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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread
- Thread starter batman2million
- Start date
exmachina64
Banned
When I first built my PC, I tried to use 4x DSR on The Witcher 2. Brought my 980 to its knees (max settings).
970
i5 4790K @ OC 4.5 GHz
16GB Ram
SSD
Only played until you make it to White Orchid but it seems I have to turn down two settings to have a constant 60fps from ultra preset @ 1080p:
Shadows from ultra to high
and
Foliage View Distance ultra to high
If I do start dropping what would be the next best setting and do you think I will start to, I mean does the game go to more graphical intensive areas as it progresses?
Also I haven't ran into any super hairy creatures yet so I may need to turn that HairWorks if that causes a problem.
All in all, very satisfied!
i5 4790K @ OC 4.5 GHz
16GB Ram
SSD
Only played until you make it to White Orchid but it seems I have to turn down two settings to have a constant 60fps from ultra preset @ 1080p:
Shadows from ultra to high
and
Foliage View Distance ultra to high
If I do start dropping what would be the next best setting and do you think I will start to, I mean does the game go to more graphical intensive areas as it progresses?
Also I haven't ran into any super hairy creatures yet so I may need to turn that HairWorks if that causes a problem.
All in all, very satisfied!
Well after trying since launch to play more than 30 minutes without crashing, I finally got it. Rolling back to non beta drivers fixed most of the problems. Disabling hairworks fixed the rest of my random freezing during the first cutscene. Game still stutters a bit though when spinning the camera quickly and riding, even with my GPU and CPU not being maxed out.
Surprisingly, I'm running almost everything ultra except foliage distance which is on high. MSI afterburner says I'm running at a locked 30 with anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the gpu being free but the stuttering is really noticeable.
Vram usage seems really low to me. Hasn't gone past 1.5 GB even though 7950's have 3. Any one else seeing the same thing? Also would moving the game to an ssd help with some of the stuttering, at least when riding the horse and movies?
Surprisingly, I'm running almost everything ultra except foliage distance which is on high. MSI afterburner says I'm running at a locked 30 with anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the gpu being free but the stuttering is really noticeable.
Vram usage seems really low to me. Hasn't gone past 1.5 GB even though 7950's have 3. Any one else seeing the same thing? Also would moving the game to an ssd help with some of the stuttering, at least when riding the horse and movies?
Looks like the one that improves damage is called Thunderbolt. 25 toxicity, duration is 30 seconds. Pretty sure you get the recipe for it and are forced to brew it in the Griffin quest, so should be obtained really early on.
I don't believe so.
The best you can get away with is adjusting the level of MSAA applied to hairworks in the ini file.
ISee
Member
Thx for the quick answer.
Too bad. As tessellation seems to be less demanding on nvidia cards I was hoping to get a less demanding, maybe nearly free (yeah I know...), hairworks option on my 970.
Also I wonder if NVIDIA made CDPR set the tessellation levels way higher then necessary to slow down AMD cards... After the 970 memory 'issue' they lost a lot of reputation in my eyes.
Let's hope they didn't force them and CDPR let us adjust the tessellation leves in the next 'more options for PC' patch , wich they announced.
ISee
Member
780 Ti at 1440p everything maxed except foliage distance (high).
Standing on the balcony at the beginning, looking at the scenery.
Hairworks off: 47 fps
Hairworks on: 9 fps
Them trees must have a lot of fur.
I just tested the same settings on my 970.
Hairworks off: ~42 fps
Hairworks on: ~37 fps
So the 780Ti is way faster without hairworks... that is interesting.
Darkstorne
Member
Yep, those are the two biggest performance boosts!
You can also lower water to high for a nice boost (and it's still tessellated at high), and if you use Hairworks then you can turn the anti-aliasing amount down to 4 or 2 (or off completely with 0) through the \bin\config\base\rendering.ini file in your Witcher 3 install folder for another performance boost.
I play without Hairworks, because that allows me to play with Ultra Foliage Distance which is just way more important to me than beautifully conditioned and regularly brushed L'Oreal hair =P
The drop from ultra to high doesn't impact IQ much. HBAO+ however is miles ahead of SSAO.
HBAO+ is better than ultra shadows for sure.
forcing 60fps without v-sync will give you screen tearing,using v-sync will get rid of screen tearing
martino
Member
i have the same feeling (idem with witcher 2)
Is there equivalent thing with amd cards ?
Cannon Goose
Member
Even with the AA level lowered Hairworks still hits the frame rate so hard. I'm going to have to go without it until someone either finds another way to tweak it or perhaps CD Projekt includes more options in that big patch that was mentioned earlier.
Is there a PS4 controller button mod yet?
