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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

mdsfx

Member
Are you getting hard locks or CTDs?

I know for me when I had my graphics card overclocked, this game was giving me hard locks pre-1.03. Lowered it and haven't had any problems.
It's possible both of your overclocks might be giving you issues.

Game just quits to desktop.

Has GPU ocd and CPU stock with no issues. Trying different combinations now.
 

Corpekata

Banned
If it's quitting to desktop you should check event viewer for Nvidia driver crashes. Typically a bad CPU OC is a lot more volatile.

Specifically if it's the black screen but you can hear the sounds and even sort of still control Geralt (hit the attack buttons and he'll grunt), it's almost certainly GPU related.
 

knerl

Member
Been messing around with the settings on my i5 2500k 3,3ghz and GTX970 combo, and it seems like hairworks, highest foliage distance and ultra shadows are pretty much the only settings I have to lower to keep a consistent 60 FPS at 1080p resolutions. And hairworks is the only thing that drops the framerate below 50FPS.

HBAO+, ultra textures, ultra details, etc. None of them are any problem for that configuration. Feels really solid. :)

With hairworks that setup can bog the fps to 24. I have the same CPU running @ 4.3GHz and a 970 G1 Gaming from Gigabyte running @ 1380MHz. Mostly with hairworks on, shadows on high and everything else on ultra I get ~45fps, but if you get close to geralt with hairworks on the fps can take a nose dive to 24-30.
 

mdsfx

Member
If it's quitting to desktop you should check event viewer for Nvidia driver crashes. Typically a bad CPU OC is a lot more volatile.

Specifically if it's the black screen but you can hear the sounds and even sort of still control Geralt (hit the attack buttons and he'll grunt), it's almost certainly GPU related.

no instances of "nvlddmkm" errors today... hahahaha THIS JUST HAPPENED AS I WROTE THIS USING CHROME (black screen). God dammit Nvidia.
 

Corpekata

Banned
It's the driver. I've gotten it while browsing via Chrome too and if you look at this thread before the game came out you'll see like 5 people mention suddenly getting it while web browsing after installing the new driver.

Nuking my GPU OC seems to have reduced it enough to be playable but they need to release a hotfix driver.
 

Yeul

Member
Wow I don't even know what happened. I didn't change anything and my performance on my i7 4790k + 970 on ultra for everything (hairworks off) was 60 fps but I opened the game today and it was between 25-30 fps. Weird.
 
Has anyone messed around with foliage ini settings? To be more specific, has anyone tried ultra settings' tree loading distance with high setting grass loading distance?

Wow I don't even know what happened. I didn't change anything and my performance on my i7 4790k + 970 on ultra for everything (hairworks off) was 60 fps but I opened the game today and it was between 25-30 fps. Weird.

You just got kepler'd.
 

M.D

Member
I'm currently playing The Witcher 2 and I have the weirdest issue..

I've been playing with everything on max (except for a few things turned off) + UberSampling with what felt like 60 FPS everywhere except areas with tons of foliage. I was messing around with the meditation menu when suddenly it felt like the performance of the game had become way worse.

Ran around in the camp and outside, and it was pretty clear something was wrong. I restarted the PC and took off UberSampling (holy shit what a difference that thing makes), but even now something feels off.
The framerate during the QTE fight I just had felt reallly bad and nothing like I ever remember seeing before

I have no idea what this could be really, because it happened mid game.
Everything else seems fine, the GPU temp is fine (and went down from 69 to 46 after turning off UberSampling).
I did slightly overclock my GPU but that was a couple of days ago and everything was fine until now, and there aren't any artifacts or anything to suggest its related
 

mdsfx

Member
If it's quitting to desktop you should check event viewer for Nvidia driver crashes. Typically a bad CPU OC is a lot more volatile.

Specifically if it's the black screen but you can hear the sounds and even sort of still control Geralt (hit the attack buttons and he'll grunt), it's almost certainly GPU related.
Immediate crashes at anything above 4.0 with this CPU. Anything under is stable even with GPU OC.
 

