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[Easy_D]

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.

Yeah, higher resolutions do wonders. I remember back when I had a 1280x1024 monitor I absolutely needed AA, or the jaggies would murder my eyes. Now with a 1080p monitor I usually turn it off, at that reso+screen size they're not that bad for me personally.
The old 5:4 monitor was a 19 incher, and my 1080p is 21.1 inches, not *that* much bigger but the resolution difference is huge.

 

[Durante]

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

Wrong. 4xMSAA will look better for some situations since the samples are sparse, while downsampling is equivalent to AA with an ordered grid.

See my article.

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

MSAA actually used to be pretty cheap, back when it had good hardware support but before most games switched to deferred shading.

 

[Dictator93]

Wrong. 4xMSAA will look better for some situations since the samples are sparse, while downsampling is equivalent to AA with an ordered grid.

See my article.

MSAA actually used to be pretty cheap, back when it had good hardware support but before most games switched to deferred shading.

This game is forward rendered.. so it would be pretty awesome if they added full screen MSAA (not just for hairworks... although the MSAA there is really good).

 

[daninthemix]

Wrong. 4xMSAA will look better for some situations since the samples are sparse, while downsampling is equivalent to AA with an ordered grid.

I was actually talking about native 4k, not DSR.

See my article.

MSAA actually used to be pretty cheap, back when it had good hardware support but before most games switched to deferred shading.

Interesting, must be why those Valve games always ran so well even with ludicrous AA (16x). Recently stuff like AssCreed and Far Cry 4 have seemingly made MSAA untenable though.

 

[Smokey]

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?

Not really needed in my experience (4k)

 

[daninthemix]

Not really needed in my experience (4k)

Cool. Do you even bother with post-process AA then?

 

[Dries]

Wrong. 4xMSAA will look better for some situations since the samples are sparse, while downsampling is equivalent to AA with an ordered grid.

See my article.

Weren't we comparing native 4K against 1080p though? I never said anything about downsampling.

 

[lightchris]

Weren't we comparing native 4K against 1080p though? I never said anything about downsampling.

There can still be situations where 4xMSAA @ 1080p has less aliasing.

 

[plasticpassion]

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

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.

I don't really have CPU hogs running in the background, but when playing W3 and staring at the MSI afterburner graphs (which I linked on previous page), I often see the CPU peak at 100% and GPU usage drop as a result. Maybe I just need to spend more time overclocking my 3570k, but didn't have much luck with it in the past. I did buy an i7-4790k but will likely return it.

 

[Eyothrie]

Is 70-72 deg celcius too hot under load for a gtx 970? I can set a more aggressive fan profile, but then the fans are too loud. I want this thing to last a few years

 

[Dusktildawn48]

Is 70-72 deg celcius too hot under load for a gtx 970? I can set a more aggressive fan profile, but then the fans are too loud. I want this thing to last a few years

Absolutely not. Mine in sli get to 80c and that doesn't even bother me

 

[Zakalwe]

Is 70-72 deg celcius too hot under load for a gtx 970? I can set a more aggressive fan profile, but then the fans are too loud. I want this thing to last a few years

Not at all. Cards can reach temps of 95 before it becomes an actual problem. I like to keep mine under 80 if I can, 70 is absolutely fine.

 

[danthefan]

I can't believe the loading times in this game. Most of the time I don't actually get to read the little tip or whatever that shows up on the screen.

 

[Naedtrax]

I can't believe the loading times in this game. Most of the time I don't actually get to read the little tip or whatever that shows up on the screen.

You would have plenty of time to read them on console, i was at a friends house the other day and it honestly reminded me of Bloodbornes loading screens when i was there playing that.

 

[icecold1983]

This game is forward rendered.. so it would be pretty awesome if they added full screen MSAA (not just for hairworks... although the MSAA there is really good).

according to andys guide its not a true forward renderer

 

[Dictator93]

according to andys guide its not a true forward renderer

They have mentioned before that it is forward+ in interviews and in their docs... is there a chance Andy was mistaken?

Or perhaps it is some odd "other beast" of an engine now since they issued this interviews and docs?

 

[Zakalwe]

Took a chance on the latest Nvidia drivers, immediate crash when I loaded the game.

Rolled back to GTAV set and no issues.

