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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

Ignoring the instability of the latest Nvidia driver, is there actually any improvement in performance?

I'm still on the GTA V drivers, only had one crash on release day.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
With hairworks on cutscene fps spikes randomly yeah, stable without it.
Interestingly only when you see the back of Geralt's head, the face doesnt yeald any drops.

Regardless, I take some droppes to the low 50s in Cutscenes over turning it off, the beard just looks so good.
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
Anecdotal evidence for sure but considering that I havent had any crashes in any games or otherwise until 5/19, Im going to bet its the Nvidia drivers. Event Viewer shows the same error that blackscreens TW3 for me is the same error thats black screening me during web browsing....all started on 5/19.

Its their drivers and, for whatever reason, they are taking their sweet time fixing it.
Theres a pretty lengthy thread on Nvidias forums, if you care to read it:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...-driver-feedback-thread-released-5-18-15-/60/

Im trying to be patient with them...but its just so frustrating.

Same. 352.86 is actually the first driver that has given me any major difficulties, well since September when I upgraded from an old AMD card (2GB 5870). Good news is the GTAV driver seems completely stable, at least on my end.

Ignoring the instability of the latest Nvidia driver, is there actually any improvement in performance?

I'm still on the GTA V drivers, only had one crash on release day.

I spend (too) much time glancing at the the fps counter and I believe I get slightly better performance on 325.86 in certain locations, but it's hard to tell without an in game benchmark.

Plenty have posted here saying they see no difference at all. With that in mind, if there is any performance increase, it's small or situational.
 

Social

Member
The game ready driver gave me much better performance conpared to the one i had before (dragon age ready one). It was a huge boost.
 

diamount

Banned
Interestingly only when you see the back of Geralt's head, the face doesnt yeald any drops.

Regardless, I take some droppes to the low 50s in Cutscenes over turning it off, the beard just looks so good.

That's obvious why, since it's not rendering a lot of his hair.
 
Deleting my modified ini and starting anew seems to have resolved the crashing I was experiencing after installing the new patch.

In other news, still can't hold 60 with Hairworks on (970 SLI, everything ultra). That damn effect is far to taxing for what it provides.
 

jrcbandit

Member
Every patch seems to make this game worse ;p. Absolutely 0 crashes with the launch version/patch, but 1.03 and 1.04 patches are problematic. For 1.03, I was playing about 3 hours or so without issue then had a number of crashes. With 1.04, I've had 3 crashes within the last 30 minutes, sigh. This on SLI 970s.
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
Every patch seems to make this game worse ;p. Absolutely 0 crashes with the launch version/patch, but 1.03 and 1.04 patches are problematic. For 1.03, I was playing about 3 hours or so without issue then had a number of crashes. With 1.04, I've had 3 crashes within the last 30 minutes, sigh. This on SLI 970s.

Stability on my end has only gotten better on my 970, display crashes-wise. Funny how that works.
 

AU Tiger

Member
I'm kinda curious if we are ever going to have the ability to enabled the shading/lighting and DOF that the cut scenes have in actual game play.

The dramatic drop in quality is pretty jarring going from cut scene to game play despite me running everything at ultra minus hair works.

Neither character moved from their spot during the cut scene for this 2nd screen shot :/

j87bc0o.png


8LFkx1n.png
 
I'm kinda curious if we are ever going to have the ability to enabled the shading/lighting and DOF that the cut scenes have in actual game play.

The dramatic drop in quality is pretty jarring going from cut scene to game play despite me running everything at ultra minus hair works.

Neither character moved from their spot during the cut scene for this 2nd screen shot :/
I was JUST thinking about this. I wonder if there will be some way to mod it so the game always uses the cutscene lighting...
 
I'm kinda curious if we are ever going to have the ability to enabled the shading/lighting and DOF that the cut scenes have in actual game play.

The dramatic drop in quality is pretty jarring going from cut scene to game play despite me running everything at ultra minus hair works.

Neither character moved from their spot during the cut scene for this 2nd screen shot :/
Yeah. I don't like that change either. I assume it's done because it's just too demanding in-game.
 

AU Tiger

Member
I was JUST thinking about this. I wonder if there will be some way to mod it so the game always uses the cutscene lighting...

Here's another comparison. Again, Geralt in the exact same spot in both shots.

