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Witcher 3 PC Performance Thread

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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Well I was hoping today's Nvidia driver would help with my issue, but nope, it actually made it much worse, the hitching and frame loss are now more severe, bear in mind when these symptoms aren't present I get 60fps without dips everywhere, this problem kicks in after 1 - 3 hours in a blink of an eye:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlZUG7whFOw
 

dr_rus

Member
Well I was hoping today's Nvidia driver would help with my issue, but nope, it actually made it much worse, the hitching and frame loss are now more severe, bear in mind when these symptoms aren't present I get 60fps without dips everywhere, this problem kicks in after 1 - 3 hours in a blink of an eye:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlZUG7whFOw

This looks like preloading is slow on your machine. Can you check that nothing is using the HDD which TW3 is installed on and try moving the game to an SSD maybe?

Most of hitches are due to resource loading and there isn't much a driver can do to fix them.
 

Qassim

Member
Well I was hoping today's Nvidia driver would help with my issue, but nope, it actually made it much worse, the hitching and frame loss are now more severe, bear in mind when these symptoms aren't present I get 60fps without dips everywhere, this problem kicks in after 1 - 3 hours in a blink of an eye:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlZUG7whFOw

Are you monitoring system memory usage when this is happening? It happening over time could indicate that eventually your system memory runs out and it starts using the page file (on your HDD).
 
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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
I don't even use 50% of my physical RAM, and the game is on a Samsung 850 Evo SSD. I changed the max pre rendered frames to 1 and it hasn't done it yet, I've had it running for 8 hours which is usually plenty of time for it to do it, but I'll keep it running.
 

dr_rus

Member
I don't even use 50% of my physical RAM, and the game is on a Samsung 850 Evo SSD. I changed the max pre rendered frames to 1 and it hasn't done it yet, I've had it running for 8 hours which is usually plenty of time for it to do it, but I'll keep it running.

Well, how about moving it to a different drive just for a test? This is happening when you have some SSD/HDD load in parallel usually.
 
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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
I can try tomorrow maybe, I'm still running my current test. I made it to 12 hours without issue, then the symptoms appeared, but here's the kicker, they were noticeably less severe and for the first time, the issue corrected itself without me having to reboot. So it looks like max pre rendered frames 1 has a big impact on the Witcher 3, at least for me. We're now at nearly 15 hours straight, and it's currently working symptom free. And in the real world, I would never play for over 12 hours straight anyway, not even close so this one setting has made the game playable again for me, and it means I can buy the expansion.

I have lowered my pagefile though now, as it was far too big according to Mark Russinovich, it's now at 1GB/2GB instead of 8GB/16GB, this should force Windows to use my physical RAM more than it currently is.
 

dr_rus

Member
I can try tomorrow maybe, I'm still running my current test. I made it to 12 hours without issue, then the symptoms appeared, but here's the kicker, they were noticeably less severe and for the first time, the issue corrected itself without me having to reboot. So it looks like max pre rendered frames 1 has a big impact on the Witcher 3, at least for me. We're now at nearly 15 hours straight, and it's currently working symptom free. And in the real world, I would never play for over 12 hours straight anyway, not even close so this one setting has made the game playable again for me, and it means I can buy the expansion.

I have lowered my pagefile though now, as it was far too big according to Mark Russinovich, it's now at 1GB/2GB instead of 8GB/16GB, this should force Windows to use my physical RAM more than it currently is.

Well, I have the same issues as you've captured but only during the first couple of minutes after a save file load. What's interesting is that they seems to be more pronounced on this new Haswell 4790K machine then they were on the old 3820 one. Still, the game runs fine for me after all the caches are filled, and I don't game for more than six hours usually so I really can't tell if there's something happening after 8 or 15.
 
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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Well the game ran for 13 hours today without issue after switching to pre-rendered frames 1 and changing my pagefile for 1GB/2GB, so it seems to be fixed. I can now buy the expansion.
 

LilJoka

Member
I can try tomorrow maybe, I'm still running my current test. I made it to 12 hours without issue, then the symptoms appeared, but here's the kicker, they were noticeably less severe and for the first time, the issue corrected itself without me having to reboot. So it looks like max pre rendered frames 1 has a big impact on the Witcher 3, at least for me. We're now at nearly 15 hours straight, and it's currently working symptom free. And in the real world, I would never play for over 12 hours straight anyway, not even close so this one setting has made the game playable again for me, and it means I can buy the expansion.

I have lowered my pagefile though now, as it was far too big according to Mark Russinovich, it's now at 1GB/2GB instead of 8GB/16GB, this should force Windows to use my physical RAM more than it currently is.

Forcing windows to use the ram by lowering the page file doesn't seem like any sort of remedy to me. Windows is very clever in managing RAM, it is not going to put a games memory in the page file when that process is active. Your problem was probably fixed by pre rendered frames setting. Reducing page file is probably going to cause its own problems, especially if you play GTA V.

