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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

GTX 780 and i5-2500k, performance seems to be getting worse the more I explore.

Running on all "high," hairworks and anti-aliasing off at 1440p, can barely stay above 30 in town or "Abandoned Village" in White Orchard.

Abandoned village is arguably the worst FPS area early in the game, followed by White Orchad village. I get 60+fps in all areas (occasional dips in bad FPS areas and sometimes combat) with everything on ultra, except for shadows, max rendered characters and foliage at high, and hairworks and AA are set to off (CA and motion blur off but they don't have a performance impact). I have a similar graphics card (not Overclocked) and i7 4770k with 16 GB RAM, windows 8.1 (no crashes for 6+ hours).
 

JoeBoy101

Member
Yeah hair works is off. It's weird though even with foliage distance at medium I can only manage like 24-26 FPS in Abanadoned Village or the first town. It's OK out in the fields though.

Try reducing shadows to high or medium. Its not much of a drop off of ultra.

BTW, thanks for the AA suggestion Cybernaton, it is a MUCH better option than the ingame. Also, glad to hear White Orchard is bad, as its making me hopeful for turning on hairworks for at least Geralt, though the base hair for him is actually decently animated.
 

Gbraga

Member
The one issue I'm having is that the steam overlay just isn't working in this game, haha. Even played a bit of Dark Souls to see if it was something on my end, but it worked fine there.
 

dragn

Member
im getting a wierd pixel grid when playing in fullscreen. does anyone know what thats about? playing in 1080p 144hz with gsync
 

McBryBry

Member
So, what are "the best" settings to get the game at 1080p/30 on a stock clock i5 4690k/stock clock MSI 970/16GB RAM?

I'm hoping to get it extremely close to what the 980 can do at 60fps, including hairworks if possible.
 

Buburibon

Member
That is the issue I'm having.. video freezes while audio and controls continue. Whenever it occurs I have to force quit the game and that entry will be waiting for me in the system event log.

So, no luck resetting everything to default and disabling monitoring tools/overlays? Does the system log still show display driver-related (nvlddmkm) errors when it happens?
 

CHC

Member
Abandoned village is arguably the worst FPS area early in the game, followed by White Orchad village. I get 60+fps in all areas (occasional dips in bad FPS areas and sometimes combat) with everything on ultra, except for shadows, max rendered characters and foliage at high, and hairworks and AA are set to off (CA and motion blur off but they don't have a performance impact). I have a similar graphics card (not Overclocked) and i7 4770k with 16 GB RAM, windows 8.1 (no crashes for 6+ hours).

Well that's a relief that it's one of the worse performing areas, seems almost like something is wrong with the culling or loading of areas around Abandoned Village. It doesn't really look particularly special (no fancy effects, no NPCs, not a lot of geometry) and it TANKS the framerate no matter what the settings. Hopefully it gets better past White Orchard because I can deal with 30 FPS, but not any less.
 

Exoda

Neo Member
Hmm I wonder if its a bug with their controller input? If you move the view diagonally slowly, it does a zig-zag motion, it doesn't even just stutter in a straight diagonal line...

I noticed this as well, If you just go directly vertical there is no stuttering for me what so ever.
As soon as I start spinning horizontally (with or without vertical movement) the stutter is bonkers.
 

vakarian32

Member
680 here as well. I put everything on max, except put shadows and foliage distance to high, turned off ingame vsync and forced 30fps through RivaTuner. Also turned off motion blur cause its way too much imo. Turned off in-game AA, and forced FXAA through nvidia CP.
Getting smooth 30fps.
Now time to go and enjoy this game!

I spent some time last night tweaking settings on & off trying to get a solid 60fps for my GTX680 but it's just not happening :( Looks like I'll just follow your lead and be done with it, doesn't feel too bad playing with a DS4 controller anyway.
 

centracore

Member
So, no luck resetting everything to default and disabling monitoring tools/overlays? Does the system log still show display driver-related (nvlddmkm) errors when it happens?

