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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

Oh, I have to give the hairworks to 2msaa ini edit a try when I git home today.

It made a pretty big difference for me, before I did it I'd get a 10fps hit every time I zoomed in with the crossbow, completely gone now.

Has anyone else freeze problems in the menus does anyone know a workaround for this problem. That said I love this game so far

Do you have the fps limited in game?

Do you have a second monitor hooked up?

What gpu drivers are you using?

Do you have any overclocks or INI file tweaks?

These are the main culprits apparently.
 
After the 1.03 patch i can now lock the game at 30fps and have everything on ultra (bar shadow quality and foliage draw distance at high) and enable hairworks for all.

The HairWorks .ini change to 2x and tesselation at x16 max on CCC made wonders for my HD7850.

And i'm injecting SMAA using RadeonPro so the game have a better AA.

What about when it starts raining? I also have a 7850, I'm happy with my settings, but rain still hits pretty hard. I ended up going medium on shadows, and SSAO rather than HBAO+, just to give myself some breathing room.
 

dEvAnGeL

Member
I can't be the only who thinks that hairworks on geralt looks worst than original hair and beard, on monsters it looks phenomenal but i think on geralt it looks really bad
 
Well ****. I had my first crash whilst following on the finding a witch task. I checked the event viewer and it is related to the nVidia driver stopping. It happened when I went to my inventory; I could still hear the game progressing and task manager didn't say the game had stopped responding.

Double post, but please get rid of spoilers like this. Could be a nice surprise for book readers, like it was for me.
 
1.03 patch has been great for me. Was getting 2 crashes an hour before (although my constant setting tweaks may have been causing that), did not have a single crash in 4 hours of playing last night.

Getting a ROCK solid 60 fps with (even when fighting HairWorks monsters!) -

i7-4770
GTX 980
16GB RAM

Almost everything Ultra/ON. Including HairWorks! Exceptions -

Shadows = HIGH (can not see a difference)
Grass density = MEDIUM (still a TON of grass but makes draw distance less of a fps killer)
Foilage Draw Distance = HIGH (Visable difference between Ultra/high is tiny, but performance loss is massive)

TWEAKS =

HairWorks MSAA = 2X (ini edit, huge performance gain in 1.03!)

Nvidia Panel = FXAA forced (massive improvement to AA with tiny loss of fps)

Game is running fantastic and looks within a few % of everything maxed out. I tried locking to 30 and maxing everything out including down-sampling and other than the inferior framerate, I could only see the tiniest upgrade in visual quality.

I am currently very happy. Although a little disappointed the game is not as beautiful as the early promo videos, the game itself is incredible and I am really really enjoying it.

a few questions...

1. I have a 980, 8 megs of RAM and I5 2500K oc'd to 4.5. I thought bringing hairworks MSAA down to 2x makes it look worse even tho you gain performance.

2. Is the NVIDIA FXAA that much better than ingame? I heard you lose something by not using ingame AA

3. grass density medium. no real difference from high to medium and worth the fps increase?

I ask these questions because with everything on ultra except draw distance and shadows on high, the game runs at 60FPS. So not sure why I should turn anything else down...
 

scitek

Member
I can't be the only who thinks that hairworks on geralt looks worst than original hair and beard, on monsters it looks phenomenal but i think on geralt it looks really bad

I didn't think it was that huge of a difference compared to his normal hair, to be honest. Add to that the fact that it doesn't react properly to lighting, and I don't miss it at all. It would probably be nice to have on when I'm fighting a bear or something, but I can't say it changes the game or anything enough for me to care.
 
Sorry if i post this again but the hairworks workaround is now suggested by amd itself:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/The-Witcher3.aspx

Can somebody add this to the first post? Is sad to see that this thead is more or less an nvidia only funclub.

It's from reddit and has been discussed here a lot.
My HD 7870 Ghz OC can run the game on ultra 30 fps with hairworks on with that CCC config and the .ini tweak.
Having a blast so far with the game, 0 crashes since day 1.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Yeah this game seemingly doesn't use the CPU at all. :p Overclocking my 4670k does nothing to improve my framerate.

