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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

Kamina

Golden Boy
So i'm experiencing terrible stutter even though I'm using gsync and a overclocked titan X. I think it's time to upgrade my CPU (i5-3570k @ 3.8ghz) as it appears to throttle my GPU performance; in MSI afterburner, the CPU is clearly hitting its peak. Which CPU is a good upgrade at this point? i7-4790K or i7-5820K?
i7-4790K is pretty good and not too expensive


Hmm I have had crashes since release. What is your OC set to? I have tried going back 12 previous drivers. That didnt help. I have tied changing some settings in nvidia control panel. Didnt work .
Keep the Framerate on Unlimited and use Fullscreen mode.
Use NVidia CP to cap your game at 60 FPS.

As for the OC on GTX980
Power 125%
Boost Clock 1400MHz
Memory Clock 7800MHz
desired Temperature 75 degree Celsius

With Hairworks on, but it's AA at 2
Shadows to normal and everything else on Ultra

Most of the game is at 60 FPS with some drops to the mid 50s in stressful situations or the swamps.
Lowering Foliage distance removes most FPS drops completely.
 

negru08

Neo Member
i7-4790K is pretty good and not too expensive



Keep the Framerate on Unlimited and use Fullscreen mode.
Use NVidia CP to cap your game at 60 FPS.

As for the OC on GTX980
Power 125%
Boost Clock 1400MHz
Memory Clock 7800MHz
desired Temperature 75 degree Celsius

With Hairworks on, but it's AA at 2
Shadows to normal and everything else on Ultra

Most of the game is at 60 FPS with some drops to the mid 50s in stressful situations or the swamps.
Lowering Foliage distance removes most FPS drops completely.


Hmm thats weird without any OC I can get 60 fps with a mixture of High/ultra setting at 1080p. Never had any drops. Of course Hair works is off.
 
So i'm experiencing terrible stutter even though I'm using gsync and a overclocked titan X. I think it's time to upgrade my CPU (i5-3570k @ 3.8ghz) as it appears to throttle my GPU performance; in MSI afterburner, the CPU is clearly hitting its peak. Which CPU is a good upgrade at this point? i7-4790K or i7-5820K?

Are you sure it isn't the camera stutter?

But beyond that, it could be the i5 given what you are showing there.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Hmm thats weird without any OC I can get 60 fps with a mixture of High/ultra setting at 1080p. Never had any drops. Of course Hair works is off.
With hairworks off and OCed I can have everything on Ultra 1080p/60.
But I like that Beard. Also Shadows looks pretty much the same on every setting anyway but can help you save a few frames here or there.
 

30IR

Banned
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.

The new drivers (for 980 Ti) do cause crashes and that too only in this game. TW3 seems VERY sensitive to OC - in fact, I'm having to downclock my cards to get the game to run without freezing/crashing.

The strange thing is, just the other day, I was getting great scaling in 4-Way SLI (>90% usage) with performance around 60 - 75 FPS but now the scaling is not that great and I'm back to around 40 - 45FPS.

I do have MSI Afterburner installed (4.1.1) - that was the only thing I updated besides the driver itself.

Great scaling:

l0GgXLI.jpg


Poor scaling:

MTrFU5T.jpg
 
So i'm experiencing terrible stutter even though I'm using gsync and a overclocked titan X. I think it's time to upgrade my CPU (i5-3570k @ 3.8ghz) as it appears to throttle my GPU performance; in MSI afterburner, the CPU is clearly hitting its peak. Which CPU is a good upgrade at this point? i7-4790K or i7-5820K?

Either option is going to require a new motherboard as the i5-3570k you have is LGA 1155 and the i7-4790K is LGA 1150. With that option you can at least still use your DDR3 RAM.

The i7-5820K is LGA 2011-v3 and requires DDR4 memory but it will also give you more options in terms of PCI-E Lanes (if you ever want to SLI that Titan X or use a NVMe SSD)

The new drivers (for 980 Ti) do cause crashes and that too only in this game. TW3 seems VERY sensitive to OC - in fact, I'm having to downclock my cards to get the game to run without freezing/crashing.

