• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

E

Exoda

Neo Member
pahamrick said:
I don't have that stutter when using a 360 pad and rotating the camera with the right stick. It's as smooth as using the mouse.

I don't know if what I'm doing is any different, but here goes:

Vsync disabled in game
FPS limiter set to Unlimited
Vsync set to on in Nvidia drivers for Witcher 3
Locked to 30fps using DXTory
Using Fullscreen, not Borderless Windowed
All settings to Ultra, Hairworks enabled
All Post processing settings ON except CA and Sharpening
Click to expand...

How strange, I just tried with that exact setup and the stutter was amplified drastically at 30 fps. It only seems to stutter when I slowly pan the camera, if I use very fast rotations it's not as noticeable.
 
noomi

noomi

Member
I'm a little confused by the anti aliasing... it looks great but is it just a on/off setting?

No MSAA, TXAA, MXAA....etc?
 
S

Spirited

Mine is pretty and pink
Anyone else having crashes on menus after about 30-60 seconds while in them.

I have a 280x so it isn't the nvidia drivers.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Anyone fixed the crash to desktop with no error while I've been sleeping?
 
H

hermeslyre

Neo Member
TheTrain said:
Anyone with an I5 750? :eek:
Click to expand...

Yeah there's a couple of us here. Mine is OCed to 3.8ghz, paired with an OCed 970. 1080p Everything on ultra, hairworks off, fxaa forced through the Nvidia control panel, and several .ini tweaks to make the game look better. Running around the first big area, white orchard, getting 45-60 fps with occasional drops down to 40 fps. Basically in line with the nvidia chart on how the 970 should perform with the 8 core i7-5820k. Add to that cpu usage stays around 50-80% utilized all 4 cores that tells me there's very little to no CPU bottleneck with my system, in the first large area.

The game just doesn't seem to be that CPU hungry.
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
I'm getting 16-18 fps in all movies and in the menu with 1% GPU usage. Any idea on how to make them 30 at least? Or is that by design?

Rodin said:
Does MFAA work with this game if forced by Nvidia Control Panel?

Sorry if already asked.
Click to expand...

MFAA is an optimization used on top of MSAA. TW3 doesn't support or use MSAA so MFAA can't work with it.

SoundLad said:
Surprised by the AA in this game to be honest - it doesn't seem to blur textures and looks great in motion.
Click to expand...

It also doesn't work that well on edges. Probably a result of it being tweaked to a minimal blur overall.
 
T

TheTrain

Member
hermeslyre said:
Yeah there's a couple of us here. Mine is OCed to 3.8ghz, paired with an OCed 970. 1080p Everything on ultra, hairworks off, fxaa forced through the Nvidia control panel, and several .ini tweaks to make the game look better. Running around the first big area, white orchard, getting 45-60 fps with occasional drops down to 40 fps. Basically in line with the nvidia chart on how the 970 should perform with the 8 core i7-5820k. Add to that cpu usage stays around 50-80% utilized all 4 cores that tells me there's very little to no CPU bottleneck with my system, in the first large area.

The game just doesn't seem to be that CPU hungry.
Click to expand...

Hell yeah, thank you sir! Much appreciated
 
P

pahamrick

Member
Exoda said:
How strange, I just tried with that exact setup and the stutter was amplified drastically at 30 fps. It only seems to stutter when I slowly pan the camera, if I use very fast rotations it's not as noticeable.
Click to expand...

Okay, I see what you mean. I did a really slow pan with the right stick and it will hitch for a second every few moments. I never pan that slowly so I didn't notice it.

Otherwise I don't get any stutter at all.
 
O

owasog

Member
Wow, the game runs much better than I anticipated on my GTX 970 and 3570K @4Ghz. I've played for about an hour around White Orchard and experienced no crashes whatsoever.

It's running at 60fps 95% of the time, with GPU usage hovering between 70 and 90% and CPU usage around 70-80% on each core. The only framerate-drops occur when the game seems to load something. But with adaptive vsync that doesn't really hurt gameplay.