Thoraxes

Member
I moved the game to my SSD and got noticeably worse NPC pop in. Moved back and it was gone. Weird. Wonder if it's because of the method (Steam Mover) or just a case of bad luck.
You can just cut/copy the files to a directory of your choosing without the need for an external tool. All you have to do is set an additional directory in Steam for the game's location, copy all the files into it, pretend to install, choose new install location,it verifies the files and integrity, and it should be 100% ready to go.

No tools needed.
So for some reason even after disconnecting my controller and using the keyboard and mouse the game still shows command prompts from the xbox controls so fast traveling becomes impossible without it hooked in.

Anyone have a fix for this?

Fix your ini file that you probably edited to get rid of the controller/keyboard message. Change the value back to 0.
 

CHC

Member
This game is so fickle.... Everything was running great on the GTX 780, high settings across the board, locked at 30. Never had stuttering issues or anything.... start a new game today and it feels completely different, very choppy and "off".
 

rabhw

Member
I took a couple of videos of the LoD issues I'm seeing on Ultra settings...this isn't normal right?

The rope at the corner of the door frame, the window on the house:
http://i.imgur.com/weiXSCh.gifv

The roof in the not-so-distant distance:
http://i.imgur.com/3XCN8bR.gifv

Also should my 980 SLI really be struggling to maintain 60fps on Ultra @ 1440p? Wasn't the whole thing that a single 980 can run Ultra @ 60fps @ 1080p? A second 980 doesn't make up for the jump from 1080 -> 1440?

It feels like I have SLI off or something, but I definitely don't. The game doesn't look nearly good enough to justify the kind of performance I'm seeing.

And yes, I'm only 5 minutes into the game, I'm just taken aback by the horrible LoD, and the fact that I can't even edit the ini to fix it because my performance is so poor already that I can't justify doing that.
 

viveks86

Member
When I was using your ini tweaks, I got inventory crashes almost every time I went into it.

went back to my own default ini file and the crashes went away.

I was using SLI 980s at the time.

Might be worth investigating your ini tweaks. Try a default ini and see if your crashes disappear.

Seems to be crashing regardless. I think the INI may have aggravated the problem as it pushes the driver harder. Good to know that rolling back helped you. I hope it gets resolved soon :(

You might be interested in this: http://www.pcgamer.com/durantes-witcher-3-analysis-the-alchemy-of-smoothness/

(I also had pretty bad stutter out of the box despite good framerates)

Good stuff! I need to try this. I don't get continuous stutter, but I do get a regular hitch while on horse back, with or without INI tweaks. Game runs at around 70 fps otherwise. Will see if this fixes it.


Anybody is using ReShade? Any recommended preset? I'm partial to presets that remove the brownish color of the game. There's a bunch available on thelazy but I can't decide which one is better.

http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/970/

Have you tried the one I posted earlier (quoted below)? Let me know your thoughts!

I took Project Reality as a template and modified it a little. It's the most satisfying result I've had so far. Now I'm all set to play the actual game! :D

witcher32015-05-2121-30-162.png


I've posted the settings here:

http://pastebin.com/KGPDrrP7

Thanks man, used your modified template and INI settings. INI is hitting my framerate for-sure (980x@4.0GHZ + G1 970), but it really looks great! If I continue to enjoy it I might have to lock my framerate to 30.

You are welcome! Glad you like it :)
 

Wag

Member
Apparently the game/drivers has bad performance on Kepler boards in general. That would explain a lot. A $200 board (960) outperforms my $1000 6GB Titan, lol. I hope Nvidia gets on this shit. In any event I plan on upgrading soon for the HDMI 2.0 support anyways...
 

PurpleSquid

Neo Member
hi guys, I have a nvidia gtx970 and my game keeps crashing to a black screen, i have to force reset my pc everytime this happens. can't even do the dang tutorial. anyone know how to fix it? I'm on the latest patch. i can hear gearlt and stuffin the background
 

finalflame

Gold Member
Ugh, just had microstutters suddenly start happening :/ Hadn't noticed them at all before. I have tried both Durante's method, and what was working for me before which is Triple buffering + VSync in nVidia control panel, unlimited FPS in game and full screen.

