 8GB
Graphics: Radeon HD4670 (512MB?)
I play on all lowest settings, I’ve tweaked the .cfg and have tried disabling sound. Its still very much unplayable and why should I have to do all that nonsense to play a game. Any response would be appreciated.
Do you have this problem in both singleplayer and multiplayer? Your setup should be enough to run Black Ops fairly comfortably in low detail.
If it performs poorly even in singleplayer then I can see two possible reasons why the game might perform poorly:
1. The game files may be excessively fragmented causing unnecessary slowdowns when loading new assets. Try defragmenting the partition with Steam on it (generally C:) and then running the game to see if that helps.
2. The Radeon HD4670 video card is somewhat low-end. But it really should be capable of running Black Ops decently with anti-aliasing turned off and a moderate resolution (1680×1050 or lower). Try updating the video card drivers first and checking in the Catalyst Control Center that anti-aliasing is set to application controlled, then turn anti-aliasing off in-game. If this doesn’t help boost performance either then a video card upgrade may be in order.
You can exclude your processor from the list of suspects by opening Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del) during gameplay to check the CPU usage. If that’s below 80%, which I expect it will be, then you should be fine.
RAM rarely causes poor game performance. The only cases in which this will happen are:
A) The system has just 1GB or 2GB RAM while attempting to play a game that uses a lot of memory. Black Ops is not such a game and you have way more than enough memory.
B) The memory modules are dying, in which case you’ll almost certainly be running into frequent blue screen errors.
Hey i have a Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3GHz
Saphier Radeon HD 4850 Toxic edition
3gb of DDR2 ram
Will my specifications run this game on max because im getting extraordinary lots of lag on these maps only “Havana,Cracked,villa” and it’s really annoying i can play other games on max such as fallout new vegas dead space 2 etc and i can run arma 2 on fairly high settings
The Radeon HD4850 should be fine for running Black Ops maxed out in a reasonable resolution. It’s almost certainly your processor that’s causing the performance drops on those maps, but to be sure you could try running something like RivaTuner or Everest’s CPU monitor overlay during play. Black Ops seems to be primarily CPU dependent – contrary to practically any other modern PC game – and it’s still not very dual-core friendly even after all the patches.
Another, remote, possibility is that it’s being caused by file fragmentation. So before you head off looking for possible CPU upgrades, try simply defragmenting the drive that you’ve installed Black Ops on. It could eliminate, or reduce, the problem.
i have a asus eah 5850 now the in game is perfect but its the 67 to 90 sec map loading times is there anything that can speed it up
The video card doesn’t really matter when it comes to game load times. The key hardware component that determines load times is the hard disk drive.
As such, a few ways to improve load times are:
1. Defragment the hard disk drive.
2. Turn off unnecessary background applications prior to playing. Especially applications that are installed on the same drive as the game.
3. Upgrade to a superior hard disk drive / solid state disk drive.
I’m playing on a third-party brand computer I bought two years ago with an Intel Core2Duo CPU T6500 @ 2.10GHz, 4.0GB RAM, and a nVidia GeForce 9600M GT (512MB I think). I have reinstalled the game multiple times, defragmented my drives, done the tweaks, ensured the latest drivers were installed, and am playing at the lowest settings (including a 800×600 res) and am still lagging/stuttering/whatever. Is this to be expected or is there more I can do? Half the time I’ll be getting a steady FPS, but when bombs start to drop I can’t tell which way I’m turning.
Unfortunately I don’t think there’s much you can do. The video card should be able to barely handle the game at minimum settings, but your processor just isn’t up-to-scratch. It ranks below the minimum system specification (Intel Core 2 Duo E6600) in every possible regard. And Black Ops already doesn’t play comfortably on systems that have processors well above the minimum specification.
The only thing I might suggest is to try to put the game to High priority in Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del – right click on black ops process – priority – high) after you’ve started Black Ops. But I doubt even that will prevent it from stuttering.
There’s also no way to upgrade your system, because you’re using a laptop. The only alternatives then are to either buy a new laptop, buy a new desktop PC, or give up on Black Ops. At this point I highly doubt that they’ll bring out any further patches that will improve the performance.