Is there a PS4 controller button mod yet?
Lord Phol
Member
My 680 2GB really feels outdated now >>. I get like an average of 35-45, sometimes it goes a bit higher and sometimes it dips lower. I have everything on medium except texture's on high and foliage distance an shadows on low, with ssao and aa. It's impossible for me to get even close to a consistent 60 though.
The weird thing is if I lock it to 30 fps it feels really sluggish and awful. More so than other games in 30 fps.
Edit: Playing @1080p btw.
The weird thing is if I lock it to 30 fps it feels really sluggish and awful. More so than other games in 30 fps.
Edit: Playing @1080p btw.
Darkstorne
Member
Yep, I play without too. I would love an option to enable it on monsters but not Geralt and Roach, and see if that helps the performance.
I don't mind much though. It's one more reason (as if I needed another one) to replay this in a few years time with whatever the latest GPU is, all settings maxed, ini files tweaked to high heaven, running at 4k *drool*
Sadly it doesn't scale down well to older hardware. Very much aimed at modern hardware only, and optimized for current gen consoles as much as they could (which again, is only 30fps there too).
Actually i get 42 if i look down over the balcony. But if i look straight ahead i get about 47.
Just tested it again in the same spot.
Hairworks off: 41-47 fps depending on where I look.
Hairworks on: 13-15 fps
Just goes to show you how screwed Kepler is with HairWorks. I lost over 30 fps enabling it. You lost ~5 fps.
Well played, Nvidia. Cripple me more.
Edit: Tried it again and it was 9 fps. And then again and it was 30 fps. And then back to 9 fps. I figured out it was the birds that were flying past. They have hair. Holy shit I shouldn't do benchmarks ever again.
I don't agree with this at all. I'm still using a radeon 5850, which is like 5 years old now, and the game looks very good on medium and runs well at 1080p 30 hz. CD projeckt absolutely did not abandon lower spec hardware with their new engine.
AMD 280X
Borderless fullscreen
Framelimit 60
1080p
Windows 10
Performance seems at a constant 60fps with a 280X in High.
Around 25-30 with Uber on 1080p.
No HairWorks.
Everything seems fine and as intended? My 280X not having better performance on Uber is sad, but not disapoiting, it's not top of the line anymore.
Borderless fullscreen
Framelimit 60
1080p
Windows 10
Performance seems at a constant 60fps with a 280X in High.
Around 25-30 with Uber on 1080p.
No HairWorks.
Everything seems fine and as intended? My 280X not having better performance on Uber is sad, but not disapoiting, it's not top of the line anymore.
That's weird. I got a 970 too and play the game with constant 60 fps (rare drops to 50+ fps with a group of enemies) and everything on max, Hairworks and rendering filter off though.
So don't use the in-game VSync? Set in game to Unlimited and go to Nvidia Control Panel and turn Vertical Sync on for Witcher 3?
Sevenfold
Member
Does Ubersampling stack with DSR? oO
Lord Phol
Member
Yeah I suspected that was the case, first modern game that I've had frame rate problems with :7. It looks good on my settings but so does DA:Inquisition and it runs alot better. Guess it's time to finally get that 980 I've been drooling after and see how the game looks on high/ultra.
Zomba13
Member
So yeah, no idea at all on why I'm sometimes crashing. I did get a fair amount of crashes quite quickly in fullscreen just out and about and in menus and whatnot. Borderless I get not as many crashes, I've had like 2. seemingly random but then also I've been playing for a few hours straight with no issue at all doing all manner of things (menus, inventory clean up, reading books, fighting, travelling, running past drowners). Been keeping an eye on resources and temperatures and all are fine, within reason.
Getting solid 30 (capped at 30) with most at ultra minus shadows (high), AA (using Nvidia forcing FXAA) and hairworks off (even with the ini set to 1x AA or whatever geralt only still takes too many frames. Plus I think it looks a bit weird).
Getting solid 30 (capped at 30) with most at ultra minus shadows (high), AA (using Nvidia forcing FXAA) and hairworks off (even with the ini set to 1x AA or whatever geralt only still takes too many frames. Plus I think it looks a bit weird).
Toothless Spoon
Member
I like the colour palette, did you change anything? Also what are your game settings?
Saturation -0.17 in SweetFX.
ISee
Member
Oh I am playing it on mostly solid 60 fps in 1080p.
with everything on max, but foliage and shadows (both on high) and of course w/o hairworks.
But those were max settings in 2560x1440...
They decided to activate hairworks on birds? That is a bit unnecessary.