2x980s, i5-4670K. Anyone else experiencing microstutters? It looks almost like a faint flash/hitch. Other demanding open world games such as GTA V are working fine.
 
The performance when it is raining is amazing; it is as if there is barely any FPS hit as opposed to other games that use antialiasing on raindrops. Even the rain looks actually nice. I get 49-51 fps with my GTX 780 and i7 4770k in the Baron's castle with no NPCs around; apparently, those damn peasants are behind the fps hit in villages.

Overall, the game has amazing and smart usage of post-processing effect. And they are not neglecting details that other devs usually don't get right (skyboxes, skybox lighting effects and numerous post-processing effects). The parallax maps of the terrain are great, and that vegetation middleware is very great in terms of performance--grass is normally the fps killer and the true test to proper antialiasing.

The only complaint that I have is rendering distance and LODS. It is obvious and apparent once you reach White Orchid and notice how some NPC body parts, windows, interiors and shadows start rendering.

It sucks that Nvidia fucked Kepler cards on such a cool game. It is my first major release that I bought on day one or pre-ordered; I invested a lot in the Witcher 2 so that has to do with it. I am starting to despise pc gaming and gaming as a whole. I moved from consoles to avoid the limitations and business practices with outdated hardware, but now I have to deal with unoptimized games, bad ports, and now Nvidia completely dropping the ball with a supposedly high-end car that today it can be considered a 2 years old product.
 

comrade

Member
Wow I don't even know what happened. I didn't change anything and my performance on my i7 4790k + 970 on ultra for everything (hairworks off) was 60 fps but I opened the game today and it was between 25-30 fps. Weird.

For some reason sometimes my 970 will be running the game at 2d clocks. I'll be getting like sub 30fps and look with afterburner and the gpu is running at like 525mhz. Restarting the game doesn't fix it I have to reboot. It's happened to me twice now.
 
For some reason sometimes my 970 will be running the game at 2d clocks. I'll be getting like sub 30fps and look with afterburner and the gpu is running at like 525mhz. Restarting the game doesn't fix it I have to reboot. It's happened to me twice now.

Check if your 970 is reaching too high a temp and downclocking itself to maintain safe temps. Have you OC'd it?

~

Made a mod to increase potion durations, if anyone wants to try it it's on NexusMods.
 

golem

Member
Wow I don't even know what happened. I didn't change anything and my performance on my i7 4790k + 970 on ultra for everything (hairworks off) was 60 fps but I opened the game today and it was between 25-30 fps. Weird.

I bet the game switched back to Borderless Windowed mode for some reason, put it back to fullscreen. Happened to me a few times as well.
 

comrade

Member
Check if your 970 is reaching too high a temp and downclocking itself to maintain safe temps. Have you OC'd it?

It'll do it right from the beginning of the game. Not downclock itself while playing. The temps are fine, under 70. It also fixes after I reboot. The Witcher 3 is the only game to ever do this.

It's also only happened twice in 20 hours.
 

Shy

Member
has someone made a mod for PS button promts yet. ?
Apparently the game/drivers has bad performance on Kepler boards in general. That would explain a lot. A $200 board (960) outperforms my $1000 6GB Titan, lol. I hope Nvidia gets on this shit.
Yeah, i hope so. *sigh*
 

DPB

Member
For some reason sometimes my 970 will be running the game at 2d clocks. I'll be getting like sub 30fps and look with afterburner and the gpu is running at like 525mhz. Restarting the game doesn't fix it I have to reboot. It's happened to me twice now.

Changing the game's setting for power management in the Nvidia Control Panel to "prefer maximum performance" should fix that.
 

Buburibon

Member
It'll do it right from the beginning of the game. Not downclock itself while playing. The temps are fine, under 70. It also fixes after I reboot. The Witcher 3 is the only game to ever do this.

It's also only happened twice in 20 hours.

What does the event viewer say? From your description it sounds like the problem might be related to a "silent" display driver error/failed overclock when attempting to run TW3.
 

