Wild Hunt PC Performance Thread

I figured we should get a performance thread going for people who want to share how the game is running and/or post tips for getting better performance.

I'll start with, Hairworks with Amd for lower tier Nvidia cards without killing framerate.

AMD-

http://wccftech.com/amd-announces-witcher-3-hairworks-performance-fix-catalyst-control-center-driver-coming-boost-tessellation-performance/

AMD/Nvidia

http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36jjoz/psa_change_hairworksaa_in_renderingini_for_a/

I run an AMD hd7950 card and with tessellation set to x8 i get about 35-40fps with hair works on and 40- 45 with it off. It helped boost my fps as i was getting 35-40 without hair works before. Hopefully when the new drivers come out It'll run even better.

I also turned foilage down to high and shadows to medium for about 5-10fps increase. Shadows aren't noticeably different to me at any settings honestly.

i7-2600K @3.2Ghz, 16GB 1600Mhz RAM, GTX970.

Solid 60 on high with hairworks turned off. On ultra it fluctuates from 40 - 55, but I am able to turn a couple of settings to ultra and keep the solid 60 so there must be something there that is killing the framerate. I'm not sure what setting it is. I always turn motion blur and sharpening off on any setting but they aren't important for framerate.

I've got a i5-2500 @3.3, 8GB RAM, and an overclocked 970. With everything maxed out(except chromatic aberration and vignetting, but those don't really affect performance), I'd maybe guess it's running somewhere in the 40s most of the time. I'm admittedly not great at determining framerates.

By the way this NVIDIA tweak guide is a great tool if you aren't sure what you want to lower or raise. They measure the performance impact of each individual setting, and is fairly accurate as a benchmark.

@alistercat Motion blur in this game actually helps stable framerate when you turn your camera around, so it will help if you can stomach it.

i7 4770k, 16 gigs RAM, and GTX 980.

Everything is maxed out except for hairworks which I have turned off and I'm getting 60 fps with very few drops at 1080p. I can run it at 1440p but the game hovers around the mid 40s so no thanks.

They need to fix the hairworks stuff, it's ridiculous that it drops my frames from 60 to 50

@friendlyphoenix: Just use geforce experience. It has a built in frame counter that you can use

i5-4690K OC'ed to 4.2, 8 GB RAM, and GTX 980.

Same as @colourful_hippie; everything maxed out except hairworks off. Getting a solid 60 FPS at 1080p

• i5-4690k @4.3Ghz
• XFire R9 290 (XFire doesn't seem to be supported at the moment, though I heard R9 295 x2 users are having success)
• 8GB ram

At 1080p I was getting 60-70 fps without hairworks and everything on ultra minus shadows, grass density, and foliage distance.

At 3440 x 1440, with the same settings, I get between 30-45 fps. The game looks really cool in ultrawide, but I'm not a fan of having to lock the frame rate at 30.

i7 3930k at 4.1 GHz, 12 Gb Ram, Titan X

Runs comfortably in 4k. After 1.03 I see 35-45 fps with hairworks and 40-50 with hairworks off.

That's worse performance in 4k than GTA V, Dying Light, and Far Cry 4, but still totally playable. Assassins Creed Unity is the only other game that I see framerates in the 30s.

4670k OC'd to 4ghz, 780 GTX OC'd to buggery, 16GB DDR3, 1080p

I limit the frames to 60 for the sake of uniformity but get 70+ on hillsides and sometimes dropping to 55 when in towns.

Everything's on High except Detail (Ultra) and Nvidihair (off). In the post processing section both blurs are off (because urgh) as is sharpening and vignette (they don't affect performance but I prefer them off). DoF is on.

EDIT - Probably tomorrow I'll install the game on my old gaming PC to see how it'll run on something pretty weaksauce nowadays: Phenom II 955, 8GB DDR3, 560ti 1GB

2600k @ 4.1 Ghz, Crossfire 6950s unlocked to 6970s.