No luck with any of that. I've never overclocked my graphics card although I believe it's factory overclocked (Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC) and don't have any monitoring tools or overlays. I've never ran into an issue like this with other games I play, leading me to believe it's being caused by The Witcher 3. The system log is still showing the nvlddmkm error every time it happens.

Thanks for your help on this Buburibon!
 
ok i just started it up with a 860m and an I7 4700HQ
i can run it PERFECTLY on ultra
dont meet minimum requirements my ass Can You Run It!
asus laptop btw
now if youll excuse me i need to go beat the first 2 before June 4th
 

dreamfall

Member
Is there a button to clear the HUD completely? I think in TW2, it was the "H" key- it made for some wonderful screenshots. But everytime I press anything, it tells me my control scheme has switched (because I'm using a controller lazily).
 

oxidax

Member
Just noticed that only one of my gpu is working with this game. I'm just gonna let this game sit until both amd and game updates start rolling in.

The modded amd update that somebody posted here is fucking amazing on gta V, tho. Jesus Christ I can't wait for win10!
 

Big_Al

Unconfirmed Member
Quick question folks, does anyone know of a way to increase the font size ? It's just a bit too small for my liking, could do with it being slightly bigger.
 

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
ok i just started it up with a 860m and an I7 4700HQ
i can run it PERFECTLY on ultra
dont meet minimum requirements my ass Can You Run It!
asus laptop btw
now if youll excuse me i need to go beat the first 2 before June 4th

Bullshit. I have a GTX 980M, which is I need not tell you how much more powerful than an 860M, and I can't run it on Ultra.

Unless by "started up" you mean "I sat on the title screen and posted on GAF".
 

Shy

Member
Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you viveks86.
Oh wait, you are getting it only while playing this game? It's not system wide?
Yep, just witcher 3.
What about other games? Have you tested with another DX11 game? If it works fine with other DX11 games, then there still is hope.
haven't tried with any other games yet.
 
Bullshit. I have a GTX 980M, which is I need not tell you how much more powerful than an 860M, and I can't run it on Ultra.

Unless by "started up" you mean "I sat on the title screen and posted on GAF".

nope was ingame at the beginning and everything
maybe the port is so bad it fucks up the performance of better cards
 
nope was ingame at the beginning and everything
maybe the port is so bad it fucks up the performance of better cards

No. Both the 860m and 980m are Maxwell.

And the 860m is far below the performance of many other cards that can't even run it well on Ultra, so you're gonna have to post exactly what kind of framerates you're getting, especially in White Orchard.
 

Buburibon

Member
No luck with any of that. I've never overclocked my graphics card although I believe it's factory overclocked (Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Ti OC) and don't have any monitoring tools or overlays. I've never ran into an issue like this with other games I play, leading me to believe it's being caused by The Witcher 3. The system log is still showing the nvlddmkm error every time it happens.

Thanks for your help on this Buburibon!

Alright, so it is factory OCed. If you don't mind, download EVGA Precision X 5.3.3 or whatever the latest version is, and dial the clock down to vanilla factory settings. Or you could just dial it down in small increments of -20Mhz or so until you (hopefully) achieve stability.
 

LordAmused

Member
Allright, game crashed 4 times today, twice in the Inventory menu. Did everything I've read so far:

Set Power Management to Performance
Uncap FPS, Cap FPS,
Borderless, Fullscreen.

None of those worked. Computer is more than able to run it. I get 60 fps steady then it just hangs up.

I5 4690
GTX 970
SSD
16GB Ram
 

fastmower

Member
W7 64bit, 4670K, 280X. This game stutters like a mutha. When you walk Roach it's awful, but it's especially terrible when you move the camera around at a slow speed. This is the absolute worst framepacing problem I've ever suffered. FRAPS shows a 30fps locked framerate.
I have the same specs and I agree, lots of stuttering at random times. The FPS is a solid 30 too. I wonder if there will ever be a fix for this issue.
 

shandy706

Member
Alright, I seem to have escaped the crashes. No complete crashes and no crash with audio, or crash and loss of audio.