Yeul

Member
For some reason sometimes my 970 will be running the game at 2d clocks. I'll be getting like sub 30fps and look with afterburner and the gpu is running at like 525mhz. Restarting the game doesn't fix it I have to reboot. It's happened to me twice now.

I bet the game switched back to Borderless Windowed mode for some reason, put it back to fullscreen. Happened to me a few times as well.

Yeah I'm in fullscreen mode and the game is running at 25fps for me even though I tried rebooting my entire PC. Checked and my gpu was running at 539mhz and temperature isn't a problem because while running the game it's hitting 50C so it's definitely an issue of my gpu running oddly? I just don't know what I'm looking for or how to fix it.
 
Yeah I'm in fullscreen mode and the game is running at 25fps for me even though I tried rebooting my entire PC. Checked and my gpu was running at 539mhz and temperature isn't a problem because while running the game it's hitting 50C so it's definitely an issue of my gpu running oddly? I just don't know what I'm looking for or how to fix it.

Screenshot GPU-Z before and after booting the game if possible? This was we can try and tell when it's going awry.
 
You can just cut/copy the files to a directory of your choosing without the need for an external tool. All you have to do is set an additional directory in Steam for the game's location, copy all the files into it, pretend to install, choose new install location,it verifies the files and integrity, and it should be 100% ready to go.

No tools needed.


Fix your ini file that you probably edited to get rid of the controller/keyboard message. Change the value back to 0.

this did it good sir.
 
Perhaps they made the engine light on CPU stuff on account of the weaksauce CPUs in the console twins.

7870ghz is the same as the 280x right? I CAN HAVE THAT HAIR? THAT WONDERFUL WOLF HAIR?

I have the HD 7870 as well - is yours a special overclocked edition or do you just use the CCC to overclock it that way? I can run mostly Ultra settings (with a few on High like foliage draw distance) and I get between 37-45fps or so. I have Hairworks completely off though (and just using SSAO). What is the .ini tweak?

I'd say that is not delined enough, anyway the funny thing is that implies amd saw it on reddit and then formally copied it.

Not all on ultra, shadow and foliage distance are on high. Might dips to 28-29 in crowded battles with hairworks monsters. But it's smooth 30 fps everywhere else.
These are my settings.

AMD CCC tweak
http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36jpe9/how_to_run_hairworks_on_amd_cards_without/
.ini config tweak
http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36jjoz/psa_change_hairworksaa_in_renderingini_for_a/

My specs:
AMD PhenomII x4 955 BE 3,2Ghz
AMD HD 7870 Ghz Edition 2Gb
Memory 8gb

Been playing since day 1, 0 crashes.
 

M.D

Member
Yeah I'm in fullscreen mode and the game is running at 25fps for me even though I tried rebooting my entire PC. Checked and my gpu was running at 539mhz and temperature isn't a problem because while running the game it's hitting 50C so it's definitely an issue of my gpu running oddly? I just don't know what I'm looking for or how to fix it.

It'll do it right from the beginning of the game. Not downclock itself while playing. The temps are fine, under 70. It also fixes after I reboot. The Witcher 3 is the only game to ever do this.

It's also only happened twice in 20 hours.

I'm currently playing The Witcher 2 and I have the weirdest issue..

I've been playing with everything on max (except for a few things turned off) + UberSampling with what felt like 60 FPS everywhere except areas with tons of foliage. I was messing around with the meditation menu when suddenly it felt like the performance of the game had become way worse.

Ran around in the camp and outside, and it was pretty clear something was wrong. I restarted the PC and took off UberSampling (holy shit what a difference that thing makes), but even now something feels off.
The framerate during the QTE fight I just had felt reallly bad and nothing like I ever remember seeing before

I have no idea what this could be really, because it happened mid game.
Everything else seems fine, the GPU temp is fine (and went down from 69 to 46 after turning off UberSampling).
I did slightly overclock my GPU but that was a couple of days ago and everything was fine until now, and there aren't any artifacts or anything to suggest its related
Your problems sound similar to mine with the performance drop but I haven't checked the clock speed while ingame

The thing is I'm playing Witcher 2 and not 3, but I also have a 970

Did you check if happens in other games?
 