It's literally as if there is a switch that's getting flipped to turn off these effects after the cut scene.

Edit: SlackBladder, I think that PC users should have the option to mess with this. If I'm getting 60fps during cut scenes, let me at least see the rest of the world looking like this even if it is a massive hit... can't hardly be worse than turning uber sampling and hair works back on but would make a much more significant impact on visual quality.

If it's just that demanding, so be it... but I want them to at least have that choice to be mine.

 

viveks86

Member
Here's another comparison. Again, Geralt in the exact same spot in both shots.

It's literally as if there is a switch that's getting flipped to turn off these effects after the cut scene.

Edit: SlackBladder, I think that PC users should have the option to mess with this. If I'm getting 60fps during cut scenes, let me at least see the rest of the world looking like this even if it is a massive hit... can't hardly be worse than turning uber sampling and hair works back on but would make a much more significant impact on visual quality.

If it's just that demanding, so be it... but I want them to at least have that choice to be mine.

Cutscene lighting often uses additional point sources to artificially enhance the scene since the character positions are fixed. These lights will be floating in the air if they were exposed during gameplay and will probably look terrible from other angles. It would be like walking into a photo shoot. What you are seeing in the picture is not how the environment looks like outside of the picture. And that level of DoF would make the game unplayable. Not sure either of these are performance related cutbacks. There's really nothing going on tech wise than standard cutscene trickery.
 
lol, take screenshots.

Haha, I wish I had. It was actually pretty funny, up until I started worrying over the health of my save file.


Thats how they party in Novigrad man.

Just got there (after 40hrs), but I don't doubt it!

You mean floating around in t-pose right? ;)

Yea, they were bobbing about like buoys in a storm. Was a little freaky once the streets started filling with them.

Edit: Fun fact. Geralt has a shaved dome under under all that hair. Didn't look half bad either. Wonder why it's not an option?
 

Sijil

Member
Agreed with what SirMossyBloke said,

Game crashed 3 times at the same location, at the same time I had Firefox streaming youtube, it crashed alongside it as well. Existing Firefox eliminated that crash, looks like too much of a resource hog, especially when streaming.
 

neorej

ERMYGERD!
I'm running this on i5 3.4GHz, 16 GB DDR 1600, GTX 970 4GB, 850 EVO SSD. With everything on ultra, hairworks on, I get around 30fps. Turning off hairworks, and dialing back some settings like foliage distance and shadow quality to high, it jumps to 60FPS.
 

thuway

Member
Just a question, but has AMD officially commented on drivers for this game? I still curse myself the day I got this 280X. 970 came out literally a few weeks later.
 
I don't get the sweetfx thing, all it seems to do is desaturate stuff. Makes it less warm?

I don't get it either. I made a few presets for Dark Souls II solely to fix the washed out gamma. I tried a few others and they looked like Instagram filters would have been more subtle.
 
Played for 4-ish hours, 0 crashes, 0 bugs, 0 pop-in that I've seen. on version 1.04.

Locked 30fps with RivaTuner, everything on High, except shadows/shadow distance on medium, no hairworks.

All on a i5-2500k @4.2Ghz and a 2GB 7850 at 1000mhz/1350mhz. I'm really happy with the visuals and the performance, I was fearing the worst after reading this thread but was pleasantly surprised. Hope performance stays consistent throughout my playthrough and AMD releases some fresh drivers.
 

ru55lee

Neo Member
I'm kinda curious if we are ever going to have the ability to enabled the shading/lighting and DOF that the cut scenes have in actual game play.

The dramatic drop in quality is pretty jarring going from cut scene to game play despite me running everything at ultra minus hair works.

Neither character moved from their spot during the cut scene for this 2nd screen shot :/

Yes I agree. It looks discusting :/
 

MisterM

Member
What's the general consensus on 1.04? I have the stand alone GOG version installed so I can update if I want to but I don't know if I should.

Currently on 1.03
 
Here's another comparison. Again, Geralt in the exact same spot in both shots.

It's literally as if there is a switch that's getting flipped to turn off these effects after the cut scene.

Edit: SlackBladder, I think that PC users should have the option to mess with this. If I'm getting 60fps during cut scenes, let me at least see the rest of the world looking like this even if it is a massive hit... can't hardly be worse than turning uber sampling and hair works back on but would make a much more significant impact on visual quality.

