Introduction

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is the sixteenth entry to arguably the gaming industry's most monetized game franchise. It is a reboot of the similarly named "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" that originally debuted in 2007 to feverish fanfare due to its cinematic, story-driven single-player campaign. While technically a reboot, the new "Modern Warfare" doesn't recycle the original's plot.

Modern Warfare's single player campaign is still a story involving a transatlantic task force, a former Soviet bloc militia, and the Russians, except this time they are the bad guys. In order to track down weapons of mass destruction, CIA and SAS team up with a militia in a fictional Central Asian country named Urzikstan, which has been invaded by Russia. It's not all run-and-gun with Modern Warfare single player. The game also grades you on a "collateral damage" scale at the end of each mission. You are assessed on moral choices you make in combat, such as deciding to kill a civilian-looking NPC you think is reaching for a gun.



Under the hood, Modern Warfare is based on a new engine by Infinity Ward that leverages DirectX 12, with optional NVIDIA RTX real-time ray-tracing support. It's one of the very few titles that ships with RTX on day one. In this performance article, we test Call of Duty Modern Warfare across a selection of recent graphics cards at three resolutions. We also include images that let you compare the visuals and performance impact of RTX.