My settings:
1080p, Vsync on, 60fps cap, Adaptive vsync and 8xAF forced in drivers.
AA on
HBAO+ on
Hairworks off
Foliage visibility range: High
Grass density: Low
Shadows: High
Detail Level: Ultra
Textures: Ultra
DoF on
 
S

SoundLad

Member
dr_rus said:
I'm getting 16-18 fps in all movies and in the menu with 1% GPU usage. Any idea on how to make them 30 at least? Or is that by design?



MFAA is an optimization used on top of MSAA. TW3 doesn't support or use MSAA so MFAA can't work with it.



It also doesn't work that well on edges. Probably a result of it being tweaked to a minimal blur overall.
Click to expand...

This is true, I toggled AA on/off a few times at the start and thought it may have been slightly broken but now I prefer this AA method over any other post process AA done in the past. Using DSR helps with edges quite well
 
Z

Zakalwe

Banned
owasog said:
Wow, the game runs much better than I anticipated on my GTX 970 and 3570K @4Ghz. I've played for about an hour around White Orchard and experienced no crashes whatsoever.

It's running at 60fps 95% of the time, with GPU usage hovering between 70 and 90% and CPU usage around 70-80% on each core. The only framerate-drops occur when the game seems to load something. But with adaptive vsync that doesn't really hurt gameplay.

My settings:
1080p, Vsync on, adaptive vsync and 8xAF in drivers.
AA on
HBAO+ on
Hairworks off
Foliage visibility range: High
Grass density: Low
Shadows: High
Detail Level: Ultra
Textures: Ultra
DoF on
Click to expand...

Nice.

I52500k@4.3ghz and MSI 970. I could live with this if 60fps is solid. Might tweak the grass density higher and some of the ultra lower though (preference) if it remains stable.

Thanks for sharing detailed settings. Wish more would, it's vey helpful.
 
D

Darkstorne

Member
For anyone curious about the tweaks you can apply to make it look even better than Ultra, this on/off interactive image from Nvidia sums them up perfectly.

the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-config-file-tweaks-001-on.png
Click to expand...

The distant shadows are a huge improvement, and it's great to see that grass density can be cranked way up. Those are the only two "beyond Ultra" tweaks I made to my game, and it's made a huge difference with barely any impact to my framerate.
 
K

Kvik

Member
viveks86 said:
Also, making the file read only is actually not mandatory. Even changing a setting in the menu only overwrites the related entries for that menu setting, not the whole file. Especially when you are experimenting, it's kind of a pain to keep switching between readonly and normal.
Click to expand...

Yep, I noticed that as well. Also, I have a question for you. In your user.settings you have this line:

Code: 
141d145
< HairWorksAALevel=4
which I don't have. I assume:

Code: 
HairWorksAALevel=8

will probably tank the fps in your rig even more? (And the difference is noticable?)
 
Agent_4Seven

Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
So, I have installed Omega 14.12 driver and launched the game using "GOG Games\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\x64\witcher3.exe" without launching GOG Galaxy. After 2 hours which I spent playing the game I have not experienced any freezes in the inventory section or anywhere else.

I don't know exactly what's causing the game to freeze in inventory section, but installing Omega 14.12 driver and launching the game without using GOG Galaxy is clearly helped, so if someone has AMD machine and bought GOG version of the game, just do what I did guys, maybe it will help :)

P.S. New AMD drivers will be available only next week. AMD sucks :-(
 
V

Vuze

Member
As for crashes, I've played three hours straight without any on my 970 MSI Gaming at stock clock speed, i5 4570 non-k. Game looks pretty in motion and runs fine with my settings mix. Pity about Hairworks but oh well. Once the ReShade toggling works for Witcher 3, I'll try to get some nice DoF going for the LoD despite it's not as bad in action as it looked like in the screenshots.
 
