The Witcher 3 runs at 1080p ULTRA ~60 fps on a 980

GOG doesn't have a real client at the moment. They have one in development called Galaxy that I assumed would be ready in time for The Witcher 3 but now I'm not so sure.
 
It's still in the beta.

not bad

bce8vZD.jpg
 
Been toying with the idea of picking up a 2nd 980 and getting a 4K monitor for this game, or should I be content @ 1080p/Ultra on 1 980.
 
Been toying with the idea of picking up a 2nd 980 and getting a 4K monitor for this game, or should I be content @ 1080p/Ultra on 1 980.


I mean 1080p is nice, but 4K is heavenly. I game on a 4k 65" TV and it's hard to go back. So much clarity.
 
Been toying with the idea of picking up a 2nd 980 and getting a 4K monitor for this game, or should I be content @ 1080p/Ultra on 1 980.

I was going to get two 980s as well, but PCGAF informed me about the issues of SLI gaming and talked me out of it. Titan wasn't announced then, otherwise I would have gotten that one. But now that I have a 980, I'm going to wait until the next gen cards come out (Pascal) that are supposed to have HBM (better than GDDR5). These cards would likely be faster than a Titan X, and likely have more memory too. They should also be a lot more cheaper as well. Two 980s will likely run out of memory at 4K.

So, either get a Titan X, or wait for Pascal cards.
 
I was going to get two 980s as well, but PCGAF informed me about the issues of SLI gaming and talked me out of it. Titan wasn't announced then, otherwise I would have gotten that one. But now that I have a 980, I'm going to wait until the next gen cards come out (Pascal) that are supposed to have HBM (better than GDDR5). These cards would likely be faster than a Titan X, and likely have more memory too. They should also be a lot more cheaper as well. Two 980s will likely run out of memory at 4K.

So, either get a Titan X, or wait for Pascal cards memory.

This is really good advice and all those wondering what to do in a similar situation should listen to it.
 
I have a 670 and I'm tempted to buy a 980 to play witcher 3, just debating if $486 is worth it. I want so badly to play at 1080p 60fps and sadly my PS4 and X1 wont do it. excited
 
I mean 1080p is nice, but 4K is heavenly. I game on a 4k 65" TV and it's hard to go back. So much clarity.
What's your setup for this? I've seriously been considering upgrading to a 4k TV with a GPU capable of 4k and high/ultra settings. We're at a bad point in the GPU cycle for me to invest that much at this point though.
 
I hope this runs ok on a gtx 970 at 1440p... Anything above 50fps at high/very high no AA and I'll be pleased.

Why am I currently looking at a Titan X... I hope I don't do something stupid.

I went and read the anandtech Titan X review the other day too. Lol. But then I read the 970 review and a lot of games perform ok at 1440p so here's hoping it plays fine.
 
I was going to get two 980s as well, but PCGAF informed me about the issues of SLI gaming and talked me out of it. Titan wasn't announced then, otherwise I would have gotten that one. But now that I have a 980, I'm going to wait until the next gen cards come out (Pascal) that are supposed to have HBM (better than GDDR5). These cards would likely be faster than a Titan X, and likely have more memory too. They should also be a lot more cheaper as well. Two 980s will likely run out of memory at 4K.

So, either get a Titan X, or wait for Pascal cards.


What issues did they talk you out of it with?


Just ordered a second 970 FTW, gets here Friday. From what I've seen their performance at 4k is great, far superior to a single 980. My current 970 gets me by on most all games at 4K, some at 1440p. Just wanted an addition boost for TW3.

Only older game so far that inexplicabley destroys my GPU at 4K is Company of Heroes.
 
What issues did they talk you out of it with?


Just ordered a second 970 FTW, gets here Friday. From what I've seen their performance at 4k is great, far superior to a single 980. My current 970 gets me by on most all games at 4K, some at 1440p. Just wanted an addition boost for TW3.

Only older game so far that inexplicabley destroys my GPU at 4K is Company of Heroes.

I've read about issues with SLI like microstuttering as well as game incompatibility. I believe I also saw people discuss SLI issues in the GTA V performance thread. That kinda scares me. But SLI seems to be the best way of achieving high quality 4K and without spending a crazy $1400 on a Titan X...
 
What issues did they talk you out of it with?


Just ordered a second 970 FTW, gets here Friday. From what I've seen their performance at 4k is great, far superior to a single 980. My current 970 gets me by on most all games at 4K, some at 1440p. Just wanted an addition boost for TW3.

