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[wanderjahr]

I remember earlier I mentioned in this thread (and others too) about switching PhysX duties to the CPU in the NCP and were basically laughed at and ignored saying it didn't do anything. Funny how this is coming up again and the meta is changing.

 

[adamantypants]

Hmmm... Last night I hooked up my new 1440 monitor and assumed the shit performance on my 780ti was due to the resolution increase. I forgot that installing a new monitor also means new settings in GeForce Control Panel. I'll have to double check everything there. I'm sure it's defaulting the physx to my GPU. I'm barely getting mid 40s fps in high settings. Hopefully that Kepler fix is out tonight too.

 

[Lovely Salsa]

There are 4gb versions of the 680... he didn't state which he had.

I can't speak for 2 680s, but I have 3, and at 1080p with mostly ultra settings (foliage distance on high), I get 80-90 FPS in the most graphic-intensive area I've discovered so far. Probably would be higher if I offloaded PhysX to my CPU which I'll be trying when I get home! So yeah, the scaling seems pretty great. Not sure about double, but I'd wager at least an 80% increase.

I got 2 GB

Do I really need more than 2 GB for witcher 3@1080p? What happens if I buy another card but its 4 GB? Will it only count 2 GB?

 

[mintylurb]

Weird, I just dedicated one of my 780s to PhysX and I get 14-16% usage on it. Although I dunno if that is PhysX usage, I've never actually dedicated a card to PhysX before. It could just be standard usage.



There are PhysX libraries for stuff like volumetric fog, but I don't think this game uses it.

That is indeed odd..though maybe my factory oc'd 980 is enough for graphics and physx?
Anyway, I will test some more later tonight when I get home from work.

 

[b0bbyJ03]

I remember earlier I mentioned in this thread (and others too) about switching PhysX duties to the CPU in the NCP and were basically laughed at and ignored saying it didn't do anything. Funny how this is coming up again and the meta is changing.

I remember. I think that may have been due to people who tried it using Maxwell cards. This seems to be a fix for Kelper cards.

 

[JudgmentJay]

I got 2 GB

Do I really need more than 2 GB for witcher 3@1080p? What happens if I buy another card but its 4 GB? Will it only count 2 GB?

I've seen my VRAM a little over 2gb (ultra textures of course), but other games will require more, especially going forward. Not sure about pairing a 4gb and 2gb version of the same card... I'm not even sure you can. If it even worked, you would definitely be limited to 2gb.

 

[GHG]

I got 2 GB

Do I really need more than 2 GB for witcher 3@1080p? What happens if I buy another card but its 4 GB? Will it only count 2 GB?

You can't pair a 2gb and 4gb version of the same card in sli. If you have a 2gb you need to get another 2gb.

Don't do it just for this one game because it happens to be ok with 2gb GPU's at 1080p.... You will encounter issues with other games in the future and quite a few that are already out now in fact.

Save your money till you can get a 970 or similar.

 

[Dictator93]

Well Apex clothing can run on either the CPU or GPU and the name of this file is 'Apex_ClothingGPU' presumably meaning they're running it on the GPU when available.

If you look at my GPU usage on the screenshots, when PhysX is set to the CPU - both GPUs running at 98%. Whereas when I set it back to the GPU, the second GPU (which is the selected PhysX processor) is 98% whereas the first GPU is now 84%, presumably bottlenecked by the additional workload on the second GPU?

Hrmm, yeah... I guess I will test this out to see how it affects my GPU usage...

 

[Durante]

So, I tried both methods on a 970, and could not observe any statistically significant difference in frametimes.

 

[Qassim]

That is indeed odd..though maybe my factory oc'd 980 is enough for graphics and physx?
Anyway, I will test some more later tonight when I get home from work.

Do you have the second card as set as 'Dedicate to PhysX'? If so, it should, no matter what obey that and run the physx on that card regardless of how powerful your primary card is.

