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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

Asskicker

Member
Updated to 353.06 from 350.12 (last stable release for me) just for shits and giggles, on my OCed 970. Saw no performance increase in W3. I didn't get any display driver crashes for the hour or so I played, but within 5 minutes of launching chrome, crash. So it seems this new version has done little for the display driver crashes some of us have been experiencing.

I did however check reddit, in particular the thread linked below, and might have found a solution for that in the meantime. Someone linked to a little program called TDR manipulator, made by the same guy who Created DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller). It's supposed to allow you to modify and even completely disable TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) which is what's causing the crashes in the first place. I'll try it out with 353.06 and see if it helps in my case.

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/co...atest_nvidia_driver_35286_causes_TDRs/crqsfrc

TDR Manipulator - http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/



I didn't see any improvement on my 970. Specifically, I loaded up a save on 350.12, checked FPS, updated drivers to 353.06, loaded same save and I saw a 1 FPS increase @ 45fps which might as well be margin of error. Not the best test, but there you go.

Hm, I'm going to try that. Crashes have been getting more frequent as of late...
Thanks!
 
I'd love to know if anyone who has 290x CF is able to get 60 fps on ultra with hairworks.

Nope, I just tried everything on Ultra + Hairworks on everyone and no AA with my 295x2 and it was running at about 45-50 fps at 2560x1440. Definitely playable, but I need my 120fps goodness.
 
I think with the new drives I've gotten an increase of about 5-8 fps with my 970, don't remember my fps sitting around 70-90 as often as they do now or if at all. I was mostly around the 65-80fps range with the previews 2 drivers.
 

Iceternal

Member
It seems that the game changes it's lighting when in conversations, a guy at CDPR forums made a very interesting comparison.

You can test this transition by entering a conversation and then recording a video with fraps. Then play the video frame by frame (ctrl + arrow right in media player classic) because the change happens really quickly.


image.jpg



image.jpg



image.jpg



image.jpg

OMG I knew something was wrong ! This needs to be fixed ASAP !
 

artsi

Member
I did a comparison before/after installing the new Nvidia drivers and in most scenes I got around 5 fps more with my GTX 780. Not huge, but it's noticeable.
 
Don't suppose anyone has tried Witcher 3 with a 780M after the new drivers? I got a little chance to test it this morning, but literally just a few seconds. Interested to hear what kind of settings deliver what kind of frame rate.

I actually have a 780M and The Witcher 3 ran absolutely terrible (= 10-20 FPS drops at seemingly random intervals.) The first time I noticed it was during the cutscene of
Ciri
training at the pendulums when the stutter got so bad the voice track was out of sync with the animation. In combat, I noticed input lag especially when using signs.

The new drivers do seem like a big improvement for consistency - there are still drops but there only 5-10 frames and it doesn't stutter or desync the cut scene. Combat is consistently smooth so far (the boss fight with the
griffin
is remarkably smoother.) Weirdly, I do get more edge shimmer that wasn't there before.

Having said that, don't expect miracles just solid performance - you still need to compromise on a laptop. Using the GeForce Exerpeince optimum as a baseline, I ended up turning resolution to 1600x900 capped at 30 FPS in exchange for High textures and SSAO. The frame drops haven't gone below 15 and it feels fairly smooth considering it's a beast of a game on a mobile platform.

So yay, Nvidia for fixing this but I'm still wondering what the hell they were doing on release.
 

ISee

Member
Did NVIDIA fix the 'crash while useing chrome even while not playing' bug with the new Heroes of the stoirm drivers?
 
Has anyone tried the beta 15.5 AMD driver that was released a couple days ago? It says it's specifically for WItcher 3. I've never used a beta driver and not sure what to expect.

Got about 4-5 fps extra and unbelievably, an extra one or two switching to full screen mode....280x here...
 

Tankshell

Member
X-post from the OT2 (because I think you guys in here are more likely to know what I am talking about).

Related to the above screenshots of the global illumination on/off.

Does anyone else get the problem whereby in a city, eg. Novigrad, when it rains/storms and the black clouds cover the sky, it is basically TOO dark to actually properly see anything. It gets darker than it is during the middle of the night FFS.

It's kind of like the HDR goes a bit over the top and darkens the image too much.

I normally end up meditating on the spot to wait for the sun to come back out!