The strange thing is, just the other day, I was getting great scaling in 4-Way SLI (>90% usage) with performance around 60 - 75 FPS but now the scaling is not that great and I'm back to around 40 - 45FPS.

I do have MSI Afterburner installed (4.1.1) - that was the only thing I updated besides the driver itself.

Great scaling:

[img ]http://i.imgur.com/l0GgXLI.jpg[/img]

Poor scaling:

[img ]http://i.imgur.com/MTrFU5T.jpg[/img]

Do you by any chance have a G-Sync monitor and have G-Sync for Fullscreen and Borderless enabled? There is some sort of bug with that, just turning it on (even if you don't use it) will murder SLI scaling (does on my 980's)
 

ascully

Member
New nvidia driver seems to be killing performance and adding a stutter that wasn't there before for me. Need to roll back I guess.
 

n0n44m

Member
New Nvidia drivers gave me around 10 fps more in situations that mattered most :)

Had some time to kill while watching football last night so I fast traveled to some spots and noted the fps, then updated the drivers and did the same.

Locations where I was slightly over 60 fps increased to over 70, whereas locations that were already 80+ increased by no more than 5 fps.

When playing the game with 60 fps locked via RTSS I also noticed the temperatures & power usage from the wall was lower. More importantly, the game felt smoother as well, presumably because it never drops below 60 now :)

670 SLI , no hairstuff, all settings HIGH except for shadow (medium) and ultra details, HBAO+, PhysX set to CPU

haven't had a crash since 1.04 by the way
 
Either option is going to require a new motherboard as the i5-3570k you have is LGA 1155 and the i7-4790K is LGA 1150. With that option you can at least still use your DDR3 RAM.

The i7-5820K is LGA 2011-v3 and requires DDR4 memory but it will also give you more options in terms of PCI-E Lanes (if you ever want to SLI that Titan X or use a NVMe SSD)



Do you by any chance have a G-Sync monitor and have G-Sync for Fullscreen and Borderless enabled? There is some sort of bug with that, just turning it on (even if you don't use it) will murder SLI scaling (does on my 980's)

Thanks. I ordered the i7 4790k which means I'll need a new board too. Are there any particular mobo requirements for watercooling gpu?
 
Thanks. I ordered the i7 4790k which means I'll need a new board too. Are there any particular mobo requirements for watercooling gpu?

I think before ordering anything (but you clearly already did) you should try to overclock the crap outta that CPU and test again.
3570K is known to be able to reach pretty good clock speeds in general. At least test with that 3.8GHz speed and then again with a higher clock speed to see if you get much of a difference in framerate etc.
This is a good quide on how to overclock Ivy Bridge CPUs: http://www.overclock.net/t/1247413/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-with-ln2-guide-at-the-end
 
I think before ordering anything (but you clearly already did) you should try to overclock the crap outta that CPU and test again.
3570K is known to be able to reach pretty good clock speeds in general. At least test with that 3.8GHz speed and then again with a higher clock speed to see if you get much of a difference in framerate etc.
This is a good quide on how to overclock Ivy Bridge CPUs: http://www.overclock.net/t/1247413/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-with-ln2-guide-at-the-end

When I first got the processor, I tried overclocking but couldn't get a stable OC. Perhaps I'll try again as I can always return the 4790k.

Anyway, the camera stutter could be due to the game anyway. It's so terrible now and I don't recall it being like this before.
 

Smokey

Member
Hooked my 4k monitor up to the machine. Game looks amazing in 4k. It seems similar to GTA V to me in that it almost seems made to play at 4k? I dunno but it is stunning. Ultra/Max (including AA) + Hairworks resulted in an average fps in the low 50s. GPU1 @ about 92%, GPU2 @ 99% ( don't know why but ok). Small OC of +169/+244 on SLI Titan X.
 
Hooked my 4k monitor up to the machine. Game looks amazing in 4k. It seems similar to GTA V to me in that it almost seems made to play at 4k? I dunno but it is stunning. Ultra/Max (including AA) + Hairworks resulted in an average fps in the low 50s. GPU1 @ about 92%, GPU2 @ 99% ( don't know why but ok). Small OC of +169/+244 on SLI Titan X.