All youve done is force inactive or cached data to be forced into the RAM.
 

dr_rus

Member
Well the game ran for 13 hours today without issue after switching to pre-rendered frames 1 and changing my pagefile for 1GB/2GB, so it seems to be fixed. I can now buy the expansion.

Huh, tried setting the same in TW3 profile and I gotta say that this does take care of whatever stuttering I've had on Haswell platform. Interestingly I don't have any stuttering on Sandy Bridge-E platform even with default settings. Certainly looks like a driver issue. Nice tip, thanks.

Forcing windows to use the ram by lowering the page file doesn't seem like any sort of remedy to me. Windows is very clever in managing RAM, it is not going to put a games memory in the page file when that process is active. Your problem was probably fixed by pre rendered frames setting. Reducing page file is probably going to cause its own problems, especially if you play GTA V.

All youve done is force inactive or cached data to be forced into the RAM.

Fine by me, I have 32 GBs of it precisely for that reason.
 

Corpekata

Banned
Getting back into this, was a fix for the camera stutter ever found? Sometimes randomly for a few moments when running the camera stutters every couple seconds. It's not a frame rate dip or anything, it's like the camera is trying to reset itself or something.
 

dr_rus

Member
Getting back into this, was a fix for the camera stutter ever found? Sometimes randomly for a few moments when running the camera stutters every couple seconds. It's not a frame rate dip or anything, it's like the camera is trying to reset itself or something.

Did you try what was said in a couple of posts above yours?
 

Eyothrie

Member
So I have this weird microstutter that is randomly happening pretty frequently, every couple minutes. To make it stop, all I have to do is go into the menu and then exit the menu, but I don't want to keep doing this. Any idea how to correct? I've played around with the max pre-rendered frames ("1", "2", "application controlled"), but none of these settings gets rid of it. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's very annoying. FPS counter stays at 60 the entire time, but the microstutter is really apparent when it occurs. It's very "jittery" looking when panning the camera for lack of a better way to explain it. This is the only game that does this.

gtx 970 ssc
i7 3820 @ 4.3
16 gb ram

Quoting myself because this is still happening after the patch. I'm on Win 10 by the way. Any ideas?
 
DoF in this game is so weird, I feel like it kicks in way too close to Gerald and stuff that's like 10-15m away is a blurry mess. Is there any way to dial it down? I like how it looks in cutscenes :/
 

Kezen

Banned
On my end Nothing has changed when it comes to performance, I don't notice pop-in as much but that could totally be placebo.
 
980 and 25k. Can't get the game to load off of galaxy. Tried deleting and reinstalling everything. Same shit. Click play and it does nothing. I'm going to blame it on windows 10 because it ran fine before I upgraded.
 

Mifec

Member
980 and 25k. Can't get the game to load off of galaxy. Tried deleting and reinstalling everything. Same shit. Click play and it does nothing. I'm going to blame it on windows 10 because it ran fine before I upgraded.

Works fine on W10 for me.
 

Eyothrie

Member
So I have this weird microstutter that is randomly happening pretty frequently, every couple minutes. To make it stop, all I have to do is go into the menu and then exit the menu, but I don't want to keep doing this. Any idea how to correct? I've played around with the max pre-rendered frames ("1", "2", "application controlled"), but none of these settings gets rid of it. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's very annoying. FPS counter stays at 60 the entire time, but the microstutter is really apparent when it occurs. It's very "jittery" looking when panning the camera for lack of a better way to explain it. This is the only game that does this.

gtx 970 ssc
i7 3820 @ 4.3
16 gb ram

Finally found the fix. In the Nvidia Control Panel, I had to turn Vsync from ON to "Application Controlled". In game, I turned Vsync from OFF to ON, went from Full Screen to Borderless Fullscreen, and changed the in game FPS cap from 60 to Unlimited. Now I'm getting a constant 60fps everywhere without any microstutter.
 

dr_rus

Member
Was there every a fix listed for the screen going gray/black with audio and a crash to desktop?

This sounds like a video driver crash. I've had one of these in TW3 on some 1.02 version with 352.xx NV drivers I think. Had zero on 1.08 with latest drivers - from 355 to 358 - during the whole 150 hours of playthrough.
 
After Booting up Hearts of Stone I noticed there is significant colour banding in the sky which I don't think was there before :( is this part of the game I've juist never seen before
 

Gbraga

Member
Is this mod what I think it is?

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/521/

It only changes the lighting in the Swamp areas to be closer to the demos? When the game came out, many sweetfx presets tried to emulate that, but they applied to the whole game, and for that reason I never used any of them, but is this one only changing the swamps? That's amazing if so, and I'll definitely use it.
 
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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
For a patch with a million performance improvements I'm getting worse performance. I keep getting little jolts in town like something is loading. Before it was rock solid 60 in towns now it dips.

Edit: I just did the first boss and was dropping into the low 50s, before the patch this wouldn't have happened. Did anyone else get drops on that fight?
 
