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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

P

| Praxis |

Banned
jorimt said:
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, 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.
Click to expand...


I had the problem since launch too. It's not on my ssd though, so put it down to that.

Is there an easy way to transfer my game to my ssd? Is it as simple as just moving all of the game folders over (gog version)?
 
L

lordfuzzybutt

Member
| Praxis | said:
I had the problem since launch too. It's not on my ssd though, so put it down to that.

Is there an easy way to transfer my game to my ssd? Is it as simple as just moving all of the game folders over (gog version)?
Click to expand...

I think it should work, remember to backup your savefiles in document before in case.
If you use Galaxy after you move the folder, delete the game using Galaxy then readd it after moving.
 
J

jorimt

Member
| Praxis | said:
I had the problem since launch too. It's not on my ssd though, so put it down to that.

Is there an easy way to transfer my game to my ssd? Is it as simple as just moving all of the game folders over (gog version)?
Click to expand...

Well I've had it on an SSD for a while, and I can tell you most of the load times are, at the very least, cut in half after moving it from my HDD. With that, and the mod that removes the load screen re-caps, these are the shortest load times I've experienced in recent games.

As for the file transfer, I couldn't tell you, I have it on Steam.
 
L

Lanark

Member
Game crashed twice on me during the last hour. Had a lot of crashes early on, but turning off my overclock on my 980GTX solved that, didn't have a crash in the next 20 hours of playing, but now it seems to be back. Both times happened in Novigrad, new Nvidia driver doesn't seem to have made a difference.
 
P

PeterVenkman

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

970 and an i5, I wouldn't call it locked 60, but it rarely dips below 50 with those settings. I'm only in white orchard, but I worry that more taxing areas could really bring the pain in this setup.
 
P

| Praxis |

Banned
lordfuzzybutt said:
I think it should work, remember to backup your savefiles in document before in case.
If you use Galaxy after you move the folder, delete the game using Galaxy then readd it after moving.
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks. I might risk it. Although if anything went wrong and I had to start again I'd cry.
 
D

Derp

Member
chromatic9 said:
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.
Click to expand...

Well I'm playing at 1440p with a 30 fps lock. If i remove that lock it floats around from 35 - 45 fps (that's with a very heavy sweetfx + reshade preset that eats like 8-10 fps). Without the preset it's like... 45-50 fps.

At 4k, with the sweetfx + reshade preset removed (I'm not even going to bother trying with it on) I get about 26-30 fps in most places I've tested. I need 5 fps and I'll be happy. Dunno what to do. Could probably achieve it by killing HBAO+ and turning AO off completely, but I'd rather 1440p with HBAO+ than 4K without AO. Running out of ideas.
 
K

knerl

Member
Helznicht said:
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.
Click to expand...

How far'd you go? I play at 2715x1527, everything ultra except for shadows which are on high and I get ~40fps average. 35-40 in Novigrad, 32 absolute minimum. I don't have the 30fps cap which makes it a bit more pleasant.
 
K

knerl

Member
PeterVenkman said:
970 and an i5, I wouldn't call it locked 60, but it rarely dips below 50 with those settings. I'm only in white orchard, but I worry that more taxing areas could really bring the pain in this setup.
Click to expand...

Won't. Same setup basically. i5 2500K @ 4.3GHz and a 970. Shadows and foliage range at high with everything else on ultra 60 locked is a given without hairworks. Tested in Novigrad. At 1080p that is.
 
H

heringer

Member
Derp said:
Well I'm playing at 1440p with a 30 fps lock. If i remove that lock it floats around from 35 - 45 fps (that's with a very heavy sweetfx + reshade preset that eats like 8-10 fps). Without the preset it's like... 45-50 fps.

At 4k, with the sweetfx + reshade preset removed (I'm not even going to bother trying with it on) I get about 26-30 fps in most places I've tested. I need 5 fps and I'll be happy. Dunno what to do. Could probably achieve it by killing HBAO+ and turning AO off completely, but I'd rather 1440p with HBAO+ than 4K without AO. Running out of ideas.
Click to expand...

Do 1800p? I can't tell the difference from 4K (unless you have a 4K TV), yet for most people it's either 1440p or 4k. I don't get it.
 
D

Derp

Member
heringer said:
Do 1800p? Most people can't tell the difference from 4K, yet for most people it's either 1440p or 4k. I don't undertand.
Click to expand...