Now, I did have the game drop to the desktop twice in 2 hours with these settings, but it did not crash. I was able to click the icon or alt+tab back into it. It was simply paused and I kept playing both times. No hard crashes at all.

Here are my specs (although many of us are having the same crashes no matter hardware).

i7 920 @ 3.4ghz
EVGA GTX 980 SC ACX 2.0
9GB DDR3

Here are the settings. What I don't get is my card isn't struggling with everything on Ultra. It even runs the game at 60fps with everything cranked. The temps with everything cranked are the same as the images I'm posting below. Literally the only difference is that it doesn't crash with these settings (huge wtf shrug??)

iKNP5kivXm4GU.png


ibzoM2dAHUTq4N.png


iO99PM4LelFCT.png


On the post processing I have the game's crappy AA and motion blur turned off. (hate motion blur...but you may want it on if you're framerate is low) The post processing settings don't appear to have been a key to crashing.
 

JohngPR

Member
i7 4770k OC'd to 4.5 ghz
HD 7970 Ghz Edition OC'd (1125/1575)
8GB RAM
Vsync, Triple buffering, luma sharpening, and SMAA injected via Radeon Pro/SweetFX

I'm generally getting mid 40's to mid 50's in town and a constant 60fps in the open world in the first few hours of the game.

Framerate dipping below 60 usually bothers me in games but feels smooth to me for some reason, even with motion blur turned off.

I only had one crash and it was when I turned HBAO+ on to try it out so that's staying off since I could use the few extra frames anyway. Other than that I have Textures, detail, and terrain set to ultra and everything else set to high. Enjoying the game so far!
 

Zakalwe

Banned
That is the issue I'm having.. video freezes while audio and controls continue. Whenever it occurs I have to force quit the game and that entry will be waiting for me in the system event log.

When you rolled back the drivers, did you do a clean uninstall of the newest set?

Could be any number of variables why it seemed to work for me and not you, I wonder how many other people have tried it so far.

Of course, it may not have worked for me and the last three hours with no crash could have been a fluke...
 

fastmower

Member
i7 4770k OC'd to 4.5 ghz
HD 7970 Ghz Edition OC'd (1125/1575)
8GB RAM
Vsync, Triple buffering, luma sharpening, and SMAA injected via Radeon Pro/SweetFX

I'm generally getting mid 40's to mid 50's in town and a constant 60fps in the open world in the first few hours of the game.

Framerate dipping below 60 usually bothers me in games but feels smooth to me for some reason, even with motion blur turned off.

I only had one crash and it was when I turned HBAO+ on to try it out so that's staying off since I could use the few extra frames anyway. Other than that I have Textures, detail, and terrain set to ultra and everything else set to high. Enjoying the game so far!
I have a similar PC. I wish I was like you, but I can't stand the unlocked frame rate. I've locked it to 30.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
Allright, game crashed 4 times today, twice in the Inventory menu. Did everything I've read so far:

Set Power Management to Performance
Uncap FPS, Cap FPS,
Borderless, Fullscreen.

None of those worked. Computer is more than able to run it. I get 60 fps steady then it just hangs up.

I5 4690
GTX 970
SSD
16GB Ram

Roll back drivers with a clean uninstall of current?
 

Belmire

Member

GTX960 performs better than GTX780? The fucking fuck?

The 6xx/7xx and 2xx series all suck at tessellation. Turning hairworks off or reducing tessellation quality in the AMD control panel bumps up the FPS. Also, bring down the slider one notch for Shadows, Foliage Distance and maybe turn HBAO off or set it to medium. Everything else Ultra/max I get 60fps with vsync on on a single 780. Looks great on a 55 inch!
 

Elsolar

Member
i7 4770k OC'd to 4.5 ghz
HD 7970 Ghz Edition OC'd (1125/1575)
8GB RAM
Vsync, Triple buffering, luma sharpening, and SMAA injected via Radeon Pro/SweetFX

I'm generally getting mid 40's to mid 50's in town and a constant 60fps in the open world in the first few hours of the game.