Is this on purpose or is something screwed with my contrast/brightness settings...

EDIT: playing on PC with mix of high/ultra.
 
God I hope someone hacks in a way to enable global illumination all the time. I just started my second run, this time on death march. I will gladly drop it down to 30 fps if I can get that sweet, sweet global illumination we saw early on. Brownie points for removing some of the LOD fog. Those shots above with GI on look way better.
 

Durante

Member
I don't see any "global illumination" in those shots, just different tonemapping and bloom.

I wish people wouldn't throw neat-sounding technical terms around willy-nilly.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I don't see any "global illumination" in those shots, just different tonemapping and bloom.

I wish people wouldn't throw neat-sounding technical terms around willy-nilly.
GI is when light bounces off a surface and affects the colour tone right? Like if I'm standing next to a blue wall in direct light you can see some blue hues on my skin?

Can't see any of that in the shots either
 

LAA

Member
I actually have a 780M and The Witcher 3 ran absolutely terrible (= 10-20 FPS drops at seemingly random intervals.) The first time I noticed it was during the cutscene of
Ciri
training at the pendulums when the stutter got so bad the voice track was out of sync with the animation. In combat, I noticed input lag especially when using signs.

The new drivers do seem like a big improvement for consistency - there are still drops but there only 5-10 frames and it doesn't stutter or desync the cut scene. Combat is consistently smooth so far (the boss fight with the
griffin
is remarkably smoother.) Weirdly, I do get more edge shimmer that wasn't there before.

Having said that, don't expect miracles just solid performance - you still need to compromise on a laptop. Using the GeForce Exerpeince optimum as a baseline, I ended up turning resolution to 1600x900 capped at 30 FPS in exchange for High textures and SSAO. The frame drops haven't gone below 15 and it feels fairly smooth considering it's a beast of a game on a mobile platform.

So yay, Nvidia for fixing this but I'm still wondering what the hell they were doing on release.

Thanks for the post. I havent got far in Witcher 3 yet, literally still at the tutorial area I think, so I've just been judging performance in that area, which probably isnt the best.
Surprised to hear you turned to 900p, not really keen on doing that. I also thought having high/ultra textures wouldnt really impact performance? At least if the VRAM was high enough, and I would think around 4GB is?
In the tut area I've had it on 1080p (Max res on screen), high or ultra textures and I believe medium for everything else, and hairworks off and performance has seemed fine in that area so far, need to try getting to the open world area to fully test it I suppose.
 

viveks86

Member
GI is when light bounces off a surface and affects the colour tone right? Like if I'm standing next to a blue wall in direct light you can see some blue hues on my skin?

Not just color tone, but yes, GI is all about indirect lighting. Funny how people are throwing it around without knowing what it means, especially when CDPR even admitted they will have no GI way back in 2013.
 

MaLDo

Member
I don't see any "global illumination" in those shots, just different tonemapping and bloom.

I wish people wouldn't throw neat-sounding technical terms around willy-nilly.


I can see a different lighting condition but it's totally the opposite of what is being suggested.

In "global illumination off" labeled screenshots, there are a lot more "lighting" info. That makes sense, as during focalised conversations with controlled camera angles, surroundings areas can have more simple lighting system.

Most important differences are: how far the sun illumination is applied and the existence of a simulated GI that helps illuminate shadowed areas.
 
Not just color tone, but yes, GI is all about indirect lighting. Funny how people are throwing it around without knowing what it means, especially when CDPR even admitted they will have no GI way back in 2013.
The game does have some form of GI (otherwise shadows would be black). It is just rather lacking.
For example, check out the green being cast onto everything here (geralts hair, the doe...):
witcher3_2015_05_23_0m3zr5.png

Also, any cubemaps techncially count as cheapo specular GI.
I can see a different lighting condition but it's totally the opposite of what is being suggested.

In "global illumination off" labeled screenshots, there are a lot more "lighting" info. That makes sense, as during focalised conversations with controlled camera angles, surroundings areas can have more simple lighting system.

Most important differences are: how far the sun illumination is applied and the existence of a simulated GI that helps illuminate shadowed areas.
I see mainly a tonemapping difference.
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
1.05 is still on track for PC today?

Last I heard the XP hotfix was due out today, but they were looking into just adding it into 1.05 since it was so close to release, targeting Tuesday or Wednesday for that.