1800p? That's a thing? I'm on a 4k monitor and it isn't listed as a resolution I can use. I'm assuming I'd have to apply it as a custom resolution in the Nvidia control panel and then hope it shows up in the game's resolution options? Also what's the actual resolution? I'm hoping the aspect ratio is 16:9? I'd love to try it out though. How noticeable is the difference compared to 1440p?
 
Sevenfold

Sevenfold

Member
heringer said:
Do 1800p? I can't tell the difference from 4K (unless you have a 4K TV), yet for most people it's either 1440p or 4k. I don't get it.
Click to expand...

I play on a 55" 1080p telly and with DSR, the difference between 1080p and 2160p downsampled is night and day. The IQ is sublime.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Just wondering, does Geralt's beard randomly pop-up/fade-in when the camera switches angles during conversations for everyone else?
 
P

PeterVenkman

Member
knerl said:
Won't. Same setup basically. i5 2500K @ 4.3GHz and a 970. Shadows and foliage range at high with everything else on ultra 60 locked is a given without hairworks. Tested in Novigrad. At 1080p that is.
Click to expand...

Good to hear. That means all I'm waiting for is a titter fix. I'm very pleased with how it runs.
 
K

kinggroin

Banned
jett said:
Just wondering, does Geralt's beard randomly pop-up/fade-in when the camera switches angles during conversations for everyone else?
Click to expand...

Happens to all kinds of assets


Barron's daughter for instance, was bald for a couple seconds in a cutscene and then like a chia pet, POOF.
 
D

Derp

Member
Sevenfold said:
I play on a 55" 1080p telly and with DSR, the difference between 1080p and 2160p downsampled is night and day. The IQ is sublime.
Click to expand...
Mine isn't even downsampled though. It's native. That's why I'm so desperate to gain those extra frames so I can actually use the damn monitor :p

But seriously, I think everyone needs to see how good this game looks at 4k. Not saying play it at 4k, just saying look at it on a native 4k monitor just to see how beautiful it can look, and you'll know what I'm talking about. And the foliage looks as though it's entirely different compared to 1080. So fine and detailed and dense and sharp and oh mah lawd someone give me 5 fps.
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
Sevenfold said:
I play on a 55" 1080p telly and with DSR, the difference between 1080p and 2160p downsampled is night and day. The IQ is sublime.
Click to expand...

That's because of downsampling which produces a lot of half tones over the image though. Chances are that a native 4K rendering of the same size will look significantly different.

I wish people would stop calling a 1080p with 2x2 oversampling "4K". 4K is only really 4K when you can actually see 3820x2160 pixels.
 
A

Asskicker

Member
s_mirage said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'll give it a try. Thanks :)
 
H

heringer

Member
Derp said:
1800p? That's a thing? I'm on a 4k monitor and it isn't listed as a resolution I can use. I'm assuming I'd have to apply it as a custom resolution in the Nvidia control panel and then hope it shows up in the game's resolution options? Also what's the actual resolution? I'm hoping the aspect ratio is 16:9? I'd love to try it out though. How noticeable is the difference compared to 1440p?
Click to expand...

Sevenfold said:
I play on a 55" 1080p telly and with DSR, the difference between 1080p and 2160p downsampled is night and day. The IQ is sublime.
Click to expand...

Not 1080p, 1800p. As in, 3200x1800. It's a custom resolution you can create with DSR.
 
D

Derp

Member
heringer said:
Not 1080p, 1800p. As in, 3200x1800. It's a custom resolution you can create with DSR.
Click to expand...
I'm on a 4k monitor, so I can't DSR backwards. Only thing I can do is add 3200x1800 as a custom resolution. Just did that and tried it in-game, and I have black bars around the screen (so it didn't stretch the image to cover the screen). Game was running perfectly at 30 fps. What a shame. Fuck you, black bars.
 
Drama Zed Nod

Drama Zed Nod

Member
Patch notes (for the next patch)

http://www.destructoid.com/cd-projekt-red-provides-huge-patch-note-dump-for-witcher-3-293073.phtml