GPU usage PhysX dedicated to 2nd GPU (14%):

GPU usage, SLI off, PhysX on CPU (0%):

Surely at this point it's a reasonable assumption that there is something going on with PhysX on the GPU (when we assumed there was none), unless, as I said earlier, I'm being stupid

 

[Lovely Salsa]

You can't pair a 2gb and 4gb version of the same card in sli. If you have a 2gb you need to get another 2gb.

Don't do it just for this one game because it happens to be ok with 2gb GPU's at 1080p.... You will encounter issues with other games in the future and quite a few that are already out now in fact.

Save your money till you can get a 970 or similar.

I might as well wait for the X390

 

[hoserx]

You can't pair a 2gb and 4gb version of the same card in sli. If you have a 2gb you need to get another 2gb.

Don't do it just for this one game because it happens to be ok with 2gb GPU's at 1080p.... You will encounter issues with other games in the future and quite a few that are already out now in fact.

Save your money till you can get a 970 or similar.

That's not true. You can pair a 4gb and a 2gb 680.......... you'll just have the amount of ram of the lower card.... so you'll only have 2gb of vram in this situation. If your bottleneck is performance not vram, you'll see a nice improvement.

Unless you can get another 680 dirt cheap though, I would just move on to a 970 or something else for increased performance and more vram.

 

[heringer]

I'm tempted to change Shadows to low. Can't tell any difference from Ultra.

 

[hoserx]

I'm tempted to change Shadows to low. Can't tell any difference from Ultra.

if you can't tell, theres no reason to have it on max. isn't pc gaming beautiful? you are the creator........(of things already created)

 

[wanderjahr]

So, I tried both methods on a 970, and could not observe any statistically significant difference in frametimes.

Is it possible it's because you are using a Maxwell card? Would using a Kepler card be better here?

 

[Durante]

Is it possible it's because you are using a Maxwell card?

Absolutely. I just wanted to test whether there is any impact on a Maxwell card, since someone asked earlier and I was curious myself.

Interestingly, with the ~5-10% performance improvement reported Kepler cards would slot in much closer to where you'd expect them both compared to Maxwell and compared to AMD results.

 

[Qassim]

Is it possible it's because you are using a Maxwell card? Would using a Kepler card be better here?

Well this started off as a 'fix' for Kepler performance. So getting data points from Maxwell cards is useful to see if this is something unique to Kepler (or all non-Maxwell cards) or a general issue with the game that also affects Maxwell, looks like it doesn't affect Maxwell though.

 

[jorimt]

So, I tried both methods on a 970, and could not observe any statistically significant difference in frametimes.

Then it's probably safe to say that this particular issue isn't affecting Maxwell.

All I know is on my GTX 770 4GB (@1080p, NV Inspector/RTSS 30 fps cap, all Post Processing on, all "Ultra" but for Shadows and Foliage at "High," HairWorks off) with Geralt on his horse sitting in White Orchard's Abandoned Village looking out to the forest, I was getting 78% GPU usage with no fix, and 68% usage with the fix on. I loaded an identical save each time, being careful not to move the mouse.

Like I said, the fix seems to help some areas, and do nothing in others, and with a game that is so dynamic (ToD, weather patterns, and camera angle can change the performance drastically in the exact same area), it's hard to come to any concrete conclusions.

But the fix does seem to do "something," at least on Kepler.

 

[Serick]

Glad you guys are seeing improvements on your kepler based cards. I wonder if Nvidia has isolated this issue.

Were they releasing a new driver today?

 

[Kinthalis]

Can someone tweet Andy and point him to that vid, just in case he doesn't know?

Gonna try this tonight as well.

 

[wanderjahr]

Absolutely. I just wanted to test whether there is any impact on a Maxwell card, since someone asked earlier and I was curious myself.

Interestingly, with the ~5-10% performance improvement reported Kepler cards would slot in much closer to where you'd expect them both compared to Maxwell and compared to AMD results.

Thanks for checking it out!!!