Source

Updated to 353.06 from 350.12 (last stable release for me) just for shits and giggles, on my OCed 970. Saw no performance increase in W3. I didn't get any display driver crashes for the hour or so I played, but within 5 minutes of launching chrome, crash. So it seems this new version has done little for the display driver crashes some of us have been experiencing.

I did however check reddit, in particular the thread linked below, and might have found a solution for that in the meantime. Someone linked to a little program called TDR manipulator, made by the same guy who Created DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller). It's supposed to allow you to modify and even completely disable TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) which is what's causing the crashes in the first place. I'll try it out with 353.06 and see if it helps in my case.

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/co...atest_nvidia_driver_35286_causes_TDRs/crqsfrc

TDR Manipulator - http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/



I didn't see any improvement on my 970. Specifically, I loaded up a save on 350.12, checked FPS, updated drivers to 353.06, loaded same save and I saw a 1 FPS increase @ 45fps which might as well be margin of error. Not the best test, but there you go.

An update, I disabled TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) through the program earlier today. No issues till just a couple minutes ago, after quitting the game and launching chrome. Within a minute Chrome locked up and completely froze the system. Force restart. Hasn't happened like that before today.

I'm assuming the driver hit a snag after launching Chrome, as it is like to do with these new driver versions, and since I disabled TDR through that application, It didn't recover and restart, and just completely crashed. So the above might not be a fix for these Chrome display driver crashes after all.

I'll keep TDR disabled for another go, another couple days, but if Chrome locks the system up again I'll just consider it a non-solution and get rid of it.
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
Thanks I must have missed that.

It's kinda disappointing if they hold off, I wish they'd just release the XP hotfix today if it's ready.

If it's 100% ready. If they're gonna spend the next day or two continuing to test it, making sure it doesn't unintentionally fuck something else up, then maybe it's for the best.

so..do i want these new drivers?what's the general consensus?

Great for Kepler GPUs, No difference I noticed on my 970, seems to still have the display driver crash/Chrome issues, at least on my end.
 

Gattsu25

Banned
It seems that the game changes it's lighting when in conversations, a guy at CDPR forums made a very interesting comparison.

You can test this transition by entering a conversation and then recording a video with fraps. Then play the video frame by frame (ctrl + arrow right in media player classic) because the change happens really quickly.


image.jpg



image.jpg



image.jpg



image.jpg
Looks mostly like a change in contrast, saturation, and color warmth. I'm not seeing any lighting changes.
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
I thought the Nvidia Chrome crashes could be mitigated by turning HW acceleration off for Flash?

I read that earlier today, but I didn't do it at that point because I wanted to test the TDR manipulator program and see if I still got crashes. Still seem to, so soon I'll either disable HW acc or rollback to 350.12, the GTAV drivers, which have never given me a problem.
 

Derp

Member
so..do i want these new drivers?what's the general consensus?
It's given me under 5 fps gain in some areas on my 780 Ti, other than that I don't see any big difference in what I was getting before especially considering my card was getting beaten by a 290 according to benchmarks. Still gets beaten by a 290x and 970 by a significant margin now. Pretty underwhelming, but it's gotten me closer to 4k 30fps at least.

I need to somehow gain another 5 fps... If anyone has any advice aside from HairWorks (already off), foliage distance (already on high), shadows (already on medium) and AA (already off), that would be great... I don't really wanna turn down the AO from HBAO+ because... Well... Good AO is important to me. I need a miracle setting that does nothing visually but gives me all the frames in the world. Make it happen... Someone.
 

Grechy34

Member
I am not noticing any performance increase with the new 353.06 driver. I can't get 60fps unless I set everything to low on my GTX 780. I currently have AA, hairworks and V-sync off, Shadows and foliage to high, and the rest on ultra. I get 50-55fps, and 40-45fps in villages. I will sell my GTX 780 and get an AMD card, or possibly quit gaming.

CPU? You should easily be getting high on that card.
 

Sil

Banned
Due to the heavy pop-in I had to roll back from 1.04 to 1.03, but I still have character pop-in, in populated areas. As in, you see roughly 3 or 4 characters standing, and when you're next to them suddenly there's another two appearing out of thin air.

