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[Dictator93]

I get the weirdest issue with this game regarding framepacing.

The variety of external and internal frame-limiting to 60 I've tried make it look like it's dropping frames when it's holding at 60 steady.

I've settled on borderless, unlimited for now. It looks the smoothest. Borderless with MSi limiting the framerate causes some issues in forests where it looks like sub-40 FPS. The internal limiter just straight up sucks for me.

Weird stuff.

I am not sure what happens when galopping on a horse. The game is printing a flat 60 and 16.6ms per frame (no changes), yet the camera movement apears to rhythmically judder. I am not sure if that is frame pacing problems or just the way the camera moves when on horseback.

 

[ChemicalWorld]

Just installing the game right now, was going to hold off till I upgraded but what the hell.

Core I5 2500k OC to 4.8Ghz
16GB Kingston Hyper Savage RAM 2133Mhz
Saphire HD 7950 OC 1100Mhz - 1500Mhz Memory

If I lock to 30 fps, what settings can I realistically expect to play with? 1920 x 1080

 

[Enduin]

Just installing the game right now, was going to hold off till I upgraded but what the hell.

Core I5 2500k OC to 4.8Ghz
16GB Kingston Hyper Savage RAM 2133Mhz
Saphire HD 7950 OC 1100Mhz - 1500Mhz Memory

If I lock to 30 fps, what settings can I realistically expect to play with? 1920 x 1080

You have a faster version of my setup so I'd say high pretty easily across the board if you're just aiming for 30fps. I'm getting about ~44fps with a mix of high and medium and no tweaking to the options for best performance.

 

[Deadstar]

After reading the impressions here I think I'm going to skip the 980 and wait a month or so for the next nvidia card.

 

[ChemicalWorld]

You have a faster version of my setup so I'd high pretty easily across the board if you're just aiming for 30fps.

Cheers, will try it out and let you guys know how I fare. Just hope the gtx 980 TI gets a release date soon, been wanting to rejoin team green for a good while now.

 

[Soi-Fong]

+1 Foliage and shadows on high instead of ultra, great performance!

I think I might settle on leaving foliage at high, shadows on medium (I'm having a hard time telling the difference between Ultra and medium for shadows) and grass density at high or medium.

I'm gonna turn hairworks on and hopefully, I won't drop below 30 fps rendering at 1440p.

 

[viveks86]

well i personally wouldn't go into conspiracy theory territory... i just think they probably put the focus of their efforts into the 900 series and let a lot of Maxwell users down. For AMD, you have to remember the the 2xx series is their current set of cards. it would make sense that they are still putting all their efforts into making the drivers the best they can.

Good point!

 

[UnrealEck]

I don't have the game so I'm not sure...

But I know Hairworks makes heavy use of tessellation.

True but there benchmarks are done with Hairworks on and off. The results are the same between architectures.

 

[Song of the Turtle]

Anyone here with this combo or close?

I5 2500k
670
8gb ram

Are you managing a stable 30fps at 1080p, and if so what are your exact settings?

Thanks!

I have a stock 4670k and an overclocked 760. Everything on high, HBAO+, no bloom, no motion blur, no depth of field, no hairworks. I've only played for two hours but until now I've always had between 35 and 40fps.

 

[arevin01]

A 580 can still handle this game at 30fps with everything on medium and texture on high. All post processing settings turned on also.

 

[billmcdougal]

I just set RTSS to limit at 30 and it doesn't actually limit in-game. Do I have to enable the OSD or something?

 

[coolmast3r]

That is what I was hoping for if I was going to pick this up. I always try and shoot for 60 first no matter how low the settings. I have pretty much the same setup. Think I am going to hold out for a 970 successor.

Yep... The way this game runs is kinda surprising. It is literally the first game ever that refused to hit 60 at ultra low. I guess it's wise to wait for the next gen Nvidia gpus then.

 

[SliChillax]

Game runs beautifully for me, everything maxed except shadows set to high since I don't see a visual difference. Feels smooth on a gsync monitor, don't know the exact framerate but I'm loving it. i7 2600k, 980

Only problem I have is the input lag with the X360 controller, makes it really hard to position the character where you want and dodge or parry.