Only older game so far that inexplicabley destroys my GPU at 4K is Company of Heroes.

Yeah, basically what plasticpassion said. The idea was to get the best single card possible and then upgrade with a new single best card every 2-3 years. It seems like a sound policy. Also means there are less cards to worry about selling. Single card setups will also be more cooler and quieter. Hit up the PCGAF thread if you want more details.

I don't think the current GPU tech is there yet for a single card to support 4K at 60 fps+ for every game. Once a card can do 90 fps for 90% of the games at 4K, that'd be the time to pull the trigger imo. Probably be the time I'll get a 4K tv. The next Pascal cards might deliver on this.
 
Yeah, basically what plasticpassion said. The idea was to get the best single card possible and then upgrade with a new single best card every 2-3 years. It seems like a sound policy. Also means there are less cards to worry about selling. Single card setups will also be more cooler and quieter. Hit up the PCGAF thread if you want more details.

I don't think the current GPU tech is there yet for a single card to support 4K at 60 fps+ for every game. Once a card can do 90 fps for 90% of the games at 4K, that'd be the time to pull the trigger imo. Probably be the time I'll get a 4K tv. The next Pascal cards might deliver on this.


Ah fair enough. Yeah I've known about that.


I was definitely a single card guy before, always would rather wait on the next best single card, but I bought a 970 FTW just to get my foot in the door with 4K while I wait for the next big card.

However I found that I REALY like 4K gaming. So much so that the Witcher 3 hype had me impulse buy a second 970 FTW just in the hopes of Ultra @30fps 4K.

Haven't bought a card for the hype of one game since Half Life 2.

Seriously.
 
Only older game so far that inexplicabley destroys my GPU at 4K is Company of Heroes.

CoH2 has major performance issues even on beastly rigs. And it doesn't have the looks to show for it. It runs better on AMD cards, from memory. But the general consensus is basically that it's badly coded. Based on THQs finances over the majority of the game's development, they probably had to fire their coder halfway through and get an intern to finish it off.
 
SLI 980s aren't going to play any new game at 4k/60 FPS unless you turn a bunch of settings down.

I game at 1440p with SLI 980s.
 
Ah fair enough. Yeah I've known about that.


I was definitely a single card guy before, always would rather wait on the next best single card, but I bought a 970 FTW just to get my foot in the door with 4K while I wait for the next big card.

However I found that I REALY like 4K gaming. So much so that the Witcher 3 hype had me impulse buy a second 970 FTW just in the hopes of Ultra @30fps 4K.

Haven't bought a card for the hype of one game since Half Life 2.

Seriously.

Haha I can understand. I built an expensive gaming rig mainly for Witcher 3 (and a small push from Ori and the Blind Forest). Even after having rationalized it all, I still end up looking at Titan X prices from time to time lol.
 
I get 1080p60 in GTA 5 on very high settings with my 780, DA:I also runs above 1080p30, so I wouldnt worry that much about Witcher 3

Share with us your foul magic. 980 cats are complaining like hell in the PC performance thread, so I'm really interested to see how you got it to run that well on a 780.
 
Lol, I love threads like this that consist almost entirely of "my system is XYZ, I wonder how it will do???".

OT, my system is i5-2500k @ 4.2 / 8GB / GTX970 I wonder how it will do?? :\
 
Lol, I love threads like this that consist almost entirely of "my system is XYZ, I wonder how it will do???".

OT, my system is i5-2500k @ 4.2 / 8GB / GTX970 I wonder how it will do?? :\

As tech lead / CFO for Graphics Corp. I can tell you that you'll get an average of 44,32 FPS. I'm well versed in the latest computer graphics technology, as I frequent several forums and RSS feeds.
 
True, but 1080p isn't really the resolution PC gamers with high end cards aim for.

I have a 5960x/980 rig run a 1080p monitor on it for 120-240fps {lovely eizo monitors} purposes, I also have a 1440p and 4k monitor I run off of it, but I won't lie and say I don't prefer to play 1080p and drop some settings for competitive play in first person play with 120-240 high frame rate with that rig. There's some people out there like me who like to have that high frame rate at your standard HD res for a competitive edge.

that being said this game isn't competitive but I'll probably play it at 1080p anyways because i compete on that resolution a ton that im used to it, and I'd expect the newest games to be developed on what latest hardware was available to then at the time so if I was gonna expect any better I should be buying a 980ti/390x or dropping in a second card.
 