 

[icecold1983]

They have mentioned before that it is forward+ in interviews and in their docs... is there a chance Andy was mistaken?

Or perhaps it is some odd "other beast" of an engine now since they issued this interviews and docs?

how long ago did they state it was forward+? was it before the entire renderer was supposedly changed?

 

[Dictator93]

how long ago did they state it was forward+? was it before the entire renderer was supposedly changed?

Well, a while ago they had a .ppt describing the switches over to forward rendering in their engine. I have scoured the web and it is gone.

Maybe they dumped the forward+ path and went back to deferred. That would be surprising though, because upping the games resolution does not dramatically increase VRAM usage like it does in most deferred engines.

 

[GroinShooter]

Cool. Do you even bother with post-process AA then?

I guess using any kind of AA at 4K is down to personal preference. I couldn't play without AA on 4K, tried it and forgot about it. I always use ReShade's SMAA or FXAA + 4K. It makes quite a difference if you care to take time and tweak SMAA/FXAA correctly for every game.
If you don't want to tweak AA settings yourself, ingame post-process AA is a decent option too (always better than just 4K imo).

 

[RickyRozay]

is it counterproductive to mix DSR and FXAA?

 

[icecold1983]

is it counterproductive to mix DSR and FXAA?

nope, just keep the smoothing factor lower depending on how strong the fxaa is.

 

[Rival]

Not at all. Cards can reach temps of 95 before it becomes an actual problem. I like to keep mine under 80 if I can, 70 is absolutely fine.

Agreed. Running sli 970s and set max temp to 84 with no issue.

 

[Cross-Section]

I've been running my GOG copy of the game through Steam as of late (dat overlay) but when I tried launching today, it crashed; a quick flash of a window, then nothing. Launching through Galaxy still works, as does running the exe standalone.

Anyone else having this issue, or is willing to test it?

 

[PFD]

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?

There's no way that CPU is bottlenecking you. Your problem lies elsewhere

 

[kinggroin]

I've been running my GOG copy of the game through Steam as of late (dat overlay) but when I tried launching today, it crashed; a quick flash of a window, then nothing. Launching through Galaxy still works, as does running the exe standalone.

Anyone else having this issue, or is willing to test it?

Game crashes after so much time or none at all when launching from BPM for me. I just launch it the old fashion way, then when the game is beat, uninstalling it. Goty contender, but boy is it temperamental.

 

[Philtastic]

At this point, I've uninstalled and reinstalled the latest AMD beta drivers a couple of times and, maybe every other boot, I have roughly half the performance of my GPU. Rebooting usually fixes this. I am posting this to warn everyone that the latest AMD drivers are probably buggy. I'm also not noticing much of any frame rate improvement. It may not be worth installing.

 

[leng jai]

Is there any way to stop the game from switching back to borderless window mode all the time?

 

[Mad Season]

Is there any way to stop the game from switching back to borderless window mode all the time?

Don't set Fps to unlimited in options

 

[texhnolyze]

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.

Regarding this cutscene lighting, someone has finally made a mod so it's applicable in gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPfGK70jE7s
It's not released yet, but it's close.

 

[AU Tiger]

Updated to the new geforce drivers. Immediate crashing... doesn't even attempt to load the game.

Rolled back to GTA drivers, black screen and endless spinning windows loading circle animated thing. Ctrl+alt+del to task manager shows witcher 3 stopped responding.

Rolled forward to witcher 3 drivers, crash immediately upon trying to launch the game.

WHAT
THE
HELL

BRB currently downloading 26 gigs worth of witcher files again from GOG

:|

Not cool.. I literally have not even touched my PC since playing on sunday. This makes no sense at all.

Regarding this cutscene lighting, someone has finally made a mod so it's applicable in gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPfGK70jE7s
It's not released yet, but it's close.

Game dun changed. I want this properly implemented back into the game by CDPR though. I'm sure there are other bells and whistles along with this that they've turned off.

Should be as easy as flipping a switch

Spoiler

MajorNelsonPatch.exe

 

[Cannon Goose]

Has anyone with the Steam version been able to download the new free DLC yet?

 

[DKF590]

Sold my 780 and bought a friend's 970 who was itching for an upgrade, but I'm suddenly facing some huge driver issues.

