I've been playing my COD in the window mode for a few days now. In addition to being able to easily do other stuffs on the computer while I wait to respawn (and I die a lot, so it's nice), I've been getting a much better FPS. Soooooo, I thought I'd put this out there for all our low FPS friends.
And I'm talking about
actually low, not "ugh, I'm only getting like 80 frames a second".
Before changing it to the window, I would get about 15-30 FPS. Now, I'm getting between 30-90 FPS. Things seem to move a lot faster!
I'm playing on the smallest window (or the lowest resolution), the 640x480 or whatever it is. The image is pretty clear (or as clear as it will get with all the settings turned down) and the window is pretty small.
< Click for almost full size.
That's how it looks on the desktop, kinda small. Could probably stand to have it a bit bigger (i.e. higher resolution).
With it being so small, the text you can see at the middle bottom is a little distorted but the chat is fine, and it can be hard to see things in the distance. In the screenshot, the spectatee is standing on the roof on Broadcast looking at that sniper building. I don't think anyone's there...
The SS isn't as clear as I saw it, it's only 1024xSomething and my desktop is 1440xSomething, but you get the idea.
Anyway, it's something to try if your game seems a little jumpy due to low FPS. I don't know if there's a way to switch to window mode in the options menu, I didn't see one at least. You can do it through the console.
If you want to see how it looks:Press the tilde key ( ~ ) to open the console.
Type
/r_fullscreen 0 and press Enter.
Type
/vid_restart and press Enter.
That will refresh everything and apply your new setting. You can do it on the menu screen or even while you're dead and waiting, it shouldn't kick you out. After that, you can change the screen resolution by going to
Options > Graphics > Video Mode at the top. The lower the resolution, the smaller the window.
If you hate it and want to go back:Press the tilde key to open the console.
Type
/r_fullscreen 1 and press Enter.
Type
/quit and press Enter.
The vid_restart doesn't quite work to refresh it, so you'll have to exit the game (/quit) and restart it.