What issues did they talk you out of it with?


Just ordered a second 970 FTW, gets here Friday. From what I've seen their performance at 4k is great, far superior to a single 980. My current 970 gets me by on most all games at 4K, some at 1440p. Just wanted an addition boost for TW3.

Only older game so far that inexplicabley destroys my GPU at 4K is Company of Heroes.

Theres additional heat issues, noise, power, heavy reliance on game specific SLI drivers.

Are you going to be playing at 4k with those 970s? The 3.5GB VRAM could bring some issues...
 
Theres additional heat issues, noise, power, heavy reliance on game specific SLI drivers.

Are you going to be playing at 4k with those 970s? The 3.5GB VRAM could bring some issues...

Indeed, noise shouldn't be an issue since my PC is actually in a different room than the one I game in, I am able to keep the fan cranked on my current 970.

Yes, I play at 4K now on my single 970 FTW. The only games I have had to drop down to 1440p so far are Crysis 3 Maxed and Company of Heroes maxed.


So far I have played Bioshock 1-2-Infinite, Portal 2, Dishonored, Far Cry 3, Alien Isolation, The Witcher 2, Dead Space 2, Crysis Warhead, Battlefield 3, Batman Arkham City, Dues Ex Missing Link, Homeworld Remastered, Rage, Mirrors Edge, Splinter Cell Blacklist, Civ V, and Titanfall all at 4K and maxed or near maxed on my card at 4K without issue.

Looking at benches of the difference in benchmark performance between a single 980 @ 1080p/4k vs 970's SLI @ 1080p/4K it looks like I should be able to obtain 30fps Ultra Settings at 4K in TW3; unless, as you mentioned, VRAM becomes an issue, which has yet to happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlCdEK8uQ4U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPUtxxlI5xo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpmuXd52Ce0

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_970_sli_review,22.html

For instance here a GTX 970 gets 30 FPS, a 980 gets 42, and SLI 970's get 60 fps, at 4K in Bioshock Infinite. Similar benchmarks for Tombraider, Metro Last light, Hitman, AC:BF, BF4, Far Cry 4, Far Cry Unity, Advanced Warfare, Ryse, etc.



Some games I used DSR to play at 5k-8K and started to see performance issues, some games became unplayable framerate wise. But I have no such aspirations with TW3.

However if a single 980 is cranking out 60 FPS, Ultra settings at 1080p, I have high hopes of squeezing out 30 out of 2 overclocked 970 FTW's. We will see soon enough I suppose!
 
Ah fair enough. Yeah I've known about that.


I was definitely a single card guy before, always would rather wait on the next best single card, but I bought a 970 FTW just to get my foot in the door with 4K while I wait for the next big card.

However I found that I REALY like 4K gaming. So much so that the Witcher 3 hype had me impulse buy a second 970 FTW just in the hopes of Ultra @30fps 4K.

Haven't bought a card for the hype of one game since Half Life 2.

Seriously.

Seriously though, are you expecting to run 4K decently with 3,5gb of VRAM? Even GTAV struggled with 3,5gb @ 1080p and we're talking a game way beyond the graphical fidelity of GTA in terms of open world games.

E: Ah, you answered right above me. Still, you must understand that every single game you listed was last-gen in terms of console tech. X360 has 512mb or VRAM and PS3 a pathetic 256mb, and standard PC had somewhat 1-2gb, 4gb at best. Now that the consoles have unified memory pools with large amount of GDDR5, the developers can use a ton more memory for textures, population etc. You should expect the general VRAM requrement to run any game, at max settings on PC, to rise to 4gb @1080p.
 
Sorry, i know this really isn't the place to ask this but, does anyone know when/if we'll be able to pre-load the GOG copy. ?

Good question. That's the version I got with my GPU and my DLs are slow as hell recently.

Seriously though, are you expecting to run 4K decently with 3,5gb of VRAM? Even GTAV struggled with 3,5gb @ 1080p and we're talking a game way beyond the graphical fidelity of GTA in terms of open world games.

He just said he bought a 2nd 970, and GTAV runs great on a single 970 in my experience. Hell, it even ran great on a 2 gig 670.
 
Runs fine for me on 2GB. (yes, with VHigh textures.)

Yes, but if you crank it all the way up with draw distance, advanced shadows, population density etc and anti-aliasing, it makes a 970 sweat in terms of memory. Not that it wont run, but it's already really close to the limit.

