lag/stutter when particle effects present

[Gibovich]

I've been trying to play the campaign but the game goes from a smooth 60fps to 20fps anytime I enter a fire fight, there's a lot of smoke, or particle effects like kicked up snow occurs.

The mod "Call of Duty 2 REMASTERED" fixed this issue through "engine fixes" but that mod proved to be too buggy so I'm wondering if anyone knows how to fix this issue in the base game?

[FIX]: Set "Rendering Method Preference" to Direct X7 and enable "Sync Every Frame" in Graphic options. Apparently COD2 does not handle Direct X9 or 10 well at all.