I’ve made the changes to my config. files, but now when I open multiplayer, the game gets stuck at the opening menu. Task manager has the game listed as not responding. Any idea how I fix this?
You can delete the configuration files and then start Black Ops. It will create new configuration files and should work fine again.
If it hangs on the menu then it probably doesn’t like the changes to configureGHz and sys_sysMB. So after deleting the config and having it recreated, you could implement all the other config file performance fixes and just skip that part and Black Ops MP should work fine.
I deleted the config files as you suggest and didn’t solve the problem. I went back and switched the priority and affinity settings for Bops and steam as they were before and that fixed the problem.
My PC Settings are:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
RAM 2GB
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Video Card GeForce 8500 GT
I tryed BO with skidrow ofc,(dont wanna buy the game, because i know that my video card is shit) but i think with all these links (3 of them)
http://gamedrone.net/2010/11/10/how-to-improve-your-black-ops-experience/
http://gamedrone.net/2010/11/16/7-tips-for-improving-black-ops-pc-performance/
http://gamedrone.net/2010/07/14/6-tweaks-to-optimize-a-fresh-windows-installation/
With these, i think i could play BO almost smoothly with lowest settings, what do you think?
I’m not sure. The tweaking should be able to mostly make up for the video card and RAM, but I doubt it’ll actually be smooth. You’ll probably still experience regular framerate drops.
It also doesn’t help that the minimum processor listed (on the AMD side) is a much lower clocked triple-core Phenom X3. In most situations that would make your dual-core far superior, but Black Ops actually seems to prefer more cores over purely higher clock speeds. As such, I suspect your processor might also be the cause of some performance issues.
You should probably just try to avoid Black Ops until you’ve managed a full system overhaul. I doubt the experience will be particularly enjoyable otherwise.
Thank you for your reply, i’ve tested this on the Skidrow version of Black ops, really grateful for that, because it really helped me :) oh, and by the way, im gonna try it soon on the Steamed version.. but i wanted to ask you one important question… i have JUST A BIT more fps drops when im playing on fullscreen, and if i make the BO to the non full screen, it makes nofps drops at all on lowest settings… so, should i play on fullscreen or no? :)
By the way, this really helps.
If it performs better for you in windowed mode than full screen then you should definitely be playing in windowed mode. If you don’t mind windowed mode that is, I prefer full screen to be honest :p
In some cases windowed mode will give a mild performance boost, but that depends a lot on your system, background applications, etc. If it works for you, then that’s great!
I gave it a go myself and in my case Black Ops actually saw a 5-10 fps performance drop across the board in windowed mode. So I can’t really recommend it for everyone, but in your case: go for it!
what program do you use to measure fps?
I use Fraps, for which you can download a trial version at http://www.fraps.com.
It can be used to display an overlay of your current FPS in a corner of the screen, but also as a benchmarking tool that dumps the frame rate over an extended period of time into a text file.
plz help
Hey, i have a windows vista with Processor: AMD Athlon(tm)64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+. The game is running REALLY slow, and i don’t know what to do? I was thinking about buying a new computer (Gaming Computer) but aren’t they quite expensive? ;)
i dont see call of duty black ops in my steam apss
I have a evga 460GTX 768 DDR5, quad core amd 630 at 2.8ghz, 3 ghz of shitty 400mhz ram.. when i get into the game my fps are like 20 and its running like garbage, but if i stay they will go up to like 40-50 which is still trash for my 460gtx…
@Shane
That’s some pretty wimpy ram. 40-50 is about tops for what I’d expect for a 460GTX. Either ways, sounds like caching issues, add more ram and stop strangling your cpu.
turn on PIXEL WARING in options, load time will be higher, but you wont have to wait taht it goes from 20 fps to 40s few min
PROBLEM:
i have intel i5 2.3 ghz, 8 gig of ram, gt520mx 1gb, win7, all updated
game runs really nice
BUT
when i exit game, my CPU usage is 30% -.- and it stays so until i restart
usualy is 0-2%
on other games when i exit is fine..
i even exit steam, and check under processes if anything from cod or steam runs, but nothing =//