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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

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

Yep, there are a couple of dll files in the bin folder that weren't there before. Deleting d3d11 and dxgi should resolve the Steam crashes, as does checking the admin flag in the witcher3 executable's properties.

The first solution is the preferred one, however, as running in admin disables the Steam overlay anyway. That said, it's definitely possible that deleting those files may have ramifications come 1.05's release.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
Getting CTDs often since last night. No changes, just started ahppening around an hour after reaching Novigrad.

Sometimes I get the sound playing/gamecloses/driver crash error.
Sometimes it just closes with no indication of why.

970, using the GTAV driver set (the newest set crashes as soon a I load the game).

Any current temp fixes for these?
 

b0bbyJ03

Member
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 ?

Make sure it didn't switch your settings from fullscreen to windowed.
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
So, I was messing with the Hairworks settings for Geralt and I settled on x16 tessellation on his hair with 0 Hairworks MSAA with better than expected results (I think the in-games post-processed AA really helps and it looks good in motion):

witcher32015-06-0413-p6qbj.png


witcher32015-06-0413-j8oma.png
 

hermeslyre

Neo Member
So, I was messing with the Hairworks settings for Geralt and I settled on x16 tessellation on his hair with 0 Hairworks MSAA with better than expected results (I think the in-games post-processed AA really helps and it looks good in motion)


I have a question, can Nvidia users do anything to change the level of tesselation used in the game? I know they can change the MSAA level, but I'm talking about the x16 - x64 levels I've been reading about lately. Supposedly dropping from the default x64 to x16 results in a large performance improvement with little decrease in quality, but I've only heard that AMD users are able to affect this setting.
 

Dysun

Member
Just got back from a weekend trip out of town, and now my game gets a random "Loading" screen no matter where I am or what I'm doing after updating GeForce drivers and the game itself to 1.04

I saw someone else mention this on the Steam forums, is this happening to others as well?
 

jett

D-Member
So, I was messing with the Hairworks settings for Geralt and I settled on x16 tessellation on his hair with 0 Hairworks MSAA with better than expected results (I think the in-games post-processed AA really helps and it looks good in motion):

witcher32015-06-0413-p6qbj.png


witcher32015-06-0413-j8oma.png

Call me crazy but that looks fucked. His regular non-HW hair looks better.
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
I have a question, can Nvidia users do anything to change the level of tesselation used in the game? I know they can change the MSAA level, but I'm talking about the x16 - x64 levels I've been reading about lately. Supposedly dropping from the default x64 to x16 results in a large performance improvement with little decrease in quality, but I've only heard that AMD users are able to affect this setting.

It is only a feature for AMD cards atm precisely because they have worse tessellation performance in general in comparison to Nvidia's cards.

Call me crazy but that looks fucked. His regular non-HW hair looks better.

It looks good in motion with a really small performance hit. I agree that it looks a lot worse in screen shots (and the hair on the side looks like shit no matter the settings).
 
It is only a feature for AMD cards atm precisely because they have worse tessellation performance in general in comparison to Nvidia's cards.

unfortunately. it would be great if their was a similar option because it would rly shed some light on all the accusations nvidias gameworks effects get.
 
I hope this is the right place to ask this. Is it possible to pull 60 frames at 1440p with a 980ti? Still rocking a 2500k but I'm looking to upgrade my 780 and I'm wondering how much better a 980ti would be for this game.
 

didamangi

Member
I hope this is the right place to ask this. Is it possible to pull 60 frames at 1440p with a 980ti? Still rocking a 2500k but I'm looking to upgrade my 780 and I'm wondering how much better a 980ti would be for this game.

With hairworks on it probably won't. Guru3D reviewed the 980 Ti and Witcher 3 was one of the game benchmarked. Take a look.
 

jett

D-Member
It is only a feature for AMD cards atm precisely because they have worse tessellation performance in general in comparison to Nvidia's cards.



It looks good in motion with a really small performance hit. I agree that it looks a lot worse in screen shots (and the hair on the side looks like shit no matter the settings).