 

[Rhaknar]

booted this up, everything on ultra, 1920x1080 fullscreen

getting solid 60 (ocasional dips to mid 50s as usual) but some cutscenes drop down to 30, what the fuck?

I only played up to when the gryphon is attacking the dude, which is barely anything, but it was a bit of open world and horse racing and it held at 60 like I said. Im sure it will get worse later on so Ill adjust then I guess

Any fix for these 30fps cutscenes tho?

 

[viveks86]

True but there benchmarks are done with Hairworks on and off. The results are the same between architectures.

Yup. I think it's safe to say that it isn't tessellation specifically that's causing the issue. Which leaves us with 2 possibilities (either or both):

• Something else that hairworks depends on hogs performance in the older architecture
• Nvidia is simply not doing the same optimizations for older architectures as they are for new ones, either for practical reasons or for forcing the market to upgrade

 

[Pagusas]

Game runs beautifully for me, everything maxed except shadows set to high since I don't see a visual difference. Feels smooth on a gsync monitor, don't know the exact framerate but I'm loving it. i7 2600k, 980

Only problem I have is the input lag with the X360 controller, makes it really hard to position the character where you want and dodge or parry.

I've noticed that with a few games, including GTA5. It seems like a developers choice, like they add some form of delay with controllers, is it something we can fix?

 

[Static Jak]

Anyone else notice random dips every now and then? Like, walking through a village, everything at 60FPS and for no noticeable reason it might quickly dip to 55 or 50 and go right back to 60.
Nothing extra happening on screen just sometimes decides to do it.

 

[Kezen]

[*]Nvidia is simply not doing the same optimizations for older architectures as they are for new ones, either for practical reasons or for forcing the market to upgrade
[/LIST]

This seems like the obvious one.
They are playing with fire if you ask me. I've always been a Geforce customer since 2004 (except for a very short time period when I had a Radeon 5770 from December 2009 to March 2010) but that's really shaddy.

 

[Rhaknar]

Anyone else notice random dips every now and then? Like, walking through a village, everything at 60FPS and for no noticeable reason it might quickly dip to 55 or 50 and go right back to 60.
Nothing extra happening on screen just sometimes decides to do it.

dont all games do that? I mean, we talk about "locked 60" but I dont think Ive ever played a game where it stayed at 60 100% of the time. Hell we only notice because we have shit like MSI afterburner or whatever you use running

 

[JAYSIMPLE]

just had a crash when the griffon swoops in at beginning. any cure for it yet???

 

[STILLethal]

Should I do that even if I limit the game to 30?

I would like to know this as well.

 

[Shy]

little update on my screen flickering problem.

Just before i went to bed to last night, i decided to play again and got the same problem as before (a different image flickering on screen) but now i was getting a thin blue line.

Do any of you fine ladies and gentlemen know why. ?

 

[HeliosT10]

Getting a rock solid 60fps on my laptop with the below specs:

16GB Memory
8GB 980m
i7-4790S

all settings at high apart from shadow quality (med), texture quality (ultra), SSAO, no hairworks

Could probably still get a solid 60fps with the HBAO+ but it's nice to have a little buffer there for the really demanding scenes.

 

[viveks86]

Anyone else notice random dips every now and then? Like, walking through a village, everything at 60FPS and for no noticeable reason it might quickly dip to 55 or 50 and go right back to 60.
Nothing extra happening on screen just sometimes decides to do it.

Could be overhead from garbage collection, which runs either based on a trigger for number of objects in memory or periodically. You should always give 5-10 fps headroom while benchmarking and tuning.

Another way to tackle this is by changing the garbage collector settings to be more/less aggressive based on your hardware's capabilities (there is a config file for that), but this could very easily make the game unstable as we have no idea what the engine limits/bottlenecks are.

 

[badb0y]

A fellow poster over Anandtech has actually tested these claims since he has some of the cards involved in the "debacle" and posted his results on his blog. According to his test the GTX 780 Ti is definitely under-performing as it gets bested by a R9 290.