He just said he bought a 2nd 970, and GTAV runs great on a single 970 in my experience. Hell, it even ran great on a 2 gig 670.

How does the second card affect the memory pool, unless DX12 is a godsend and actually splits the usage among both cards
 
Yes, but if you crank it all the way up with draw distance, advanced shadows, population density etc and anti-aliasing, it makes a 970 sweat in terms of memory. Not that it wont run, but it's already really close to the limit.

Sure if you set MSAA to x8, and everything else maxed it'll use more than 3.5GB of video memory. But who uses x8 MSAA anyway? Especially on a 970.
Outside of using heavy MSAA, the game doesn't use more than 3.5GB and the memory usage indicator is also not 100% true to the sort of performance hit you can expect since you can go to for example 2400MB on a 2048MB card and it'll be fine.
 
Sure if you set MSAA to x8, and everything else maxed it'll use more than 3.5GB of video memory. But who uses x8 MSAA anyway? Especially on a 970.
Outside of using heavy MSAA, the game doesn't use more than 3.5GB and the memory usage indicator is also not 100% true to the sort of performance hit you can expect since you can go to for example 2400MB on a 2048MB card and it'll be fine.

Well, to completely eliminate aliasing in 1080p you need x8. Personally I think "maxing out" or "ultra" means setting all available settings to the max, including AA. Either way, this doesn't really conflict with my argument that with the introducion of the new console generation, the overall VRAM requirement, even for 1080p, for ultra settings is likely gonna rise up to 4GB. That's why I feel it's a bit a waste of money to go dual 970 with hopes of 4K performance, as the increased resolution will tear the memorypool apart. Even dual 980 are kinda risky investement, and I'd rather wait for what AMD has to offer with 390X or NVidia with 980ti (with possible 8GB).
 
Well, to completely eliminate aliasing in 1080p you need x8. Personally I think "maxing out" or "ultra" means setting all available settings to the max, including AA. Either way, this doesn't really conflict with my argument that with the introducion of the new console generation, the overall VRAM requirement, even for 1080p, for ultra settings is likely gonna rise up to 4GB. That's why I feel it's a bit a waste of money to go dual 970 with hopes of 4K performance, as the increased resolution will tear the memorypool apart. Even dual 980 are kinda risky investement, and I'd rather wait for what AMD has to offer with 390X or NVidia with 980ti (with possible 8GB).



What games are you talking about though? I already linked you benchmarks to just about every big game out there, and 970/980's in SLI handle damn near every one of them easily in 4K.

Metro Last Light, Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, Alien Isolation, Ryse, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 4, Advanced Warfare, GTAV, The Witcher 2, etc etc.

I mean are there any games specifically that you are referring to that have a hard time in 4K? The only one I can think of this gen is Assassins Creed Unity, which apparently is a mess on just about any rig at 4K. Other than that though I can't find a single current gen game that 970/980s in SLI cant run at 4K at high/ultra settings.
 
What games are you talking about though? I already linked you benchmarks to just about every big game out there, and 970/980's in SLI handle damn near every one of them easily in 4K.

Metro Last Light, Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, Alien Isolation, Ryse, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 4, Advanced Warfare, GTAV, The Witcher 2, etc etc.

I mean are there any games specifically that you are referring to that have a hard time in 4K? The only one I can think of this gen is Assassins Creed Unity, which apparently is a mess on just about any rig at 4K. Other than that though I can't find a single current gen game that 970/980s in SLI cant run at 4K at high/ultra settings.

Just looking at average framerates in benchmarks isn't always the best way to judge game performance.

970 SLI might seem fine in that regard, but is not as good as a Titan X in terms of minimum frames and frame pacing.

Memory constrains are also a real concern moving forward. 3.5GBs is just not enough, especially at 4K.

For me, GTA 5 with 4X TXAA at only 1440p uses 5.4GBs of VRAM.
 
What games are you talking about though? I already linked you benchmarks to just about every big game out there, and 970/980's in SLI handle damn near every one of them easily in 4K.

Metro Last Light, Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, Alien Isolation, Ryse, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 4, Advanced Warfare, GTAV, The Witcher 2, etc etc.

I mean are there any games specifically that you are referring to that have a hard time in 4K? The only one I can think of this gen is Assassins Creed Unity, which apparently is a mess on just about any rig at 4K. Other than that though I can't find a single current gen game that 970/980s in SLI cant run at 4K at high/ultra settings.

Tnaples, are you running at native 4k? If so, what is it like? I have really never seen a game running at that native res.
 
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