I dunno, the beard looks really awful. It looks fine in regular settings.
 

bodine1231

Member
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 ?

Same here bro. Running two 980 Ti's and in the middle of the square in the main city I'm getting 45-50 fps @1440p with everything maxed including hairworks. My cards are only being used 55% as well. When I go into the field though they jump up to 80+ usage and my frames are in the 70's and 80's.
 

Elsolar

Member
Same here bro. Running two 980 Ti's and in the middle of the square in the main city I'm getting 45-50 fps @1440p with everything maxed including hairworks. My cards are only being used 55% as well. When I go into the field though they jump up to 80+ usage and my frames are in the 70's and 80's.

Check your CPU utilization?
 
I'm at 1440p, 980ti, 24gb ram, 4670k @ 4.6 ghz.

Turning down foliage distance to high and leaving hair completely off gives me ultra settings across the board, including AA, 60 fps practically locked. I'm a little bummed about having to turn foliage down but that's mostly a e-peen pissing contest. I honestly can't tell the difference at high and ultra.
 

didamangi

Member
Man, this pop-in is the worst. People, hairs, beards pop in out of nowhere, it's pretty annoying. All my settings are maxed except hairworks off, foliage distance and grass to high, game runs on ssd.

Anyone knows what settings in the user.settings file that relates to this pop-ins?
 

leng jai

Member
Man, this pop-in is the worst. People, hairs, beards pop in out of nowhere, it's pretty annoying. All my settings are maxed except hairworks off, foliage distance and grass to high, game runs on ssd.

Anyone knows what settings in the user.settings file that relates to this pop-ins?

Yeah the pop in is quite distracting at times. Should be some ini tweaks you can do to minimise it though.
 

UnrealEck

Member
I'm at 1440p, 980ti, 24gb ram, 4670k @ 4.6 ghz.

Turning down foliage distance to high and leaving hair completely off gives me ultra settings across the board, including AA, 60 fps practically locked. I'm a little bummed about having to turn foliage down but that's mostly a e-peen pissing contest. I honestly can't tell the difference at high and ultra.

There's very few instances you can see the difference because it's only at extremely long ranges. It's more of a screenshot setting than a play setting.
 
Does anyone get a crash where the game locks up and you get blue square artifacts all over the screen meaning you have to hard reset the computer?

I keep thinking it's a graphics driver crash due to my OC but no matter how much I turn the OC down I still get it. Also graphics driver crashes usually recover. Wondering if it's just the game.
 
Anyone else had this problem?

The game starts and literally runs at 2 fps.
Everything is in slow motion.
I installed new 15.5 AMD drivers and downloaded all three patches but it does nothing.
 

reektann

Member
I'm at 1440p, 980ti, 24gb ram, 4670k @ 4.6 ghz.

Turning down foliage distance to high and leaving hair completely off gives me ultra settings across the board, including AA, 60 fps practically locked. I'm a little bummed about having to turn foliage down but that's mostly a e-peen pissing contest. I honestly can't tell the difference at high and ultra.

Same setup as you but 8GB ram and an i5 2500k @4.5ghz. I have to notch the shadows down one and foliage distance one to get that 60fps 99% of the time.
 
Anyone else had this problem?

The game starts and literally runs at 2 fps.
Everything is in slow motion.
I installed new 15.5 AMD drivers and downloaded all three patches but it does nothing.

Not sure if it's the same thing but every time I load a save up there will be huge frame drops but after 5-10 seconds it smooths out completely. Been like that since launch for me with both GTA V drivers and W3/Project Cars drivers.
 

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
I dunno, the beard looks really awful. It looks fine in regular settings.

The beard is one of the better hairworks effects actually. Looks fantastic in motion at 4K. The wind blowing in the beard looks especially awesome.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
Does anyone get a crash where the game locks up and you get blue square artifacts all over the screen meaning you have to hard reset the computer?

I keep thinking it's a graphics driver crash due to my OC but no matter how much I turn the OC down I still get it. Also graphics driver crashes usually recover. Wondering if it's just the game.