Perhaps they made the engine light on CPU stuff on account of the weaksauce CPUs in the console twins.

It's from reddit and has been discussed here a lot.
My HD 7870 Ghz OC can run the game on ultra 30 fps with hairworks on with that CCC config and the .ini tweak.
Having a blast so far with the game, 0 crashes since day 1.

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

Angel_DvA

Member
1.03 patch has been great for me. Was getting 2 crashes an hour before (although my constant setting tweaks may have been causing that), did not have a single crash in 4 hours of playing last night.

Getting a ROCK solid 60 fps with (even when fighting HairWorks monsters!) -

i7-4770
GTX 980
16GB RAM

Almost everything Ultra/ON. Including HairWorks! Exceptions -

Shadows = HIGH (can not see a difference)
Grass density = MEDIUM (still a TON of grass but makes draw distance less of a fps killer)
Foilage Draw Distance = HIGH (Visable difference between Ultra/high is tiny, but performance loss is massive)

TWEAKS =

HairWorks MSAA = 2X (ini edit, huge performance gain in 1.03!)

Nvidia Panel = FXAA forced (massive improvement to AA with tiny loss of fps)

Game is running fantastic and looks within a few % of everything maxed out. I tried locking to 30 and maxing everything out including down-sampling and other than the inferior framerate, I could only see the tiniest upgrade in visual quality.

I am currently very happy. Although a little disappointed the game is not as beautiful as the early promo videos, the game itself is incredible and I am really really enjoying it.

it works !!! Thank you dude !!!
 
It's from reddit and has been discussed here a lot.
My HD 7870 Ghz OC can run the game on ultra 30 fps with hairworks on with that CCC config and the .ini tweak.
Having a blast so far with the game, 0 crashes since day 1.

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?
 

Firequake

Neo Member
It's from reddit and has been discussed here a lot.
My HD 7870 Ghz OC can run the game on ultra 30 fps with hairworks on with that CCC config and the .ini tweak.
Having a blast so far with the game, 0 crashes since day 1.
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.
 

Dinjoralo

Member
I didn't think it was that huge of a difference compared to his normal hair, to be honest. Add to that the fact that it doesn't react properly to lighting, and I don't miss it at all. It would probably be nice to have on when I'm fighting a bear or something, but I can't say it changes the game or anything enough for me to care.

Same here. I like how the stubble looks on Geralt's beard, but that's all I'm missing without it. It's always too bright no matter where Geralt is, and I'm not going to inject FXAA/SMAA to make it look good without the MSAA because that makes the UI look like dithered crap.
 

Yurikerr

This post isn't by me, it's by a guy with the same username as me.
What about when it starts raining? I also have a 7850, I'm happy with my settings, but rain still hits pretty hard. I ended up going medium on shadows, and SSAO rather than HBAO+, just to give myself some breathing room.

I didn't got rain yet, but i'm inclined to turn one or two settings down if my fps drop in more intense situations.

But i must admit that being capable of running hairworks in addition to ultra settings surprised me in a good way, even with the 30fps lock.
 
Asking on behalf of a friend, would the game run at PS4 setting at 1080p with a 7870 and Phenom II x4 @ 3.4ghz?

Yes. I have a 7850 overclocked to 7870 levels. Solid 30fps so far matching ps4 settings. I have character amount in high amd grass density on high also actually.

I may try setting grass density to medium to bump foliage distance to high. I'm assuming fps may drop though.
 

ramshot

Member
I have the exact same setup except i have a 3770k and no overclock on my 980. I had excellent performance since day one with no crashes (I went with the minimal approach of using display driver uninstaller, downloading fresh drivers with no extra software (no GFE, 3d vision, etc) and its been over 60 with just shadows on medium and everything else at ultra, including foliage, no HW. I was holding off on the 1.03 patch since its been so good. Do you recommend downloading it?

These questions are always awkward to answer on the PC side of things, as how do I know if the patch introduces something that causes problems for you, but hasn't for me.

That said, for me, 1.03 introduced absolutely nothing negative and improved performance a little. So, yeah, I'd say go for it.
 