Framerate dipping below 60 usually bothers me in games but feels smooth to me for some reason, even with motion blur turned off.

I only had one crash and it was when I turned HBAO+ on to try it out so that's staying off since I could use the few extra frames anyway. Other than that I have Textures, detail, and terrain set to ultra and everything else set to high. Enjoying the game so far!

Howd you get triple buffering?
 

Zakalwe

Banned
So, no fix for the crashes? Thought I was okay until 2 hours in and I got a crash.

Depends. I seem to have found a fix that someone listed on reddit.

I was crashing once every half an hour at least. Last three hours of playtime and I haven't crashed once.

Go through my post history and you'll find it, try it and let us know if it works.

I will try to do that tomorrow first thing. I will update any results then.

Hope it works for you as it (seems to have) worked for me.
 

Portugeezer

Member
Depends. I seem to have found a fix that someone listed on reddit.

I was crashing once every half an hour at least. Last three hours of playtime and I haven't crashed once.

Go through my post history and you'll find it, try it and let us know if it works.



Hope it works for you as it (seems to have) worked for me.

I'm on AMD r9 290, but thanks anyway. I guess I will wait and see if it crashes again, could have just been a random crash.
 

Yurikerr

This post isn't by me, it's by a guy with the same username as me.
Saw this on reddit on how to use hairworks with an AMD card without too much of a performance hit

http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36jpe9/how_to_run_hairworks_on_amd_cards_without/

Anyone with an AMD card want to try it out and see how it goes?

Man, even with this "fix" HairWorks still tanks my framerate.

I was running the game at 35-40 with almost everything on ultra (foliage high). When i turned hairworks on Geralt my fps gos to 25-27, with everything on high and foliage on medium i gained like 2 frames.

I'll try the 8x setting.
 

Derp

Member
GTX960 performs better than GTX780? The fucking fuck?
The theory on the Nvidia forums is that the latest drivers either purposely crippled Kepler or did nothing for it to get everyone to move to Maxwell or some shit, but Nvidia are denying it and said they're investigating the issue. All Kepler GPUs specifically have seriously shitty performance for some unknown reason. 290x destroying a 780 Ti (it's always the opposite), a 960 is beating a 780 (780 is usually 36% ahead of a 960). Titan (original) beating the 960 (BY ONLY 2 FPS). They estimated a 40% performance penalty for Kepler for absolutely no known reason.

It's clear the Kepler GPUs have been fucked over in some way, which is the claim other sites are making as well (It doesn't take a genius to notice, just look at the benchmarks, they make absolutely no sense...), and there's also a long reddit post (it's apparently accurate) claiming that the GameWorks libraries are what crippled Kepler. I don't know what's going on man...

But yeah... Nvidia has commented saying they're investigating the issue... As if they'd do anything.

All of us with Kepler are basically fucked thanks to Nvidia's shitty business practices.

Edit: People on Kepler are getting performance improvements rolling back driver updates. Look at the Nvidia forum.
 
Ok so I'm 90% sure the "stutter" when rotating the camera slowly with a gamepad is an issue with the controller input and not frame-pacing or anything like that.

I just did a test where I stood in place and rotated the camera, got the stutter. Then I walked Geralt in circles in the exact same spot, letting the camera auto rotate with him, no stutter. Stopped Geralt, rotated cam manually again, stutter.
 

bbd23

Member
I havent had a menu freeze since someone mentioned the whole thing about setting your frames to unlimited instead of 30 and 60.
 

Gambit61

Member
Ok so I'm 90% sure the "stutter" when rotating the camera slowly with a gamepad is an issue with the controller input and not frame-pacing or anything like that.

I just did a test where I stood in place and rotated the camera, got the stutter. Then I walked Geralt in circles in the exact same spot, letting the camera auto rotate with him, no stutter. Stopped Geralt, rotated cam manually again, stutter.

Sounds about right. My game constantly has that "game pad detected" pop up showing up even though I only play with a controller.
 
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