Sounds like your card may have been damaged with the OC.

Are the artefacts appearing in other games?
 

Blitzhex

Member
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.

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.

I just got a 34" 3440x1440 curved VA monitor. Jaggies are extremely minimal now compared to my old 1080p 27" and IQ is a lot better.

970gtx is a pretty good card. Mine's OC'd to 1450/8000 and it never drops below 30 fps at this res running all ultra - hairdworks off. I'd probably need a 980ti OC'd to similar clocks to get 60 fps at this res and settings.

Edit: Screenie has steam compression sorry. I thought I had "save uncompressed copy" option ticked, but it wasn't.
 
I installed the 15.5 catalyst drivers on my laptop and now the game crashes on boot up. My laptop is a A10 APU. I have a R9 290 at home and I'm worried this is gonna happen If I install this update on my desktop.

Is there anyone here that has tried 15.5 catalyst drivers on a R9 290? Any issues or performance improvements?
 
Yeah the pop in is quite distracting at times. Should be some ini tweaks you can do to minimise it though.

Do you perchance know the ini tweaks or have a link towards?

Stuff's super annoying for me too in cutscenes. Where helmets and hair are popping in and otherwise emotional scenes get ruined because some female in the scene goes from being bald and unrecognizable to well... with a full head of hair.
 

j-wood

Member
Posted in the official thread but no response, so I wanted to try here:

So I got witcher 3 for free when I bought my GTX 970, and I installed it/have been playing it via GOG galaxy.

Last night, I tried adding the .exe to steam so that I could stream witcher 3 to my surface pro 3 when I'm in another room.

When I try to launch it, I see the .exe in the taskbar, then it disappears immediately. Happens if I try to launch it from the SP3 via streaming or if I do it myself from the desktop. The game launches fine if I do it from galaxy or click the .exe myself. Any ideas how to make this work?
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
I installed the 15.5 catalyst drivers on my laptop and now the game crashes on boot up. My laptop is a A10 APU. I have a R9 290 at home and I'm worried this is gonna happen If I install this update on my desktop.

Is there anyone here that has tried 15.5 catalyst drivers on a R9 290? Any issues or performance improvements?

No issues here with my 290. I'm pretty much running in the 50-60+ fps with hairworks off and 45-50 fps with Hairworks on (tweaked and Geralt only). In Novigrad, there are some annoying, unexplainable frame drops here and there. Overall, the new drivers netted me 5-7 extra fps as before I was barely hitting over 50 fps.
 

Lulubop

Member
So I been playing on Ultra, locked at 30fps on a 780ti at 1080p and I just can't any more. I need to get 60. What are some of the more demending settings, without a huge visual hit?

I'm so close to just ordering a 980 ti.


Turned the hairworks to just Geralt, NPCs density and foliage on High. Getting high 40's-50 now! Wow, I'm almost there.
 
So I been playing on Ultra, locked at 30fps on a 780ti at 1080p and I just can't any more. I need to get 60. What are some of the more demending settings, without a huge visual hit?

I'm so close to just ordering a 980 ti.


Turned the hairworks to just Geralt, NPCs density and foliage on High. Getting high 40's-50 now! Wow, I'm almost there.

Turn down shadows
 

rc6886

Unconfirmed Member
So I been playing on Ultra, locked at 30fps on a 780ti at 1080p and I just can't any more. I need to get 60. What are some of the more demending settings, without a huge visual hit?

I'm so close to just ordering a 980 ti.


Turned the hairworks to just Geralt, NPCs density and foliage on High. Getting high 40's-50 now! Wow, I'm almost there.

You should also try turning down Shadows to high and getting rid of Hairworks completely, it's a huge resource drain. After I did that I was able to get it to 60 fps with settings similar to yours (on a 970).
 

Lulubop

Member
Ok, turned of the Hairworks completely and got like a 10+ fps boost alone. Shadows to high, now at 60 consistently.

I have to ask, did the recent Nvidia driver address the performance issues with Kepler cards? Or was it just for the 980 ti?
 
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