Yurikerr

This post isn't by me, it's by a guy with the same username as me.
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?

You open the rendering.ini located in ....\The Witcher 3\bin\config\base and change the line "HairWorksAALevel" to 2 or 4 to give you a performance boost.
 
But isn't the point of capping at 30 and using vsync to remove tearing and have consistency (so it isn't jumping around)?

Locked 30 can wind up looking nicer than a variable frame rate, but in my experience having it uncapped feels better to play. To each their own though, the game was great at 30fps too.

---

Just came off of a tasty six hour session without any crashes and I am loving it. The only issue I'm having is occasionally NPCs will suddenly pop up right in front of me as I'm walking around a camp or something. Even enemies will do it sometimes, with funny results:

http://giant.gfycat.com/UnsteadyCandidDogfish.webm

Also, combat around steep hills, stairs and short cliffs is the goofiest looking thing I have ever seen. Geralt just slides up and down cliff faces with no problem if you dodge into them.
 
What about when it starts raining? I also have a 7850, I'm happy with my settings, but rain still hits pretty hard. I ended up going medium on shadows, and SSAO rather than HBAO+, just to give myself some breathing room.

I must have undershot with my overclocked 7850. Hair off, ssao, med shadow, med foliage, high grass density, high water, high terrain. Not a single ultra.

I want to try high foliage. You guys have ultra textures on a 7850 too? I thought ultra used more than 2gb vram?

Oh, and as far as rain goes, I got to Velen amd haven't even seen any yet. It got really windy and dark once, but no rain.
 
Digital Foundry says that Ps4 runs the following settings:



I think that he has a pretty good chance.... Maybe he will need to drop Texture Quality to high, but the only difference is the amount of VRam that is used by the game, because the textures will be the same.

Yes. I have a 7850 overclocked to 7870 levels. Solid 30fps so far matching ps4 settings. I have character amount in high amd grass density on high also actually.

I may try setting grass density to medium to bump foliage distance to high. I'm assuming fps may drop though.

That's great to hear thanks, I'll tell him to go for the PC version then :D
 

Yurikerr

This post isn't by me, it's by a guy with the same username as me.
is it the "user.settings" file i modify? any general tweaks i should do?

You can find the .ini files in the folder \Steam\steamapps\common\The Witcher 3\bin\config\base

The file that have most of the visual settings is the rendering.ini

The tweak that gives more boost to performance is the HairWorks AA level, but it only makes sense if you want/can run the game with it enabled.

The other tweaks are more to pass the in-game ultra preset limitations, but you can try to change some things and test.
 

AEREC

Member
Well ****. I had my first crash whilst following Keira Metz on the finding a witch task. I checked the event viewer and it is related to the nVidia driver stopping. It happened when I went to my inventory; I could still hear the game progressing and task manager didn't say the game had stopped responding.

Hmm...I had a crash on that mission too, but it was right as I jumped through the first portal she created. However it was just a straight CTD.

The crash you are describing (game froze while audio still going) sounds like the crashes I was getting before the most recent patch.
 
I must have undershot with my overclocked 7850. Hair off, ssao, med shadow, med foliage, high grass density, high water, high terrain. Not a single ultra.

I want to try high foliage. You guys have ultra textures on a 7850 too? I thought ultra used more than 2gb vram?

Clocks speeds are 1000 and 1275 by memory. Stock was 860 and 1200.

Funny thing is, low everything is not that big of a difference on this card. Shadows medium, foliage range high, textures high (since ultra does not up quality, but zero performance cost), with all the detail levels on ultra. If the updated drivers give just a few more fps on the low end, I'll be able to turn HBAO+ on. Hair with the tweaks still costs several fps.
 

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
I think the stutter isn't caused by camera code or animation.

When I run at externally locked 60 FPS with external Nvidia vsync, I get the stutter when walking and panning the camera. It's smooth otherwise. The framerate never goes below 60.

If I lock externally or internally at 30 fps, the game stutters a lot more. The walking and panning camera stutter is even more pronounced and much worse at locked 30.