Getting instant display driver crashes on any driver newer than 347.88.
I have personally seen the game running on his system on newer drivers or I would probably just assume the card itself has issues.

I really have no idea what to make of this because it is 100% stable on 347.88 and newer drivers are unstable even after a fresh windows install.
Enough people seem to have similar issues that I am thoroughly stumped on if I should RMA or not.

 

[wazoo]

I've been running my GOG copy of the game through Steam as of late (dat overlay) but when I tried launching today, it crashed; a quick flash of a window, then nothing. Launching through Galaxy still works, as does running the exe standalone.

Anyone else having this issue, or is willing to test it?

Same for me. Was running fine until yesterday. Now, I have to uninstall Reshade/Sweetfx to make it work. Nothing changed during the week that I am aware of ?

 

[Yasae]

I've been running my GOG copy of the game through Steam as of late (dat overlay) but when I tried launching today, it crashed; a quick flash of a window, then nothing. Launching through Galaxy still works, as does running the exe standalone.

Anyone else having this issue, or is willing to test it?

I did. There was an update to GOG Galaxy yesterday (the 3rd). Could possibly be connected....

 

[Seanspeed]

Sold my 780 and bought a friend's 970 who was itching for an upgrade, but I'm suddenly facing some huge driver issues.

Getting instant display driver crashes on any driver newer than 347.88.
I have personally seen the game running on his system on newer drivers or I would probably just assume the card itself has issues.

I really have no idea what to make of this because it is 100% stable on 347.88 and newer drivers are unstable even after a fresh windows install.
Enough people seem to have similar issues that I am thoroughly stumped on if I should RMA or not.

Very unlikely it's your card man. All sorts of people have had these kinds of issues. Stick with any drivers you find stable.

 

[vocab]

Sold my 780 and bought a friend's 970 who was itching for an upgrade, but I'm suddenly facing some huge driver issues.

Getting instant display driver crashes on any driver newer than 347.88.
I have personally seen the game running on his system on newer drivers or I would probably just assume the card itself has issues.

I really have no idea what to make of this because it is 100% stable on 347.88 and newer drivers are unstable even after a fresh windows install.
Enough people seem to have similar issues that I am thoroughly stumped on if I should RMA or not.

It's a driver issue.

 

[sunofsam]

Sold my 780 and bought a friend's 970 who was itching for an upgrade, but I'm suddenly facing some huge driver issues.

Getting instant display driver crashes on any driver newer than 347.88.
I have personally seen the game running on his system on newer drivers or I would probably just assume the card itself has issues.

I really have no idea what to make of this because it is 100% stable on 347.88 and newer drivers are unstable even after a fresh windows install.
Enough people seem to have similar issues that I am thoroughly stumped on if I should RMA or not.

Did you do a fresh Nvidia install or just swap cards?

 

[martino]

Game dun changed. I want this properly implemented back into the game by CDPR though. I'm sure there are other bells and whistles along with this that they've turned off.

Should be as easy as flipping a switch

Spoiler

MajorNelsonPatch.exe

in several month when the game will stop drawing mainstream attention i won't be surprise if they do some stuff on pc version.

 

[Dries]

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.

Hard for me to say which option I prefer. The scenes with Global Illumination on certaintly have more "realistic" lighting, but those vanilla shots seem to have nicer colors. Less washed out. Interesting stuff though.

 

[Dictator93]

Hard for me to say which option I prefer. The scenes with Global Illumination on certaintly have more "realistic" lighting, but those vanilla shots seem to have nicer colors. Less washed out. Interesting stuff though.

Well, it not being GI is why you think that

If it were GI, it would be undeniably better. But since it is a tonemapping and, apparently, bloom difference... it is just a post process and is relegated to the realm of subjectivity.

 

[Dries]

Well, it not being GI is why you think that

If it were GI, it would be undeniably better. But since it is a tonemapping and, apparently, bloom difference... it is just a post process and is relegated to the realm of subjectivity.

Haha, it's not even GI? So it's just a post-processing toggle huh.... what do you like better?

I would prefer that night-time lighting any day (haha). But my IPS panel really likes the less washed out colors of those vanilla day-time shots.

 

[leng jai]

So are there any Reshade settings that don't introduce black crush? Is that even possible?