H

hermeslyre

Neo Member
viveks86 said:
I actually tried that and it broke self shadowing on Geralt. Took me a whole hour to diagnose it. If I increase it past 1, the shadow of his hairwoks hair on his back breaks and becomes completely low res. Not sure if the issue is reproducible standalone or is because of the specific combination I'm using. So I left it as is and increased the others, which paid equally huge dividends . Shadows were already extending so far out that I didn't bother with cascade 3 as well. Every single frame lost/gained counts as they add up real fast.
Click to expand...

Ah. I did just a quick comparison to see if the issue is reproducible with my setup and didn't see any difference in self shadowing on Geralt, hairworks or default. I also loaded up the backup user.settings file with defaults values just to make sure I was seeing everything the way it was intended. No difference that I could tell. I just changed 4-5 values in the file though, just those I deemed with the most impact.

TheTrain said:
Hell yeah, thank you sir! Much appreciated
Click to expand...

No problem!
 
M

Mideon

Member
Did my usual whack everything on ultra and see if it's smooth and it runs really well with a single 970. No idea what the framerate is but it's more than the PS4 version I also have. Hairworks is so pretty!
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Vuze said:
As for crashes, I've played three hours straight without any on my 970 MSI Gaming at stock clock speed, i5 4570 non-k. Game looks pretty in motion and runs fine with my settings mix. Pity about Hairworks but oh well. Once the ReShade toggling works for Witcher 3, I'll try to get some nice DoF going for the LoD despite it's not as bad in action as it looked like in the screenshots.
Click to expand...

When you say stock, do you mean 0/0 so factory overclocked or undeclocked to reference speeds?
 
T

Tc91

Member
Spirited said:
Anyone else having crashes on menus after about 30-60 seconds while in them.

I have a 280x so it isn't the nvidia drivers.
Click to expand...

Yep, haven't found a solution yet though. Browsing through the items last night and this morning and it crashed both times.
 
S

Sijil

Member
So anyone with a 770 can share their experience? I have the 4GB model and would like to know what I'm getting into since I've yet to download the game at home.
 
B

b0bbyJ03

Member
3770k @ 4.3
GTX 980 @ stock
8GB RAM

I get well over 60 with everything ultra hair works off. This game proves that if devs are allowed to put enough time into a game it can run beautifully. Great experience so far. The question for me now is is hair works worth lowering everything to high (playing on a plasma so I need that locked 60fps) or should I just keep ultra without it?
 
D

dex3108

Member
I tried everything on Low except Water Quality (High) and i got 45-50FPS, Now i am playing at these settings :


  • AO: HBAO+ (made 5FPS difference for me from SSAO)
  • AA: On
  • Bloom: Off
  • Cutscene DoF: On
  • DoF: Off
  • Light Shafts: On
  • Detail Level: Medium
  • Foliage Visibility Range: Medium
  • Grass Density: Medium
  • No. of Background Characters: Medium
  • Shadow Quality; Medium
  • Terrain Quality: Medium
  • Texture Quality: High
  • Water Quality: High

I am getting 32-35FPS and i locked game to 30. Sometimes FPS dips to 27-29 but rarely. Also i tweaked ini file and increased Cascade Shadow range from 1 to 3 for all Cascade Shadow options (from 0 to 3).

My PC:
  • i7 2600K @ Stock speed
  • GTX 760 2GB version
  • 8GB DDR3 1600MHz

Everything on Low
17232813754_e791dcb40c_o.png
Click to expand...

Mine current settings (Only Textures staid on Low for some reason i changed that later when i noticed)
17669102019_7a58ece707_o.png
Click to expand...
 
J

jabuseika

Member
Z

Zakalwe

Banned
b0bbyJ03 said:
3770k @ 4.3
GTX 980 @ stock
8GB RAM

I get well over 60 with everything ultra hair works off. This game proves that if devs are allowed to put enough time into a game it can run beautifully. Great experience so far. The question for me now is is hair works worth lowering everything to high (playing on a plasma so I need that locked 60fps) or should I just keep ultra without it?
Click to expand...