This is on a 970 with witcher drivers.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Well ****. I had my first crash whilst following Keira Metz on the finding a witch task. I checked the event viewer and it is related to the nVidia driver stopping. It happened when I went to my inventory; I could still hear the game progressing and task manager didn't say the game had stopped responding.

That was supposed to have been fixed with the patch :/
 

Barzul

Member
Bought 970 for this game. Kinda disappointed it can't do 60fps on ultra, even without hairworks :(

It can for the most part. I have one, do you mean everything on Ultra? You might have to drop a few settings to High. I have everything on Ultra except Shadows = Medium (don't really see the difference btw the two), Number of visible characters = Low, which means a limit of 75 characters at once (Nvidia graphics review said they were unable to find a single scenario where there were more than that on screen at once even when set to Ultra), Foliage visibility distance = High (This is one of the biggest FPS killers after hairworks, I toned it down to game some fps). I get locked 60 for the most part. Are you sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers and 1.0.3 patch installed? I thought I had but that wasn't the case and I wasn't getting great performance as a result.
 
is there a way to turn off the auto-centering camera?

listen game, if i want to look to the side while i've got horse cruise control engaged... don't screw up the moment by automatically panning the view back to center!
 

b0bbyJ03

Member
These questions are always awkward to answer on the PC side of things, as how do I know if the patch introduces something that causes problems for you, but hasn't for me.

That said, for me, 1.03 introduced absolutely nothing negative and improved performance a little. So, yeah, I'd say go for it.

True, I hear you... I'll take the risk i guess. "crosses fingers"
 
It can for the most part. I have one, do you mean everything on Ultra? You might have to drop a few settings to High. I have everything on Ultra except Shadows = Medium (don't really see the difference btw the two), Number of visible characters = Low, which means a limit of 75 characters at once (Nvidia graphics review said they were unable to find a single scenario where there were more than that on screen at once even when set to Ultra), Foliage visibility distance = High (This is one of the biggest FPS killers after hairworks, I toned it down to game some fps). I get locked 60 for the most part. Are you sure you have the latest Nvidia drivers and 1.0.3 patch installed? I thought I had but that wasn't the case and I wasn't getting great performance as a result.

If Nvidia couldn't find a single instance of that many characters, why is there an option? And how did df know that ps4 is set to low? Is there any fps difference between the settings at all?
 
Double post, but please get rid of spoilers like this. Could be a nice surprise for book readers, like it was for me.

Ah ****, sorry, didn't know it was anything important; edited now.

Bought 970 for this game. Kinda disappointed it can't do 60fps on ultra, even without hairworks :(

The ones to knock down, as with a lot of games (GTA V comes to mind) are the foliage distance/quality and shadows. I have everything on full apart from shadows (high), foliage distance (high) and no hairworks. The difference between high and ultra are minimal and not worth the performance impact when it allows you to up other settings. I have edited the user.settings to add additional details to certain areas as per the nVidia guide.
 
what the verdict, are people forcing AA through Nvidia control panel, or making use of the in-game AA provided in the most recent patch. I've got some headroom to spare and want to pump up AA, any suggestions?

I'm currently forcing 16x through Nvidia control panel.
 

Barzul

Member
If Nvidia couldn't find a single instance of that many characters, why is there an option? And how did df know that ps4 is set to low? Is there any fps difference between the settings at all?

Now that is the mystery, I'm less than 10 hours in myself but I've been unable to find that many characters at once myself.
 
Nothing over 75? What about the big city with people inside homes and on the streets, with animals walking around, and birds flying above? I'm not saying that's wrong, just curious how they define characters, and what actually does count as a character in game engine terms (I would think all of the above). Monsters can be seen from a pretty good distance, too.
 

tioslash

Member
No matter what I change, I can´t mantain a solid 30fps even with all settings to Medium, NO AA, SSAO, on a GTX 760. Sure, it stays at 30 when I´m roaming around a deserted place, but as soon as I get into a battle, or even just going a small village the fps already drops to 25-20.

Even if I overclock it, it doesn´t give me ONE fps more. It´s like, exactly the same.
 
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