If it's just that demanding, so be it... but I want them to at least have that choice to be mine.
Yeah I've noticed it since I started the game, it even changes in outside scenes...

I'm really curious as to why exactly they do this, I'm sure its "performance related", but still.

And yea an option would be nice if it really is really demanding.
 

Iceternal

Member
Yeah I've noticed it since I started the game, it even changes in outside scenes...

I'm really curious as to why exactly they do this, I'm sure its "performance related", but still.

And yea an option would be nice if it really is really demanding.

It glitches sometimes during conversation too ... for example when you talk to Igor during the Whoreson Junior quest ! The game forgot to enable this effect during the conversation except at like the very end of it .

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYnY37lp7co

Look at 2'25, you'll see the lighting glitching between the two states.

I think it comes from the fact that Geralt glows in the dark and creates an unflattering light.
 

The_Poet

Banned
Is anybody playing the game while overclocking their GPU?

I get reliable crashes every time I try to overclock (gtx780 using evga precisionX)
 
Just ordered myself the MSI Gaming 970 today. I'm hoping I don't start to get these issues when I swap from my 770 as i've not had a single crash so far!

Is anybody playing the game while overclocking their GPU?

I get reliable crashes every time I try to overclock (gtx780 using evga precisionX)


I deduced there was an issue with my overclocking too as when i first tried to the game I had set my 770 on a custom overclock and Witcher 3 did not like it at all. Crashed within minutes each time I loaded up the game. Put it to factory settings and it's been working flawlessly for 40 hours
 

Valravn

Member
I remember playing Crysis 2 on my 2x GTX285 SLI setup back in 2011. The cards would run so hot I could smell the plastic... checked one time and they were at 105c. Never crashed or anything, so np.

Love having a watercooled setup though... my 3 GTX680s hover around 45c when playing TW3.

Wow 105c is an entirely different story.
 

The_Poet

Banned
I deduced there was an issue with my overclocking too as when i first tried to the game I had set my 770 on a custom overclock and Witcher 3 did not like it at all. Crashed within minutes each time I loaded up the game. Put it to factory settings and it's been working flawlessly for 40 hours

Yeh same, It's a shame because it means the difference between ~56fps and 60fps in towns (from what I could tell in the couple minutes before it crashes)
 

damidu

Member
Just ordered myself the MSI Gaming 970 today. I'm hoping I don't start to get these issues when I swap from my 770 as i've not had a single crash so far!




I deduced there was an issue with my overclocking too as when i first tried to the game I had set my 770 on a custom overclock and Witcher 3 did not like it at all. Crashed within minutes each time I loaded up the game. Put it to factory settings and it's been working flawlessly for 40 hours

also a new msi gaming 970 user here.
was having inventory screen crashes before 1.03 but its pretty stable now. i also overclocked it a little.

hairworks off, foliage distance high gives a solid 1080p60
 
also a new msi gaming 970 user here.
was having inventory screen crashes before 1.03 but its pretty stable now. i also overclocked it a little.

hairworks off, foliage distance high gives a solid 1080p60

Sweet. Hoping all is fine for when I switch! I've been playing with everything ultra apart from Foliage distance and shadows being on high, Hairworks off, and getting a solid 30fps.

Might just stick to 30fps with my 970 and get everything up on max, or start tweaking with some ini files and sweetfx now I have that extra headroom.
 
It glitches sometimes during conversation too ... for example when you talk to Igor during the Whoreson Junior quest ! The game forgot to enable this effect during the conversation except at like the very end of it .

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYnY37lp7co

Look at 2'25, you'll see the lighting glitching between the two states.

I think it comes from the fact that Geralt glows in the dark and creates an unflattering light.
HUGE difference, makes it almost seem like gameplay lighting is bugged...

Before (Gameplay Lighting):
P5xkDId.png


After (Cutscene Lighting):
24hfBAe.png
 

Iceternal

Member
HUGE difference, makes it almost seem like gameplay lighting is bugged...

Before (Gameplay Lighting):
P5xkDId.png


After (Cutscene Lighting):
24hfBAe.png

Like I said, I think some sort of light emanates from Geralt during gameplay and it's turned off during conversations ( except when it glitches)
 
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