I'm using a gsync 2k monitor and with 4K DSR, 4K doesn't seem to look that good. Maybe it is because of their seemingly low-res textures, but even at the same settings you mentioned in 4K, I wasn't blown away.
 

Smokey

Member
I'm using a gsync 2k monitor and with 4K DSR, 4K doesn't seem to look that good. Maybe it is because of their seemingly low-res textures, but even at the same settings you mentioned in 4K, I wasn't blown away.

Sure there are those console looking textures especially on bricks. But riding around and just exploring in general it looks really good. Crisp and sharp. Maybe down sampling produces a slightly different looking 4k picture than a native 4k panel?
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
Goddammit, now the game is starting to bug out on me on the Broken Flowers quest
near the end when Rosa asks for a rematch
. She just completely disappears. I lost about 1.5 hours of game play since my last quick save but I'll just wait for a patch to fix the problem before playing again.

I also heard that you are supposed to get exp for each person you talk to in that mission but I didn't receive any despite my character being only 3 levels higher than the recommended level of 11.

This must be the infamous 'exp bug' people are talking about huh?

CDPR needs to prioritize the exp bug fix before anything imo.
 

MattyG

Banned
Just installed my 970 (760 before). It runs SOOOOO much better.

Is there any better AA solution for it though? Everything about this game is so beautiful EXCEPT the very very fine aliasing and shimmering that the in-game AA leaves behind.

Also, any tweaks I should make to the game (.ini) that don't have much performance cost?
 
Hooked my 4k monitor up to the machine. Game looks amazing in 4k. It seems similar to GTA V to me in that it almost seems made to play at 4k? I dunno but it is stunning. Ultra/Max (including AA) + Hairworks resulted in an average fps in the low 50s. GPU1 @ about 92%, GPU2 @ 99% ( don't know why but ok). Small OC of +169/+244 on SLI Titan X.

It really does look amazing at native 4k.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
I think before ordering anything (but you clearly already did) you should try to overclock the crap outta that CPU and test again.
3570K is known to be able to reach pretty good clock speeds in general. At least test with that 3.8GHz speed and then again with a higher clock speed to see if you get much of a difference in framerate etc.
This is a good quide on how to overclock Ivy Bridge CPUs: http://www.overclock.net/t/1247413/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-with-ln2-guide-at-the-end

Got my 3570k @ 4.4GHz and it's doing great in Witcher 3. CPUs make very small steps, not leaps year to year.
 

golem

Member
Hooked my 4k monitor up to the machine. Game looks amazing in 4k. It seems similar to GTA V to me in that it almost seems made to play at 4k? I dunno but it is stunning. Ultra/Max (including AA) + Hairworks resulted in an average fps in the low 50s. GPU1 @ about 92%, GPU2 @ 99% ( don't know why but ok). Small OC of +169/+244 on SLI Titan X.

Native 4k has ruined me with regards to 1080p games. It really is a noticeable difference
 

Kuro

Member
My game froze when i tried quitting and my gpu fans got really really loud and I started to smell burning so i hard reset the pc and now its idling 5 degrees higher than usual...
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Native 4k has ruined me with regards to 1080p games. It really is a noticeable difference

Uggghhh, you people are killing me! I haven't made the 4K jump yet simply because I went 120Hz with 1080p and just CANNOT go back to 60Hz. However, after seeing 4K screenshots of The Witcher III (which already looks fantastic in 1080p to me), I've become torn!
 
its not the new Nvidia drivers thats messing up you guys games
as i havent had any stutter problems or freezes at all
i am using an Asus laptop if that matters though so might just be a Desktop problem
 

Exuro

Member
Native 4k has ruined me with regards to 1080p games. It really is a noticeable difference
I bet. The shimmering caused by the tiny detail in some of the armor(mastercrafted ursine chest for example) makes me wonder how nice it must look in 4k.
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
Native 4k has ruined me with regards to 1080p games. It really is a noticeable difference

4K makes 1080p look weak as fuck. I've seen the game in 4K on my tv and it looks amazingly crisp (it REALLY helps to bring out foliage detail) but it is an unplayable mess with my 290 even with low settings.