After reading on Reddit it looks like this is hardcoded, although I'm not sure.
 

s_mirage

Member
I did however check reddit, in particular the thread linked below, and might have found a solution for that in the meantime. Someone linked to a little program called TDR manipulator, made by the same guy who Created DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller). It's supposed to allow you to modify and even completely disable TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) which is what's causing the crashes in the first place. I'll try it out with 353.06 and see if it helps in my case.

A note of caution. Disabling TDR is fine when TDR is erroneously deciding that the driver has crashed. However, if the driver/GPU actually has crashed it can cause problems requiring a reboot (e.g. the game could still freeze, but instead of crashing to desktop it can produce a scenario where the frozen screen remains in focus and is impossible to escape from without powering down).

I still maintain that these driver crashes are being caused either by unstable overclocks or (more likely) by background software (EVGA Precision, MSI Afterburner, etc). Precision X running in the background definitely causes them in some games on my system. If it's purely a driver problem it seems rather odd that only some people are getting them, while others with nearly identical hardware and software are not.
 
It's given me under 5 fps gain in some areas on my 780 Ti, other than that I don't see any big difference in what I was getting before especially considering my card was getting beaten by a 290 according to benchmarks. Still gets beaten by a 290x and 970 by a significant margin now. Pretty underwhelming, but it's gotten me closer to 4k 30fps at least.

I need to somehow gain another 5 fps... If anyone has any advice aside from HairWorks (already off), foliage distance (already on high), shadows (already on medium) and AA (already off), that would be great... I don't really wanna turn down the AO from HBAO+ because... Well... Good AO is important to me. I need a miracle setting that does nothing visually but gives me all the frames in the world. Make it happen... Someone.

What fps do you get now? Perhaps you can pick some well known spots although I'm sure some sites will be testing the kepler stuff with the new driver.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Looking at the difference between cutscene and regular lighting it looks kind of washed out, the bloom just about kills any detail in the textures in the bright spots, and things in shadow look grey as if the black levels are wrong.
 
A note of caution. Disabling TDR is fine when TDR is erroneously deciding that the driver has crashed. However, if the driver/GPU actually has crashed it can cause problems requiring a reboot (e.g. the game could still freeze, but instead of crashing to desktop it can produce a scenario where the frozen screen remains in focus and is impossible to escape from without powering down).

I still maintain that these driver crashes are being caused either by unstable overclocks or (more likely) by background software (EVGA Precision, MSI Afterburner, etc). Precision X running in the background definitely causes them in some games on my system. If it's purely a driver problem it seems rather odd that only some people are getting them, while others with nearly identical hardware and software are not.

My system has been stable on the GTA V drivers.

With the Witcher 3 drivers it crashes so often that it often crashes on start up and I have to use a system recovery point to be able to access my PC. And this is without any overclock running. Using Firefox, not Chrome.

I really wish I knew what was causing it.
 

s_mirage

Member
My system has been stable on the GTA V drivers.

With the Witcher 3 drivers it crashes so often that it often crashes on start up and I have to use a system recovery point to be able to access my PC. And this is without any overclock running. Using Firefox, not Chrome.

I really wish I knew what was causing it.

Strange. Hopefully if people report it to Nvidia it'll get looked into.
 

Asskicker

Member
A note of caution. Disabling TDR is fine when TDR is erroneously deciding that the driver has crashed. However, if the driver/GPU actually has crashed it can cause problems requiring a reboot (e.g. the game could still freeze, but instead of crashing to desktop it can produce a scenario where the frozen screen remains in focus and is impossible to escape from without powering down).

I still maintain that these driver crashes are being caused either by unstable overclocks or (more likely) by background software (EVGA Precision, MSI Afterburner, etc). Precision X running in the background definitely causes them in some games on my system. If it's purely a driver problem it seems rather odd that only some people are getting them, while others with nearly identical hardware and software are not.

Mine is all stock, I only have MSI Afterburner running to show my FPS and temps.
I guess I could try disabling MSI Afterburner, but then I can't lock my FPS to 50...
 

s_mirage

Member
Mine is all stock, I only have MSI Afterburner running to show my FPS and temps.
I guess I could try disabling MSI Afterburner, but then I can't lock my FPS to 50...

If you're getting a lot of crashes you could just try disabling Afterburner for a bit just to see if the problems go away. You could use Nvidia Inspector to set the frame limit feature of the drivers to lock to 50, but I haven't had great results with that in this game (not smooth). To be honest though, RTSS didn't smooth things out either.
 