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt patch notes

  • Geralt will not longer interact with candles near chests and other interactive elements.
  • General stability and performance improvements
  • Significantly Enlarged GUI and HUD elements (including fonts) on consoles and slightly on PC.
  • Improved camera smoothness
  • Performance improvements during some cutscenes.
  • Fixed case where game was crashing on loading a save in certain situations
  • Various bug fixes and user experience improvements in GUI panels.
  • Fixed issue where some players were unable to run after Wandering in the Dark quest
  • Fixed issue where players were unable to talk to Eight after the Lord of Undvik quest
  • Too many wild hunt minions were spawned during Ciri's Story: Fleeing the Bog quest.
  • Fixed issue where Keira could sometimes fall under terrain during Wandering in the Dark quest
  • Fixed issue where Player was unable to move freely during Blindingly Obvious quest
  • Fixed issue where Player was unable to activate portal during Wandering in the Dark quest
  • Fixed issue where Player could get trapped in Turseach castle ruins
  • Fixed issue where Roche was not present at Hanged Man's tree during Eye for an Eye quest
  • Fixed issue where Player was unable to talk or interact with certain NPCs
  • Fixed issue where Sirens in quest Lord of Undvik could be invulnerable.
  • Fixed issue where player was unable to use certain actions after Carnal Sins quest
  • Fixed issue where Geralt was sometimes unable to mount Roach
  • Fixed issue where some players where experiencing infinite loading screen during King's Gambit quest.
  • Fixed issue where Simun was not properly spawned in An Unpaid Debt quest
  • Fixed issue where player might have had a progression break after choosing certain dialogue option when talking to Dijkstra in Count Reuven's Treasure quest
  • The Pyres of Novigrad quest is of course going to be fixed as well as the XP glitch.
 
S

Sil

Banned
jorimt said:
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.
Click to expand...

To clear things up: NPC pop-in exists since release, texture/foliage pop-in has worsened since 1.04 for some people. Probably a minority though, I'm aware of that.
 
B

b0bbyJ03

Member
980 here. I've had zero issues or crashes since launch so unless there is an upgrade in performance of any kind I'll stay on my current driver. Can anyone chime in on Maxwell performance.
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Guys, are you supposed to get a sexy looking shockwave effect when you use Aard over water (As seen in a video posted in here)? Because I get a few individual ripple effects D:
Edit: No PC patch today? Dammit, I'll suck it up and play anyway, I do a lot of sidequests anyway so I'll probably even out level wise eventually.
 
B

b0bbyJ03

Member
Easy_D said:
Guys, are you supposed to get a sexy looking shockwave effect when you use Aard over water (As seen in a video posted in here)? Because I get a few individual ripple effects D:
Edit: No PC patch today? Dammit, I'll suck it up and play anyway, I do a lot of sidequests anyway so I'll probably even out level wise eventually.
Click to expand...

I don't get it either but I'm wondering if that will change once you've upgraded Aard. I could be wrong but I think the upgrade version is all around Geralt and not just in front of him. maybe that'll do it?
 
K

Kambing

Member
For those of you using DSR.

My display is 1080p. The only resolution that produces the best DSR is 4k. Aside from being downsampled from a higher resolution, the UI remains readable as in 1080p. Can understand this at 4k as its just 4 times 1080p. At other resolutions however, 1440p, 1800p etc, the UI does not scale very well, making the overall picture worse IMO.

Is there anyway to get the UI to scale properly? I see some of you recommending DSR of 1800p and curious how you deal with the non-scaled UI?
 
K

Krauser Kat

Member
Easy_D said:
Guys, are you supposed to get a sexy looking shockwave effect when you use Aard over water (As seen in a video posted in here)? Because I get a few individual ripple effects D:
Edit: No PC patch today? Dammit, I'll suck it up and play anyway, I do a lot of sidequests anyway so I'll probably even out level wise eventually.
Click to expand...

i get a big circle of ripple effects that slowly fade away after 1 initial shockwave.
 
J

jorimt

Member
Sil said:
To clear things up: NPC pop-in exists since release, texture/foliage pop-in has worsened since 1.04 for some people. Probably a minority though, I'm aware of that.
Click to expand...

I will concede on the texture/foliage pop-in increase, not because it's been proven as true, but because I have no proof either way on that one; I noted the environmental pop-in on launch, and as far as I can tell, I didn't see it worsen in later patches.

I have yet to see concrete proof of the supposed draw-distance downgrade introduced in 1.04, not a single screenshot comparison or video. If anyone has one, I'd honestly be interested in seeing it.
 
C

chromatic9

Member
Derp said:
I'm on a 4k monitor, so I can't DSR backwards. Only thing I can do is add 3200x1800 as a custom resolution. Just did that and tried it in-game, and I have black bars around the screen (so it didn't stretch the image to cover the screen). Game was running perfectly at 30 fps. What a shame. Fuck you, black bars.
Click to expand...

Have you ticked the override box and selected GPU scaling on the drop down menu just above the override box? This should scale any custom res to your native 2160p

Are you overclocking the card? 25-30fps sounds about right now at 2160p for a 780ti.
 