On the other hand, 1080p @ 122Hz on the same screen does have it's merits as well (motion clarity).
 

Hawk269

Member
It really does look amazing at native 4k.

Yes it does. Been playing at 4k native on my Panasonic 65" Ultra HD set and it has been just great. For me I have been mostly at 60fps with a 3930k CPU and 2 x Titan X. I do have Hairworks off and no AA (AA not needed at that resolution) and I get rare dips into the 55 realm. Hairworks tanks it for me to 45-50fps area. so I usually do not use it.
 

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Native 4k has ruined me with regards to 1080p games. It really is a noticeable difference


It really has. This game more so than others. The foliage especially. In 1080p it just looks horrible in comparison. A blurry globby by mess.

It's a staggering difference.

In fact, this is the first game that even 1440p looks bad enough to me now that I won't even lower the resolution for 60fps. The quality gap with this game is huge, anything below 4K looks so much worse.
 

Robert7lee

Neo Member
Getting minor frame drops and stuttering when neither my gpu and cpu usage is above 80% whilst forcing v sync via nvidia inspector and turning it off in game and frames set to unlimited.

Titan and i7 4770k @ 4.2 ghz.
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
It really has. This game more so than others. The foliage especially. In 1080p it just looks horrible in comparison. A blurry globby by mess.

It's a staggering difference.

In fact, this is the first game that even 1440p looks bad enough to me now that I won't even lower the resolution for 60fps. The quality gap with this game is huge, anything below 4K looks so much worse.

I'm glad ignorance is bliss. I plan on gaming on my 1080p Panasonic Plasma till it dies, or I do.
 

Iceternal

Member
I suppose this issue has already been reported but whenever the camera angle changes in cutscenes, some details like NPCs' helmets and Geralt's beard appear late on screen and it's extremely jarring and immersion-breaking !

My girlfriend was watching me play and she saw a dwarf's helmet and weapon appearing from thin air and said " WTF JUST HAPPENED ?!"

Lol, it is pretty bad ... any ini tweak to fix this ?
 

Schlomo

Member
I suppose this issue has already been reported but whenever the camera angle changes in cutscenes, some details like NPCs' helmets and Geralt's beard appear late on screen and it's extremely jarring and immersion-breaking !

Yeah that's really bad. It only happened a few times in the beginning for me though and then never again.
 

23qwerty

Member
I'm glad ignorance is bliss. I plan on gaming on my 1080p Panasonic Plasma till it dies, or I do.

Well playing on a 1080p big TV looks way better than playing on a smaller 1080p monitor. Witcher 3 looks significantly better on my TV than monitor. Damn near as good as 4k downsampled on my monitor anyway.
 

Cerity

Member
If you play with the Witcher 3 Hunter's Config and in the resource section there are some variables that do effect that sort of pop in. When I tried to mess with it to decrease load times I noticed that there was a lot more npc pop in, a bunch more were taking longer to appear and when they did appear they appeared in that scarecrow stature.
 

Dries

Member
Native 1440p also looks great guys! Obviously, 4K looks better, but on my XB270HU this is the prettiest game I have ever played. It even gets better in motion. The colours are also amazing with an IPS panel. Sometimes I can't believe what I'm seeing.
 

b0bbyJ03

Member
New nvidia driver seems to be killing performance and adding a stutter that wasn't there before for me. Need to roll back I guess.

Heads up to you, and anyone else I guess, I had the same problem and thought it was the driver. For some reason installing the new driver leaves all the setting the same in the game except one, it changes the game from fulcscreen to borderless. Once I changed it back performance was back to normal. Check your settings and make sure that this wasn't the problem.
 

spuckthew

Member
So I rolled back to 347.88 the other day and have had some long stints since with no crashing. Maybe using DDU got rid of some gremlins, or maybe 350.12 were still kind of garbage on my system. Either way, I appear to be rock-solid stable and I'm not going to grab 353.06 until I'm done with W3 because I'm happy with my performance for the first time since completing White Orchard (which, oddly, was issue-free for ~11 hours even on 350.12).
 