Philtastic

Member
Reporting in that my Radeon 280X (1.1 GHz core) plays this game quite well paired with an i5-4690K at stock 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz turbo). I'm running at mostly ultra with hairworks off, shadows high, foliage high, and HBAO+ In borderless windowed mode, vsync off, unlimited frames. Frame rate seems to average around ~45-50 throughout White Orchard. Only two crashes in about 4 hours, both due to inventory bug which seemed to have been fixed by putting frame rate to unlimited (was previously limited to 60). I haven't been keeping Afterburner on and closely monitoring FPS because I've found that the various hooks all conflict with each other and/or don't play nice with Witcher 3. For example, AMD Gaming Evolved doesn't work with this game if Afterburner is running but does if it's the only one. Instead, I've been using OBS to record and stream to Twitch.
 

Yeul

Member
Screenshot GPU-Z before and after booting the game if possible? This was we can try and tell when it's going awry.

Thank you for your willingness to help me! I figured it out from one of the posts above and it finally cranked my fps back to 60 with my clock speed of 1493mhz.

Your problems sound similar to mine with the performance drop but I haven't checked the clock speed while ingame

The thing is I'm playing Witcher 2 and not 3, but I also have a 970

Did you check if happens in other games?

What I did was what was suggested in one of the other posts above by DPB. I basically went into nvidia control panel and selected "prefer maximum performance" in the power settings. Maybe give that a go and see if it will help? Hopefully this solves my problem for good though, because I was running my power settings at adaptive before and then the dip to 25 fps happened until I changed it to prefer maximum performance. It's just odd because it had never happened before to any of my other games.
 

comrade

Member
Yeah I'm in fullscreen mode and the game is running at 25fps for me even though I tried rebooting my entire PC. Checked and my gpu was running at 539mhz and temperature isn't a problem because while running the game it's hitting 50C so it's definitely an issue of my gpu running oddly? I just don't know what I'm looking for or how to fix it.

Mine corrects itself after I reboot. This is also the only game it's ever happened in and it's only been twice so not really too worried. Probably a driver bug.

If rebooting doesn't fix it for you maybe try using DDU and re-installing your drivers.
 

Qassim

Member
If they can boost performance on my two 780s to the point where I can justify Hairworks, I'll be happy, but as I'm satisfied with the performance I'm getting - I'll take anything as a bonus :)
 

MrTexor

Member
HELP!
So, I got a 970 GTX about a month ago. I hadn't played any games sicne I got it. I tried to play witcher but I cant seem to get anything more than about 15 fps. I tried BF4 and I have the same problem. Seems like the fans are always off even tho it appears that the GPU is at 100%. I have no idea what to do now :'(
 

Corpekata

Banned
HELP!
So, I got a 970 GTX about a month ago. I hadn't played any games sicne I got it. I tried to play witcher but I cant seem to get anything more than about 15 fps. I tried BF4 and I have the same problem. Seems like the fans are always off even tho it appears that the GPU is at 100%. I have no idea what to do now :'(

Sounds like your driver might not be installed. Does the device manager read the card as a 970?

Either that or you have a really shitty power supply or maybe CPU bottlenecking it.
 
Anyone else have an issue with crushed blacks in this game? I've been fiddling with different levels of brightness and contrast for days and nothing seems to help unless I want a washed out look. I'm aware of the Nvidia hdmi issue but I've already applied durantes full spectrum patch to my drivers and it's set to full spectrum in control panel. What do?
 

AJLma

Member
HELP!
So, I got a 970 GTX about a month ago. I hadn't played any games sicne I got it. I tried to play witcher but I cant seem to get anything more than about 15 fps. I tried BF4 and I have the same problem. Seems like the fans are always off even tho it appears that the GPU is at 100%. I have no idea what to do now :'(

Your GPU may not be seated properly.
 

Blitzhex

Member
Is there any noticeable difference between ultra and high shadows, like higher shadow draw distance or shadow count on ultra?
It costs a few frames and the nvidia guide shows that shadows get a little bit clearer on ultra, but it's impossible for me to see the difference ingame, compared to high.
 
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