Darkstorne
Member
Yeah, that's my biggest concern with it too. Performance costs a lot, sure, but it doesn't even look that good on Geralt. The default hair matches him perfectly - long, flowing, but also unkempt, wild, and tangled. With HairWorks it looks like he shampoos and conditions every morning, then brushes his hair out after every single battle because damn, that shit is immaculately straight.
I really would love to enable it on monsters though =(
Toothless Spoon
Member
What in-game settings are you running?
Yes, it's really stange. My 3.5GB 970 also never uses more than 1.5GB around White Orchard. And that's with Ultra textures! Maybe the game is really aggressive with loading things in and out of memory even when there's plenty of RAM.
Could be an explanation for the frequent stutters. In my experience installing the game on an SSD seems to have made the game smoother but I could be imagining it.
Oh yeah. Gotta clean my glasses, mb
I will confirm it later, but I think I selected minimum shadows because difference is nearly invisible.
dr_rus
Member
If you were trying to run TW2 with ubersampling then sure, TW3 would run better. Otherwise - no. TW2 is hovering around 60 fps on max details sans ubersampling. TW3 with max details is struggling to hit 30 on my 970.
Whaat. Hairworks on? If not, a 970 should do double that. Literally playing the game right now, as we speak, on ultra, keeping a steady 60fps.
ISee
Member
I am really having trouble to adjust my screen settings (brightness, contrast etc.) for the Witcher 3. I asjusted my monitor at least descently, (rgb is set to full, black is black, white is white, colours aren't 'bleeding' into each other and still look good etc.). And till now I had no problems but the image just doesn't look right in Witcher 3. It seems to be way to dark and the moment I try to adjust that everything else seems to be to bright. Maybe it is me but...
My 970 is practically 60fps all the time with everything besides hairworks and grass on high instead.
Witcher 2 without ubersampling still drops to 50fps on my PC at times.
Hm, it looks fine to me (Vanilla, no SweetFX) after the washed out colors that GTAV had by default.
texhnolyze
Banned
My PC can run TW2 maxed without ubersampling at 60 fps as well. TW3, I can only run it at 30 fps maxed.
MaddenNFL64
Member
6 days for a patch? I was hoping for a hotfix for those stallouts/crashes/whatever you want to call them.
Oh well.
Oh well.
Haiworks will dip you. It's going to have to be off if you want closer to constant 60.
Shadows to High
Grass to High
Foliage Detail to Hgih
Hairworks off
Everything else on/max
This will net you 60fps almost constantly in the open world with dips to 50-60 in certain towns/areas.
Hairworks and everything to Ultra? Which resolution?
If Hairworks on and anything over 1080 then yes, of course it's going to struggle.
Cannon Goose
Member
Playing at 30fps seems to be quite smooth with these settings:
1. Maximum pre-rendered frames set to 1 in the Nvidia Control Panel (not sure what the AMD equivalent is, sorry).
2. Frame rate locked to 30 using Rivatuner Statistics Server (RTSS), bundled with MSI Afterburner.
3. Frame rate in-game set to Unlimited.
The only hitches I see are the very consistent ones when jogging or riding the horse, and those seem like the camera slows down for a split second whenever Geralt plants his foot on the ground. Stuff like rotating the camera and pans during cutscenes are smooth though.
1. Maximum pre-rendered frames set to 1 in the Nvidia Control Panel (not sure what the AMD equivalent is, sorry).
2. Frame rate locked to 30 using Rivatuner Statistics Server (RTSS), bundled with MSI Afterburner.
3. Frame rate in-game set to Unlimited.
The only hitches I see are the very consistent ones when jogging or riding the horse, and those seem like the camera slows down for a split second whenever Geralt plants his foot on the ground. Stuff like rotating the camera and pans during cutscenes are smooth though.
GoonerTRON
Banned
Can someone explain in simple terms what all the post processing graphics do.
I get what AA, Bloom and Motion Blur do but the rest are pretty much gibberish to me.
I get what AA, Bloom and Motion Blur do but the rest are pretty much gibberish to me.
Dries
Member
Check the Nvidia guide in the OP.
I have done this using Pinnacle Games Profiler. It is awesome.
In fact I took it several steps further, so I now have:
- press Xbox guide button for map
- hold Xbox guide button for quest log
- hold left analogue stick down for quick save (this was one of the only other buttons that is not already mapped by the game, so made use of it!)
Works flawlessly and has improved my experience gaming on PC with an Xbox controller immeasurably.
EDIT - if anyone wants my PGP profile just shout. Although it's pretty simple.
EDIT 2 - profile is uploaded here: https://mega.co.nz/#!UhZwmaII!cPZrcnfgRcM42bWqAxY-N3YpmpAG21l98r4KeL4vTA4