Tried new drivers on my lunch break (using gtx765m laptop)

Testing 2 areas (centre of novigrad and bog fighting foglets) I would say I'm getting 2-3 FPS better. Basically enough to up from 720p to 768p

At its worst (fighting foglets in the bog) it fluctuates between 25-28 fps. Rest of bog is between 28-35.

Novigrad was mostly 30+ bar the odd hitch to 28/29 then back up again.

So for most the game its 30 plus at 768p with high textures (but mipmapbias set to 0) high water all post processing effects on except blur and CA. Ambient occulsion set to SSAO and then some custom tweaks to shadows, foliage and grass.

I was hoping for 768p 40+ fps before release but that was assuming better performance on consoles. So I'm not far of that and when out in the open fields it is often 40+ plus so I can now stop worrying and tweaking and get back to playing. If patches improve more then yay but I'll just take the extra fps instead of tweaking more.

Tons of jank still but its to be expected in an open world game (especially one this huge) and it seems that jank effects people of all settings (NPCs appearing out of no where, stealth beard tech etc etc).

My laptops still got life in it yet at least. Wonder if a game as demanding as this is due out withing the next 18 months (when I plan to upgrade).
 

Eyothrie

Member
Looking to upgrade.. Will a 980 get a locked 60fps with no drops at High settings? I read where it gets "mostly" 60fps at Ultra, but I'll want to play at a locked 60
 

ISee

Member
Looking to upgrade.. Will a 980 get a locked 60fps with no drops at High settings? I read where it gets "mostly" 60fps at Ultra, but I'll want to play at a locked 60

You can even get locked 60 fps on a 970. everything on ultra but shadow and foliage distance (both high). Without hairworks of course.
 

Helznicht

Member
You can even get locked 60 fps on a 970. everything on ultra but shadow and foliage distance (both high). Without hairworks of course.

If you can stand 1080p. It was way to pixilated and shimmery for me. I went dsr and it's very clean now, but of course it's locked 30 not 60.
 

Tankshell

Member
Hey guys.

I have noticed whilst wandering around Novigrad, that there seems to be a LOT of shadows that only draw in when I get really close to buildings etc. Eg. under window ledges, around doors, behind the ivy/foliage that grows on walls etc.

My shadows are set to high, although I tried setting to ultra and noticed the same issue at the exact same distance.

Is there an .ini tweak that can extend the distance for when these shadows are drawn in? Of all the graphical issues, I find this the most jarring at the moment.

EDIT - also, the light that *should* come through windows whilst walking around interiors is completely fucked it seems. I just did a test in a random Novigrad interior, meditating and checking at different times of the day, the light that you can see flooding through the windows is only visible as you walk away from it/at certain distances, as soon as you focus directly on it, or attempt to approach it, it disappears and the room is plunged into darkness again.

EDIT 2 - took a series of images to help indicate what I mean regarding the interior windows/sunlight, it's almost like there is a large square area around Geralt where no sunlight can render:

 

jorimt

Member
Due to the heavy pop-in I had to roll back from 1.04 to 1.03, but I still have character pop-in, in populated areas. As in, you see roughly 3 or 4 characters standing, and when you're next to them suddenly there's another two appearing out of thin air.

After reading on Reddit it looks like this is hardcoded, although I'm not sure.

I still don't know why some people are suggesting the NPC pop-in is worse after 1.03. I noticed it from launch. Not only that, but I even noticed it on the first IGN PC stream before launch; after the dev controlling the game arrived in a small village, you could see the NPCs suddenly appear, one by one only a few feet from Geralt.

From what I can tell, the NPCs load via a spawn timer when a certain distance is triggered by the player (probably with less priority than the surrounding environment, for whatever reason), and sometimes, if you arrive too quickly in certain areas (like with your horse at full gallop), this can happen. Load up a save in the identical area, and I bet you won't have as much pop-in, due to the NPCs being able to "catch-up" during the load.

Sadly, post-patch paranoia struck, and people not paying attention the first time claimed the pop-in was worse. The truth is, this being an open world game with nearly infinite variables, sometimes the NPC pop-in is really noticeable and sometimes it isn't.

The best we can probably hope for is a decrease in the spawn time in a future patch.
 
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