Wow, something is not right here. It seems that Nvidia Gameworks was actually masking some performance issues lurking in the background. The Kepler-based 780 Ti underperforms the lower-end R9 290 without the Nvidia features enabled, and the 980 is now 52% faster than its older cousin. By the way, we also tested the 780 Ti with HBAO+ on and Hairworks off, and the hit to performance was only 1fps versus having HBAO+ off. Therefore, the 33% drop in performance on that card with the Gameworks features turned on can be attributed almost entirely to Hairworks (which looks pretty good, by the way). The R9 290 is 77% faster without Gameworks, proving that yes indeed, Nvidia-specific features can hammer AMD cards. Note that the impact of Gameworks is actually greater on the 980 than the 780 Ti, proving without a doubt that Gameworks is not what’s killing the 780 Ti.

http://techbuyersguru.com/hotdealsblog/?p=4119

 

[Aroll]

Just got the PC version. Running this on a gaming laptop 970m. Will let you guys know how it performs when I am done with work later tonight.

 

[Zafir]

I'm just getting constant random crashes when I go onto the inventory screen. It doesn't always happen, but it's often enough that I effectively have to save every time I go into it to avoid losing progress.

 

[Kezen]

dont all games do that? I mean, we talk about "locked 60" but I dont think Ive ever played a game where it stayed at 60 100% of the time.

Neither did I. By the strictest definition I don't think I've ever played a 60fps game, it always drops at some point. The Witcher 3 does sometimes when I blast some objects, for a split second I can feel the game is not running at 60fps but hardly something to lose sleep over.

 

[Surbii]

970 and 4690k, neither are OC'ed.

Getting much better performance than I did yesterday. Now getting 50-60fps with foliage distance on high, everything else on ultra, and hairworks off at 1080p. Could it be because I updated my BIOS?

I also had a crash when looking through inventory.

 

[erawsd]

Just installing the game right now, was going to hold off till I upgraded but what the hell.

Core I5 2500k OC to 4.8Ghz
16GB Kingston Hyper Savage RAM 2133Mhz
Saphire HD 7950 OC 1100Mhz - 1500Mhz Memory

If I lock to 30 fps, what settings can I realistically expect to play with? 1920 x 1080

I don't know if it helps but I have 2500k @ 4.3ghz, OC'd 7970(cant remember what clocks I settled on), and 16GB of RAM. I'm able to push 1080 with my FPS going between 55-60 while exploring and 40s when Im in combat. I have everything on high except foliage density, which I turned down to medium. Game still looks damn good. I do plan to do some more tinkering when I get home to see what types of sacrifices I need to make for silky smooth 60 everywhere.

 

[Raticus79]

The in-game FPS cap is not as bad as some other implementations, but also not as good as external tools. After some rather extensive testing (I'm writing an article) I suggest using no in-game framecap, no in-game Vsync, borderless fullscreen and a 30 FPS limit enforced using RTSS. Best combination of consistent performance and low latency I have found.

(Also, this game is pretty neat)

I actually tried to set up RTSS recently due to Windows desktop vsync acting strangely with mixed 60+120Hz displays, but I think I got the wrong version since it didn't have the framerate cap option. Where are people getting the correct one? (do we have a tutorial for that anywhere?)

I'm also wondering if there's a way to get a frame time graph as an overlay. That would be really handy for troubleshooting.

---

My horribly unbalanced 2600k / Z68 motherboard / dual Titan X setup is holding up surprisingly well despite being limited to 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes per card. My numbers were pretty close to what they had posted with the 5960X and the same cards. Hopefully just a few more months to hold out until I can upgrade to Skylake!

 

[Static Jak]

dont all games do that? I mean, we talk about "locked 60" but I dont think Ive ever played a game where it stayed at 60 100% of the time. Hell we only notice because we have shit like MSI afterburner or whatever you use running

True enough, it just seems a bit more noticeable here. I'm not sure why but it feels like it's stuttering a bit in those instances. Maybe it's vsync.

I might just be over-sensitive to it right now and I'll forget it once I really sink into playing.

 

[SliChillax]

I've noticed that with a few games, including GTA5. It seems like a developers choice, like they add some form of delay with controllers, is it something we can fix?

It's the deadzone but I feel like it's just input lag here. I have GTA 5 and it's perfectly playable but the Witcher 3 it's damn near impossible to climb some stairs without hitting the wall a few times until you get it right.

 

[mysocksarepink]

Anyone know why I can't get the OSD to work properly with EVGA precision or MSI afterburner!?