S

Smokey

Member
With new drivers I finally started playing the game. I was in the mid 70s with Ultra settings(no config tweaks) w/ Hairworks at 2560x1440 with the Witcher 3 drivers. Latest drivers I am now in the 80fps+ range with the same settings. Titan X SLI usage is in the upper 90% on both cards. GSYNC keeps the tearing to a minimum. Am happy. Will try config tweaks later.
 
C

CyberPunked

Member
Smokey said:
With new drivers I finally started playing the game. I was in the mid 70s with Ultra settings(no config tweaks) w/ Hairworks at 2560x1440 with the Witcher 3 drivers. Latest drivers I am now in the 80fps+ range with the same settings. Titan X SLI usage is in the upper 90% on both cards. GSYNC keeps the tearing to a minimum. Am happy. Will try config tweaks later.
Click to expand...

How is SLI with this game? Smooth? Just ordered two 980tis so hoping to see a nice performance boost over a single Titan X.

Also how come you're not playing at 4K?
 
V

viveks86

Member
Smokey said:
With new drivers I finally started playing the game. I was in the mid 70s with Ultra settings(no config tweaks) w/ Hairworks at 2560x1440 with the Witcher 3 drivers. Latest drivers I am now in the 80fps+ range with the same settings. Titan X SLI usage is in the upper 90% on both cards. GSYNC keeps the tearing to a minimum. Am happy. Will try config tweaks later.
Click to expand...

Whoa! So the new drivers made a big difference to framerate? Thought everyone said it made no difference to maxwell.

CyberPunked said:
Also how come you're not playing at 4K?
Click to expand...

It's sub-60 at 4k. At least that's why I'm doing 1620p. Also, there are no SLI specific issues for this game in my experience. You should be good
 
S

Smokey

Member
CyberPunked said:
How is SLI with this game? Smooth? Just ordered two 980tis so hoping to see a nice performance boost over a single Titan X.

Also how come you're not playing at 4K?
Click to expand...

SLI is smooth in the game. No issues. Use my Swift for the responsiveness and it's my daily monitor. Will get around to 4k but it means I have to move my monitors around etc. Lazy.

Did you sell the titan x?

viveks86 said:
Whoa! So the new drivers made a big difference to framerate? Thought everyone said it made no difference to maxwell.



It's sub-60 at 4k. At least that's why I'm doing 1620p. Also, there are no SLI specific issues for this game in my experience. You should be good
Click to expand...

Dunno. It's definitely went up for me.

I think there was an issue with gsync and sli configs in the Witcher 3 driver set. With gsync on my usage was not where it should be. I noticed it in Heaven, Project Cars, and Witcher 3 yesterday pre new drivers. With gsync off I got better performance.

Something was fixed in these new drivers because I am not seeing that same issue.

I haven't been following thread too much. Was waiting on patches to get ironed out along with drivers. Game is beautiful maxed out with a smooth frame rate. What kind of performance are you getting ?
 
V

viveks86

Member
Smokey said:
Dunno. It's definitely went up for me.

I think there was an issue with gsync and sli configs in the Witcher 3 driver set. With gsync on my usage was not where it should be. I noticed it in Heaven, Project Cars, and Witcher 3 yesterday pre new drivers. With gsync off I got better performance.

Something was fixed in these new drivers because I am not seeing that same issue.

I haven't been following thread too much. Was waiting on patches to get ironed out along with drivers. Game is beautiful maxed out with a smooth frame rate. What kind of performance are you getting ?
Click to expand...

Ahhh.. the improvements could be gsync related then. I've been getting high 90s utilization since launch. Haven't tried the new drivers yet, but not getting my hopes up. Playing at 1620p and framerate hovers around 70s. Drops to high 50s when shit hits the fan (like the final showdown during the bloody baron quest line), but those are rare situations that I'll just have to make peace with.
 
S

Steve Youngblood

Member
Has anyone else experienced issues since the nVidia updates yesterday that added support for the 980 Ti? I can't verify myself, but my wife tells me that she's had the game crash multiple times today, and we haven't had any issues like that since the 1.03 patch. Seeing as how I updated drivers last night, that seemed like the most likely suspect, but just curious if anyone else is having troubles with the new nVidia drivers.
 
C

CarbonFire

Member
Tankshell said:
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:
Click to expand...

There are several different shadow LOD settings in the user.settings file you can tweak, but I'm not sure which one affects this particular issue. I'll have to poke around in there after work and see which one is the one you should tweak. Keep in mind there will probably be a performance impact in getting the shadows to draw farther away, so YMMV.
 
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