Wouldn't mind changing the tone for my second play through.

 

[GroinShooter]

So are there any Reshade settings that don't introduce black crush? Is that even possible?

Wouldn't mind changing the tone for my second play through.

Definitely possible and very easy to do. You can pretty much take any preset and tweak the levels shader to fix crushed blacks (there's other ways too but this is the most simple and easiest.

 

[Blitzhex]

Does downsampling from 1440p on a 1080p monitor produce the same IQ/jaggies as a native 1440p res monitor? Assuming both are 27", dunno if that matters though.

 

[Dries]

Does downsampling from 1440p on a 1080p monitor produce the same IQ/jaggies as a native 1440p res monitor? Assuming both are 27", dunno if that matters though.

Good question. I'd say that IQ would be increased on the 1440p monitor due to the fact that there are simply more pixels available to render the scene = more sharpness and clarity.

For AA, I'd say it's a toss-up. I've really no idea.

I'm actually playing on a native 1440p screen (also at 1440 resolution, so no downsampling) and with the in-game AA enabled I would say the jaggies are pretty well eliminated. Not completely though! That's why I'm also applying nvidia's FXAA as well. This applys a finishing touch which makes it so that I can't see any remaining jaggies. People might consider this too "blurry", but for me, it looks great.

 

[knerl]

Updated to the new geforce drivers. Immediate crashing... doesn't even attempt to load the game.

Rolled back to GTA drivers, black screen and endless spinning windows loading circle animated thing. Ctrl+alt+del to task manager shows witcher 3 stopped responding.

Rolled forward to witcher 3 drivers, crash immediately upon trying to launch the game.

WHAT
THE
HELL

BRB currently downloading 26 gigs worth of witcher files again from GOG

:|

Not cool.. I literally have not even touched my PC since playing on sunday. This makes no sense at all.



Game dun changed. I want this properly implemented back into the game by CDPR though. I'm sure there are other bells and whistles along with this that they've turned off.

Should be as easy as flipping a switch

Spoiler

MajorNelsonPatch.exe

When 352.86 dropped I installed it over my existing 350.12 driver which then gave me driver crashes while using Firefox and Chrome a few times. I then re-installed 352.86 after removing it using display driver uninstaller which then didn't crash a single time even while using both Firefox and Chrome with tabs to the max. So there's one possible solution. Clean out existing drivers completely. Also. Check your windows updates.
Could have something to do with those and/or possibly some .net, c++ redists that aren't properly installed.

16GB RAM, GTX970, overclocked i5 2500K @4.3GHz installed on a Asus P8Z77-V LX.
Running Win 8.1 x64.

 

[GroinShooter]

Does downsampling from 1440p on a 1080p monitor produce the same IQ/jaggies as a native 1440p res monitor? Assuming both are 27", dunno if that matters though.

27' definitely matters. A 1080p 27' monitor has a massive pixel pitch in comparison to a 1440p one.
On a 1080p 27' monitor you're a lot more likely to detect jaggies in games even if you downsample as the pixel size is a lot bigger in comparison to a 23' 1080p monitor or a 1440p 27' monitor.
So there's definitely a difference between DSR 1440p-->1080p 27' and native 1440p 27' monitors but it probably isn't a "night and day" difference.

 

[sgs2008]

Weird ive gotten a rather substantial fps drop for no apparent reason. The only thing that has change don my system is that ive added the 2 new dlc that came out this week. Running sli titan x's game maxed at 1440p. Normally running around novigrad i get 70-80 fps now im gettin 55-65 sometimes even 50. Just did whoreson's arena down there i hit like 45 fps -_-. restarted my system and ran 3d mark but everything seems fine. Anyone got any ideas ?

 

[GHG]

Weird ive gotten a rather substantial fps drop for no apparent reason. The only thing that has change don my system is that ive added the 2 new dlc that came out this week. Running sli titan x's game maxed at 1440p. Normally running around novigrad i get 70-80 fps now im gettin 55-65 sometimes even 50. Just did whoreson's arena down there i hit like 45 fps -_-. restarted my system and ran 3d mark but everything seems fine. Anyone got any ideas ?

Sounds terrible.

Send your Titan X's to me and let me troubleshoot.