 

[Dictator93]

Well this started off as a 'fix' for Kepler performance. So getting data points from Maxwell cards is useful to see if this is something unique to Kepler (or all non-Maxwell cards) or a general issue with the game that also affects Maxwell, looks like it doesn't affect Maxwell though.

As in... maxwell uses the CPU for these things already (that would be odd)? Or is it that offloading it to the CPU on Maxwell garners no performance increase? (which I would doubt).

What is the area with the largest amount of Apex Cloth physics going on? I did not notice any difference when just walking around the bog.

 

[CyberPunked]

Does anyone know if using an overlay such as MSI afterburner causes Reshade/sweetfx to not work?

 

[jorimt]

Upon closer inspection, the PhysX to CPU fix seems to have entirely cured (what I thought was) the load stutter I was getting in large towns like Novigrad and Oxenfurt on my GTX 770 4GB.

Before the fix, I'd run down the street, and the game would hitch every second or two (even with my 850 Pro SSD), no matter what settings I had the game on. I had just given up and thought it was an issue with the engine in the towns with dozens of NPCs. This might also be the reason some (Kepler?) players were experiencing stutter, even with Durante's recommended fps capping method.

Or I'm full of it, whichever ;p

 

[AEREC]

So...Ive been having weird crashes lately basically it goes like this:

1. Play Game
2. 10 -20 minutes in crashes (freeze black screen, audio still plays, game is still controllable but screen is black even when alt tabbing back to desktop)
3. Hard reboot
4. Play Game fine for hours and then quit
5. start up game again and play for ten to 20 minutes until it crashes the same way
6. repeat

Ive now just started doing a full reboot before I play the Witcher 3 and it seems to not crash during a play session not immediately followed by a reboot.

 

[CHC]

So basically when it comes to Kepler they screwed the pooch big time on PhysX allocation it seems? Excited to try this fix and glad it's something so simple. At times my performance was fine with a 780 while other (seemingly random) situations plummeted it into the 20s. Hoping to get 1440p / all high settings / 30 FPS locked.

 

[Qassim]

As in... maxwell uses the CPU for these things already (that would be odd)? Or is it that offloading it to the CPU on Maxwell garners no performance increase? (which I would doubt).

What is the area with the largest amount of Apex Cloth physics going on? I did not notice any difference when just walking around the bog.

I'm not sure, maybe it is supposed to run on the GPU and indeed does on Maxwell, but the performance impact is marginal? Whereas on Kepler be it a bug or otherwise, GPU library for it isn't working properly resulting in worse performance?

Although I would maybe expect, if that was case, that for Maxwell owners they'd see a decrease in their framerate if they put PhysX on the CPU.

Eh. I don't know, it's a weird situation.

 

[CHC]

I'm not sure, maybe it is supposed to run on the GPU and indeed does on Maxwell, but the performance impact is marginal? Whereas on Kepler be it a bug or otherwise, GPU library for it isn't working properly resulting in worse performance?

Although I would maybe expect, if that was case, that for Maxwell owners they'd see a decrease in their framerate if they put PhysX on the CPU.

Eh. I don't know, it's a weird situation.

It's probably just a case of Kepler overriding (for some reason) the program offloading PhysX to the CPU. So whereas Maxwell just lets the CPU handle it, Kepler probably has some flag mistakenly enabled where it steps in and does all the work itself. That would be my layman's guess, but who knows really.

 

[AU Tiger]

I remoted into my desktop at the house and pulled up the physX settings so I will test it out before/after the fix when I get home.

I was having all kinds of crashes last night though. At first I thought it was from overclocking my 980 (Gigabyte G1) but returning it to defaults in afterburner still had issues.

What's crazy is that I've NEVER seen my GPU heat up the way it does with Witcher 3. Not even GTA V is getting it as hot as it does on W3 (71*C max)

Wondering if dumping PhysX to the CPU will alleviate some of that or not.??

I know my PSU (EVGA supernova 850 G2) is plenty and no other game has any stability problems so if I still have crashes with the PhysX set to CPU, I'm just going to chalk this up to the game/nvidia drivers needing to be fixed.