 

[The Llama]

A fellow poster over Anandtech has actually tested these claims since he has some of the cards involved in the "debacle" and posted his results on his blog. According to his test the GTX 780 Ti is definitely under-performing as it gets bested by a R9 290.

http://techbuyersguru.com/hotdealsblog/?p=4119

Seems to me there are 2 possibilities here:

1. nVidia has already stopped optimizing their drivers for Kepler
2. There's something used by TW3 that's not tessellation (compute, maybe?) that both GCN and Maxwell cards are good at but Kepler cards aren't.

 

[Sanctuary]

dont all games do that? I mean, we talk about "locked 60" but I dont think Ive ever played a game where it stayed at 60 100% of the time. Hell we only notice because we have shit like MSI afterburner or whatever you use running

If your card is capable of shooting way beyond 60fps for most situations, and you're capping it at 60, you shouldn't be dropping to the mid 50s at any point should you?

 

[Soi-Fong]

A fellow poster over Anandtech has actually tested these claims since he has some of the cards involved in the "debacle" and posted his results on his blog. According to his test the GTX 780 Ti is definitely under-performing as it gets bested by a R9 290.

http://techbuyersguru.com/hotdealsblog/?p=4119

Shady indeed. In all honesty, I won't be surprised if Nvidia is actually willing to screw over their own customers like this.

 

[Absinthe]

GTX 970 FTW w/2500k; 1440p & 60fps with a few settings turned down.

 

[Raticus79]

Game runs beautifully for me, everything maxed except shadows set to high since I don't see a visual difference. Feels smooth on a gsync monitor, don't know the exact framerate but I'm loving it. i7 2600k, 980

Only problem I have is the input lag with the X360 controller, makes it really hard to position the character where you want and dodge or parry.

I've noticed that with a few games, including GTA5. It seems like a developers choice, like they add some form of delay with controllers, is it something we can fix?

It's the deadzone but I feel like it's just input lag here. I have GTA 5 and it's perfectly playable but the Witcher 3 it's damn near impossible to climb some stairs without hitting the wall a few times until you get it right.

Try an Xbox One controller instead of a 360. Someone built a tool for measuring these things here, and they saw that a 360 controller had a pretty big deadzone and the Xbox One version doesn't. (might have just been due to the controller's age)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=158378773
The PS4 controller is fine as well if you don't mind installing the free software for it. I've been using one for Project CARS.

 

[Peterthumpa]

The in-game FPS cap is not as bad as some other implementations, but also not as good as external tools. After some rather extensive testing (I'm writing an article) I suggest using no in-game framecap, no in-game Vsync, borderless fullscreen and a 30 FPS limit enforced using RTSS. Best combination of consistent performance and low latency I have found.

(Also, this game is pretty neat)

Quoting for the truth. As always, Durante nails it.

FXAA forced using NVIDIA's CP is miles ahead of the in-game AA. Just try both and look for aliasing on trees, for example.

Also, no doubt that setting a FPS limit using RTSS helped a lot with stutters, as setting vsync via CP eliminated the tearing that I had in game even with the ingame vsync enabled.

 

[Sanctuary]

I actually tried to set up RTSS recently due to Windows desktop vsync acting strangely with mixed 60+120Hz displays, but I think I got the wrong version since it didn't have the framerate cap option. Where are people getting the correct one? (do we have a tutorial for that anywhere?)

I'm also wondering if there's a way to get a frame time graph as an overlay. That would be really handy for troubleshooting.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html

 

[Static Jak]

Haven't had any crashes in a few hours now. Still saving after doing anything though.

 

[holygeesus]

I'm running a 970, i5 2500k, 16gb of RAM.

vsync - on
fullscreen
1920x1080 resolution
background characters - high
shadows - medium (haven't tried higher I don't have shadows high in any game anyway)
terrain - ultra
texture - ultra
water - ultra
grass - high
foliage distance - high
detail level - ultra

Everything in postproccessing is on and HBAO+.

Buttery 60fps, super smooth no drops so far just done the first 'major' side quest I guess I'd call it. Hope that helps/gets you hyped!

Yes I have been using these with a lot of success, except I turn off DoF and am managing to run it one resolution up from 1080p, so doing a little down-sampling too.