Try it and report back. Let us know if the loss of ultra details is noticeable enough to worry about.
jabuseika said:
i5-4690k @ 4.0
Gigabyte G1 GTX 970 stock
8GB memory
WD Black 1TB

Settings for solid 60fps @1080p

NVIDIA HairWorks OFF
Ambient Occlusion SSAO
Anti-Aliasing OFF (you can leave it on, I don't see much of a difference)
Foliage Visibility Range HIGH
Shadow Quality HIGH

VSync OFF
Max Framerate 60fps

Everything else maxed.

Locked 60fps, never drops.
Click to expand...

Have you tried all of the above with HBAO+? Apparently the performance hit is very slight.
 
K

Kaze2212

Member
b0bbyJ03 said:
3770k @ 4.3
GTX 980 @ stock
8GB RAM

I get well over 60 with everything ultra hair works off. This game proves that if devs are allowed to put enough time into a game it can run beautifully. Great experience so far. The question for me now is is hair works worth lowering everything to high (playing on a plasma so I need that locked 60fps) or should I just keep ultra without it?
Click to expand...

The hairworks on Geralt doesn't necessarily look too amazing. But those creatures... SO good... SO good... RIP fps :(
 
Soren01

Soren01

Member
owasog said:
Wow, the game runs much better than I anticipated on my GTX 970 and 3570K @4Ghz. I've played for about an hour around White Orchard and experienced no crashes whatsoever.

It's running at 60fps 95% of the time, with GPU usage hovering between 70 and 90% and CPU usage around 70-80% on each core. The only framerate-drops occur when the game seems to load something. But with adaptive vsync that doesn't really hurt gameplay.

My settings:
1080p, Vsync on, 60fps cap, Adaptive vsync and 8xAF forced in drivers.
AA on
HBAO+ on
Hairworks off
Foliage visibility range: High
Grass density: Low
Shadows: High
Detail Level: Ultra
Textures: Ultra
DoF on
Click to expand...
Why ingame vsync + adaptive?
 
mdsfx

mdsfx

Member
Agent_4Seven said:
So, I have installed Omega 14.12 driver and launched the game using "GOG GamesThe Witcher 3 Wild Huntbinx64witcher3.exe" without launching GOG Galaxy. After 2 hours which I spent playing the game I have not experienced any freezes in the inventory section or anywhere else.

I don't know exactly what's causing the game to freeze in inventory section, but installing Omega 14.12 driver and launching the game without using GOG Galaxy is clearly helped, so if someone has AMD machine and bought GOG version of the game, just do what I did guys, maybe it will help :)

P.S. New AMD drivers will be available only next week. AMD sucks :-(
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I have been using GOG Galaxy and getting crashes. Is that the culprit??

Edit: and what is that Omega driver for?
 
C

CyberPunked

Member
Kvik said:
Nice job, dude! Some awesome shots there.


These are from my early tweaking sessions:



3840x2160 (4K)
All graphics settings to Ultra.
All post-processing enabled except CA.
Vsync Off, Frame limiter Off.
Slight tweaks to user.settings (please excuse the diff format):

Code: 
122c122
< GrassDensity=2400
---
> GrassDensity=4800
128c128
< CascadeShadowDistanceScale2=1.5
---
> CascadeShadowDistanceScale2=3
130c130
< TextureMemoryBudget=800
---
> TextureMemoryBudget=3072
142,143c142,143
< CascadeShadowmapSize=3072
< CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=1
---
> CascadeShadowmapSize=4096
> CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=4
145,146c145,146
< CascadeShadowQuality=1
< CascadeShadowDistanceScale1=1
---
> CascadeShadowQuality=4
> CascadeShadowDistanceScale1=4
164,166c164,166
< GrassDistanceScale=1.5
< FoliageDistanceScale=1.8
< FoliageShadowDistanceScale=54
---
> GrassDistanceScale=3
> FoliageDistanceScale=6
> FoliageShadowDistanceScale=108

If you noticed the afterburner FPS counter, it barely goes above 45fps. :-\

My specs:

i7-5930K @ 4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 @ 3000Mhz / 15-15-15-35
2x GTX 980 SLI +87mv/122%/+100/+400
2x1TB SDD in RAID0
Windows 7 SP1

So, I will probably try 1440p next, as you suggested, since there is no way I'm getting 60fps in 4K with only 2x980.
Click to expand...
Is this with or without hairworks?
 