FWIW, I've also tried running the game with sweet fx disabled, frap is not running, I've tried disabling Riva Tuner Statistics Server, running borderless windowed vs full screen, etc...

On the other hand, with hairworks off and everything else maxed out, it's pretty much staying locked at 60fps and only dipping down to the low 50's all through white orchard.

If I still have crashes I may see if temporarily pointing a really high RPM fan at the GPU to get the temps back down into the 60's help fix the problem. I can't imagine that 71*C is hot enough to cause the driver to stop responding/crash but hell... at this point, I'm wiling to try anything. If that actually solves the problem, I may end up just getting an EK block for it and calling it a day.

 

[OmegaTreeFish]

Well I deleted that file and novigrade center went from 24-25 fps up to 29-31. Strange.

 

[Qassim]

It's probably just a case of Kepler overriding (for some reason) the program offloading PhysX to the CPU. So whereas Maxwell just lets the CPU handle it, Kepler probably has some flag mistakenly enabled where it steps in and does all the work itself. That would be my layman's guess, but who knows really.

Seems odd that there would be a library for 'Apex_ClothingGPU' if it wasn't meant to run on the GPU - of course that's an analysis purely based on the name of a file. Unless of course it was supposed to be a feature but it was cut, yet the library was left in and it is as you're describing.

 

[WarpathDC]

Hairworks eats about 20fps when Geralt is close to the camera or I'm fighting a pack of wolves. My CPU is only maxing out at 67%, I wish I could offload some of the physx work from the 970 to the cpu

 

[Rhaknar]

why in the blue hell did the game revert to low textures? I didnt even notice until checked the settings for whatever reason (I did notice when I bumped it up to ultra tho). game still runs at 60 too so big fat shrug

did the entire of white orchid at 1080p all maxed (except for however long I was with low textures lol), so if its holding up during that, I should be in the clear for the rest?

 

[WarpathDC]

why in the blue hell did the game revert to low textures? I didnt even notice until checked the settings for whatever reason (I did notice when I bumped it up to ultra tho). game still runs at 60 too so big fat shrug

did the entire of white orchid at 1080p all maxed (except for however long I was with low textures lol), so if its holding up during that, I should be in the clear for the rest?

1.04 did that to me too. All my other settings were the same but textures reverted to low.

 

[BRocknRolla]

why in the blue hell did the game revert to low textures? I didnt even notice until checked the settings for whatever reason (I did notice when I bumped it up to ultra tho). game still runs at 60 too so big fat shrug

did the entire of white orchid at 1080p all maxed (except for however long I was with low textures lol), so if its holding up during that, I should be in the clear for the rest?

I don't think anything in White Orchard pushes the game to any real degree. There areas after, specifically the bogs and cities, where people seem to run into the largest performance hits. I dropped a few of my settings down from ultra to high once I got into those areas to maintain a more consistent framerate.

 

[stlobus]

So...Ive been having weird crashes lately basically it goes like this:

1. Play Game
2. 10 -20 minutes in crashes (freeze black screen, audio still plays, game is still controllable but screen is black even when alt tabbing back to desktop)
3. Hard reboot
4. Play Game fine for hours and then quit
5. start up game again and play for ten to 20 minutes until it crashes the same way
6. repeat

Ive now just started doing a full reboot before I play the Witcher 3 and it seems to not crash during a play session not immediately followed by a reboot.

I've just started seeing the same issues today, too. It had worked perfectly fine after unlocking the frame cap and for much longer play sessions but is now having issues. My system:

i7 2600k at stock
16 GB RAM at stock
Asus Strix GTX 970, no overclock on my part

 

[heringer]

if you can't tell, theres no reason to have it on max. isn't pc gaming beautiful? you are the creator........(of things already created)

Can't tell the difference in image quality. Performance gets much better.

 

[billmcdougal]

Can't tell the difference in image quality. Performance gets much better.

I may need to check this out. On a 7850, I have everything on high except for shadows on medium.