Specs are slightly different, in that I have a 3570k at stock with 16GB of RAM and my 970 is overclocked pretty harshly, to beyond 980 clocks.

Not had a single crash/stutter/freeze as of yet, except in cut-scenes. In-engine cut-scenes are fine though. I'm using the latest Nvidia drivers and GOG launcher, so I appear to be using all suspect elements, yet not having any issues. Very impressed so far. HairWorks wasn't worth the hit for me.

 

[The Goat]

I don't believe you get 60 FPS on high-ultra on a 680.
A GTX 770 (similar to 680) doesn't even get that on High preset with all post-processing stuff entirely off (including AO).

I've turned off a lot of post processing stuff. Motion blur, dof, water rendering and I'm running SSAO. It's not constant 60fps, but it's more so than not. I'm not doing anything magical to make it run.

 

[Tenebrous]

SLI still isn't working properly for me, so I'm running with the following...

3770k
GTX780
16GB RAM.
Samsung 830 SSD boot drive, game on WD Caviar Black HDD.
Windows 7

Gaming at 1440p with everything at Ultra except for foliage view distance & shadows, both of which are on high. No hairworks, but HBAO+ & AA are enabled. Not noticed a single drop below 30fps, although there is a little bit of microstutter left, it's a tolerable (for now) amount.

Game is very playable, but I wish SLI wasn't dicking me around.

Edit: Not had a single crash, either. 6 hours in.

 

[Zakalwe]

I have a stock 4670k and an overclocked 760. Everything on high, HBAO+, no bloom, no motion blur, no depth of field, no hairworks. I've only played for two hours but until now I've always had between 35 and 40fps.

Thank you. :3

Yes I have been using these with a lot of success, except I turn off DoF and am managing to run it one resolution up from 1080p, so doing a little down-sampling too.

Specs are slightly different, in that I have a 3570k at stock with 16GB of RAM and my 970 is overclocked pretty harshly, to beyond 980 clocks.

Not had a single crash/stutter/freeze as of yet, except in cut-scenes. In-engine cut-scenes are fine though. I'm using the latest Nvidia drivers and GOG launcher, so I appear to be using all suspect elements, yet not having any issues. Very impressed so far. HairWorks wasn't worth the hit for me.

Try bumping shadows up to high. I have the same set up as the system you quoted and changing medium to high didn't hit the fps at all.

 

[billmcdougal]

So far the smoothest thing I've found is to run VSync on in-game, Full Screen, Unlimited. This is on a 7850.

If I cap it in-game, it's rythmically stuttery. Capping it in Riva doesn't work at all, but maybe I'm a noob.

If I put it on Borderless Fullscreen, it's smooth but has a horrible horizontal line on my TV, even when not duplicating to my monitor. I think it's a general issue with my setup and not Witcher specific.

 

[The Wraith]

Im actually happily surprised how well this game runs on my rig, I have a Core i7-4770, 16 gigs of DDR3 ram, and a GTX 970 @ stock speeds and I can run this game with all settings on Ultra with the exception of Foliage which I have set to high and hairworks set to off. If I set foliage to Ultra and put Hairworks on I would get around 45 frames a second, which is more than acceptable but I like a smooth 60 frames a second above all else. Foliage on Ultra w/o hairworks gets me around 55 frames a sec. 60 Frames above all else imo. Game looks unbelievable.

 

[Blitzhex]

970@+135/+250 + 4690K@4.7ghz.
8 hours in, no crashes yet.
Getting 75+ fps all the time with everything ultra except hairworks off and shadows, foliage distance and # of background chars dropped to high.

 

[ChemicalWorld]

I don't know if it helps but I have 2500k @ 4.3ghz, OC'd 7970(cant remember what clocks I settled on), and 16GB of RAM. I'm able to push 1080 with my FPS going between 55-60 while exploring and 40s when Im in combat. I have everything on high except foliage density, which I turned down to medium. Game still looks damn good. I do plan to do some more tinkering when I get home to see what types of sacrifices I need to make for silky smooth 60 everywhere.

Thanks, sounds promising then. Only problem I have right now is that I can't get past the second disk for the install. Trying again using Run as Administrator and praying it works this time....