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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Just got an Nvidia driver crash in the Witcher 3 expansion, during
the cutscene where you're on the boat with Shani

ryspA98.jpg
 
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Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Damn. That's one hard crash.

Haha yeah, thankfully it put me back to just before that scene so I got to.... enjoy it. Funnily enough, this is the second time I've had an Nvidia crash, both times in the Witcher III on completely different patches. The game really does wrestle with performance problems from what I've experienced over my 170+ hours.
 

Kezen

Banned
Haha yeah, thankfully it put me back to just before that scene so I got to.... enjoy it. Funnily enough, this is the second time I've had an Nvidia crash, both times in the Witcher III on completely different patches. The game really does wrestle with performance problems from what I've experienced over my 170+ hours.

You can try doing a clean reinstall of your drivers. Are you overclocking your GPU ?
 

Älg

Member
After Booting up Hearts of Stone I noticed there is significant colour banding in the sky which I don't think was there before :( is this part of the game I've juist never seen before

Unfortunately that's always been there. I remember someone working on a ReShade debanding shader, but I don't where that went.
 

AlanOC91

Member
Hey guys I'm having a lot of subtle flickering issues with my 980ti. This only happens in the Witcher.

There's some subtle flickering on clothes, Geralts beard and the ground.

Is there any fix for this? It's really off putting. I'm playing at 4k res and on an SDD.
 

Puggles

Member
Does anyone have a problem with keyboard controls flashing on screen when using a controller since the latest patch? It's especially bad in the menus and even cause some controller button presses to not register.
 
For some reason I always want more...

Views like this frustrate me, because the trees should all be casting shadows towards me, making the draw distance of shadows painfully noticeable. That cut-off point where the trees stop shadow-casting really bugs me. Does anyone know if it's possible to extend the range of tree shadows?

I've been following the Nvidia tweak guide, applying all the shadow tweaks, but no dice (not even from CascadeShadowDistanceScale2). I've got shrubs casting shadows at longer distances now, but nothing from those trees. If you look at the tent on the left side of the screenshot, right of the big oak, there's a copse of small trees just above it. Those are right outside the current shadow draw distance. If I step forward a few paces they start shadow casting. I really want a way to extend that draw distance, but I'm worried it's impossible =(

 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
So after fucking up with patching and essentially having to re-download the entire game (on a 10mbs connection) I gotta say: wow. Novigrad is way less offensive pop-in wise now

Except there was this one house that failed to switch from its low poly model so it kind of disappeared for a few seconds. And some kids who were spawned under the ground. Other than that though, it's been better, runs a bit smoother too.
 
For some reason I always want more...

Views like this frustrate me, because the trees should all be casting shadows towards me, making the draw distance of shadows painfully noticeable. That cut-off point where the trees stop shadow-casting really bugs me. Does anyone know if it's possible to extend the range of tree shadows?

I've been following the Nvidia tweak guide, applying all the shadow tweaks, but no dice (not even from CascadeShadowDistanceScale2). I've got shrubs casting shadows at longer distances now, but nothing from those trees. If you look at the tent on the left side of the screenshot, right of the big oak, there's a copse of small trees just above it. Those are right outside the current shadow draw distance. If I step forward a few paces they start shadow casting. I really want a way to extend that draw distance, but I'm worried it's impossible =(


Wow! I found it =D It's a setting named ShadowDistanceScale, which the tweak guide claims has a "minimal increase in image quality" lol

 
Does anyone have a problem with keyboard controls flashing on screen when using a controller since the latest patch? It's especially bad in the menus and even cause some controller button presses to not register.

Yes. I made this post in the main Witcher 3 thread related to this issue:

OK, I haven't played Witcher 3 since I finished up the main quest back in early July on version 1.06. Is anyone aware of any issues with Xinput and this game? I didn't have any issues back then, and I was on Insider Preview at the time, so I don't know if the change to Windows 10 can account for it. But I tried both a 360 controller and a PS4 controller using InputMapper for Xinput emulation, and both gave me weird issues with the game constantly switching to keyboard prompts/showing the mouse cursor, and issues with the d-pad not working well at all in menus.

What was so weird though was that I learned shortly after this that the game at some point added native support for the DS4 so I tried that (i.e. I turned off InputMapper) and suddenly everything worked great.
 

tbd

Member
My PC/GPU (290) is extremely noisy since the latest patch(es). Before I played the game for like 200 hours and I could never even hear my PC. I also can't hear it playing other games.

Anyone else? Any simple solution? It's extremely annoying, makes playing the game almost unbearable.

Does anyone have a problem with keyboard controls flashing on screen when using a controller since the latest patch?

I think so.
 

Tovarisc

Member
Could anyone recommend good TextureMemoryBudget= value when running game on GTX980Ti? I tried googling about setting, but couldn't find any reliable information on how VRAM usage scales as that value is increased.
 
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