Can anyone who can tell the difference explain low to med difference please?

 

[kazinova]

Terrible screen tearing at all times cutscenes and in-game in the same spot on my screen. The V-sync, it does nothing! Anyone post fixes, the OP has nothing about it but I think I remember there being a fix.

i7 3770k @3.5gHz
8gb RAM
eVGA GTX 970 AC

 

[AEREC]

I've just started seeing the same issues today, too. Worked perfectly fine after unlocking the frame cap and for much longer play sessions. My system:

i7 2600k at stock
16 GB RAM at stock
Asus Strix GTX 970, no overclock on my part

Forgot to mention Im using the Witcher Game ready driver from NVidia on my GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0+

Ill try unlocking my framerate to see if that helps.

 

[Axial]

I tried changing PhysX settings from gpu to cpu assisted and it didn't fix anything, but removing the dynamic library file for the Apex clothing module did improve fps on my GTX770 quite significantly and also reduced stutter. Melitele be praised!

 

[stlobus]

Forgot to mention Im using the Witcher Game ready driver from NVidia on my GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0+

Ill try unlocking my framerate to see if that helps.

I just clarified my post. The framerate unlock fixed a previous crash not related to this one. It's still unlocked and I've started seeing the same problem you described. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[tioslash]

Seems odd that there would be a library for 'Apex_ClothingGPU' if it wasn't meant to run on the GPU - of course that's an analysis purely based on the name of a file. Unless of course it was supposed to be a feature but it was cut, yet the library was left in and it is as you're describing.

Could be it. I mean, apparently the game was supposed to have GPU PhysX at some point:

 

[froliq]

Terrible screen tearing at all times cutscenes and in-game in the same spot on my screen. The V-sync, it does nothing! Anyone post fixes, the OP has nothing about it but I think I remember there being a fix.

i7 3770k @3.5gHz
8gb RAM
eVGA GTX 970 AC

borderless windowed mode!

 

[wanderjahr]

borderless windowed mode!

I'm not sure why this isn't more of a thing. Not only that, but you get to keep your ICC profile if you have any sort of calibration going on.

 

[Lostconfused]

I'm not sure why this isn't more of a thing. Not only that, but you get to keep your ICC profile if you have any sort of calibration going on.

Having 2 GPUs would be the biggest argument against it. G-Sync/Freesync as well.

 

[FLAguy954]

So, I finally decided to pull the trigger and get the game.

What platform should I get the game for?

Also, what are the recommended settings for a 290/4670K with the tessellation-tweaked Hairworks?

 

[JudgmentJay]

Okay, unless I'm being stupid, I think it has to do with GPU PhysX. I reverted change of the file back to default (so the game loads it) and then went to the NVIDIA control panel and set PhysX processing to CPU.

Screenshot (PhysX - CPU) 71fps:



Screenshot (PhysX - Automatic (auto-selected my 2nd 780)) 62fps:



fps counter on the second is a bit hard to see, especially with imgur compression, but I've double checked, it's 62fps. Keep in mind, I'm running SLI also, so I'm not sure if that'll change anything in relation to your testing - but the guy in the video is running a single card.

Tried this in the exact same spot and got similar results. FPS went from 76 to 85 without hairworks, 66 to 74 with. Better than nothing I suppose, but doesn't this change affect all configurations, not just setups with Kepler cards?

 

[Blitzhex]

I'm not sure why this isn't more of a thing. Not only that, but you get to keep your ICC profile if you have any sort of calibration going on.

SLI and gsync doesnt work in b/l windowed. I also get stuttering in b/l windowed that completely goes away as soon as I go fullscreen mode. Very noticeable, happens every time I launch the game since it defaults to borderless windowed and I have to set it back.
I love b/l windowed in other games though.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

What are people using to force vsync at 30fps? Read above that using the vsync in the game is what's causing the juddering/frame pacing issues? I used Nvidia control panel but it still does it...

Just wondering what program people using to force vsync that might be better than the Nvidia control panel?