K

Kinthalis

Banned
Any settings guides/suggestions for 780ti users?

The tutorial was way more taxing than the opening scene in the open for some weird reason.
 
S

Sourav93

Neo Member
Sijil said:
So anyone with a 770 can share their experience? I have the 4GB model and would like to know what I'm getting into since I've yet to download the game at home.
Click to expand...

So the game runs rather decent on my system sporting an i7-2600k and a 2GB GTX 770 factory OC'd to 1150 MHz.

Everything on in post processing, with HBAO+.

In graphics, Hairworks off. Everything on Ultra excluding Grass Density and Foliage Visibility Range, both of which are on High.

Fps locked at 30fps at 1080p (unlocked fps ranges from 30 to 60).

Only issue is that I'm noticing minor stutters here and there. Is anyone else noticing this? If yes, have any of you been able to find a fix. Typing in "Witcher 3 pc stutter" into Google only brings up stuff about the Xbox One version. Thought you guys might know. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
UnrealEck

UnrealEck

Member
Exoda said:
How strange, I just tried with that exact setup and the stutter was amplified drastically at 30 fps. It only seems to stutter when I slowly pan the camera, if I use very fast rotations it's not as noticeable.
Click to expand...

Make sure you're in fullscreen. I found it likes to keep going back to borderless mode. Go to the main menu because it usually doesn't stick when I try to set it in the pause menu during gameplay.
 
Z

Zakalwe

Banned
jabuseika said:
I'll give it some testing.
HBAO+ was kind of killing my framerate in Far Cry 4, that's why I didn't try it. :
Click to expand...

Report back of you could. Waiting on my 970 to arrive today. I'd very much like to hit high settings with HBAO+ and 1080/60. Be interested to know how it hits you.

Just got a text as I'm writing this, card arriving in the next hour. So hyped! :D
 
Q

Qassim

Member
Has anyone tried reducing the MSAA on Hairworks to see if that improves performance? I'm not sure if visually it'd be advisable, but from the config it suggests it is at 8xMSAA (the NVIDIA guide says it's MSAA on the hair, the config file: HairWorksAALevel=8)
 
M

MikeE21286

Member
So I'm between the PC and console (ps4) version at this point.

My PC is not that new any longer:
i5 2500k
GTX 570
12 gb ddr3

What should I expect here from my PC and what should I go with?
 
B

b0bbyJ03

Member
Zakalwe said:
Try it and report back. Let us know if the loss of ultra details is noticeable enough to worry about.
Click to expand...

I definitely will but I'll be stuck at work and the gym till 6 tonight. Hopefully someone will give it a shot before then, otherwise I'll let u guys know.
 
K

Kvik

Member
CyberPunked said:
Is this with or without hairworks?
Click to expand...

With Hairworks.

Apart from the line:

Code: 
HairWorksAALevel=4

which seems to be missing from my users.settings, but it was in viveks'.

Qassim said:
HairWorksAALevel is in:
Code: 
WhereverYourGameIsInstalled\The Witcher 3\bin\config\base\rendering.ini
Click to expand...

Aw shit. forgot there's a wealth of new configs in there. Back to the drawing board for me then.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Silent Hill 2 newest patch increases Maria's clevage, decreases her head size
Community Hype 2 3
110
9K
March Climber replied
Star Wars Outlaws Title Update 2 Provides Large Number of Fixes And Stability
2
63
4K
Saiyan-Rox replied
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - Version1.020 Patch (21st March) additional performance 'sharp' mode + more.
News 2 3
100
9K
DeVeAn replied
Nvidia GeForce NOW coming to Steam Deck, Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3, PICO headsets
1
420
whyman replied
Civilization 7 PC Specs Revealed
24
2K
amigastar replied
Top Bottom