It really has. This game more so than others. The foliage especially. In 1080p it just looks horrible in comparison. A blurry globby by mess.

It's a staggering difference.

In fact, this is the first game that even 1440p looks bad enough to me now that I won't even lower the resolution for 60fps. The quality gap with this game is huge, anything below 4K looks so much worse.

I think this is a tad hyperbolic with a sprinkle of bias for good measure.
 
So i'm experiencing terrible stutter even though I'm using gsync and a overclocked titan X. I think it's time to upgrade my CPU (i5-3570k @ 3.8ghz) as it appears to throttle my GPU performance; in MSI afterburner, the CPU is clearly hitting its peak. Which CPU is a good upgrade at this point? i7-4790K or i7-5820K?

Are you running background programs? I have a i7-930 and my CPU activity hovers ~20% while playing Witcher 3. I can't think of a single good reason to upgrade my CPU in the next couple years at least and it's already 5 years old.
 

JohngPR

Member
Those on AMD GPUs that are using RadeonPro:

It might just be me, but installing the two new DLC pieces breaks RP functionality with TW3 for some reason. Luckily, I had a restore point that I was able to go back to because unstalling the two new pieces of DLC didn't unbreak it.

I know for a fact it's the DLC because I created a restore point right before I installed the DLC again to test it and it went from working to not working. Guess I'll hold of on installing the DLC for now until something changes. :(

If you want to take the chance, perhaps those that use RP can create a restore point right before they install the DLC and see if the same happens to them? Maybe it'll be useful to know if it's just me or something that affects everyone running it.
 

Smokey

Member
Yes it does. Been playing at 4k native on my Panasonic 65" Ultra HD set and it has been just great. For me I have been mostly at 60fps with a 3930k CPU and 2 x Titan X. I do have Hairworks off and no AA (AA not needed at that resolution) and I get rare dips into the 55 realm. Hairworks tanks it for me to 45-50fps area. so I usually do not use it.

Man I need hairworks...AA...all that on. Even at 4k lol. Max or go home breh :p

I don't have too big of an issue going from my ROG Swift to 4k monitor and vice versa. After a few minutes I am adjusted and ready to go. Definitely interested in the upcoming 4k ips gsync pa els though. Feel like that would really help at that res.

Waiting on 4K OLED TVs to come down a bit before I jump in on the tv side.

I think this is a tad hyperbolic with a sprinkle of bias for good measure.

Ehhh it's kind of true. I don't know what is is but GTA V and W3, the two latest high profile releases, have a certain "look" to them in 4k. It's definitely noticeable when you move back and forth. Hard to explain.
 

daninthemix

Member
Man I need hairworks...AA...all that on. Even at 4k lol. Max or go home breh :p

I've been curious about this actually - is AA needed for 4k?

Or allow me to rephrase, since some PC gamers are never happy; which looks cleaner and has less jaggies:1080p w/4x MSAA or 4k w/no AA?
 

Dries

Member
I've been curious about this actually - is AA needed for 4k?

Or allow me to rephrase, since some PC gamers are never happy; which looks cleaner and has less jaggies:1080p w/4x MSAA or 4k w/no AA?

4K has four times as many pixels as 1080p so there will be absolutely no situation at all where 1080p will look better.

Just think of it, for every pixel you have at 1920 x 1080, with 4K that pixel will exist out of four pixels.
 

daninthemix

Member
4K has four times as many pixels as 1080p so there will be absolutely no situation at all where 1080p will look better.

Just think of it, for every pixel you have at 1920 x 1080, with 4K that pixel will exist out of four pixels.

Right, so I wonder what the performance difference is between 1080p w/MSAA vs 4k w/no AA? Because MSAA was always really expensive.

EDIT: I realise W3 uses post-process AA so I'm going a little o/t here.
 
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