As I said in the other thread, Crossfire's fucked. The flicker is so unreal that it feels like Geralt's at a rave with a really aggressive lighting tech. I can get around 60 FPS on high with some tweaking, but it's unplayable.

With one card, things get more dire due to the age of the system. If I lop everything to medium and kill most post processing, I can lock it to 30 and have it stay there....usually. It still has some weird flickering issues but at least it's sorta playable.

It decides to lock up every hour or so regardless of settings, so that's fun.

What do you expect from a company that has gone something like six months without a non-beta driver release? It feels like they've just given up.

didn't know hairworks worked with amd, probably should've just tried it. i know physx stuff works but it completely decimates framerate.

why didn't they license that sweet sweet tressfx tech? :(

was averaging about 50 on r9 290 1150/1500 oc, 8gb RAM, and stock fx8350. turned off blur, sharpness, AA, and changed number of characters, amount of grass, and foliage draw distance to high and shadows to medium. Sometimes dipping to 45/40 in busy areas.

e: foregoing getting second r9 290 it seems as crossfire's borked. sad, i feel stupid now for going AMD apparently. like to root for the underdog and their pricing's nice but may just have to join nvidia club again with my next card.

I7 4790K and 2 gtx 980 in SlI, getting a solid 60 fps with some very minor hiccups every now and then. Settings are completely maxed out in 1080p. I am a happy man so far. I have been reading some posts that report SLI woes though so your mileage may vary.

I'm running an old ass Phenom II X4 AMD 960t unlocked to six cores at 3.6 ghz and a 970 at stock speeds along with 8gb of RAM.

I was super worried about my cpu being a major bottleneck, but it really does seem like this game utilizes your GPU. Everything set to high (except hair of course) and I get a solid 60fps at 1080p. I can set it all to ultra and get around 40-50 without hair, but to me, the difference isn't that huge between high and ultra in terms of quality.

Also put it on my SSD and I have to say it's totally worth it. Fast travel loads instantly.

Yeah, I'm pretty bummed. I bought a second R9 290 to push this game at 3440 x 1440, which was also a new purchase. Should of just sold my current card and bought a 980.

Here's the game on a 560ti:

That's basically everything on Low, all post processing turned off. I'm getting a steady 30 but the PC sounds like a jet taxiing on a runway.

@dave_tacitus: Low textures look like Geralt was left in the microwave for too long and got a bit melty.

I5 3470, 970, 8gb Ram. I put it on high settings, VSYNC on, doesn't seem to drop a frame.

PC:

- i5 2500k @ 4.2Ghz, SLI 580s, 8Gb RAM.

PERFORMANCE:

- 1080p, 60fps with minor dips.

SETTINGS:

- mostly High (foliage distance, shadows and NPCs on Medium)

- hairworks off

- all postprocessing on (AO on SSAO)

Very impressed with how my 3.5 year old PC runs it. However, I'm getting the occasional random freezing that seems to be plaguing many.

Have you tried changing the aliasing on hairworks in the ini file? The reason it is such a performance killer is the tessellation AND they put 8xAA on every hair strand lol.

That's why Nvidia purposely makes their stuff incompatible to force people to buy overpriced cards, but the hairworks isn't even that great on nvidia either from what i've read until you do the aliasing fix.

Amd hasn't released a driver yet which will fix crossfire, again more than likely extremely difficult to make drivers for purposefully incompatible software. I fucks with AMD because atleast they made sure tressfx could run decently on everything. I used to be indifferent but now nvidia is rubbing me the wrong way, I was actually going to switch next upgrade but maybe not now.

Locked smooth 60 FPS - no slow down at all - everything except the 2 things below on ULTRA and Post Processing Maxed on High and HBAO+

Turn off Hairworks, and move foliage slider to High

Running

I7-970 @ 3.8

GTX 680 2GB SC SLI

12 GB DDR3

So im rocking i7 4770k, 16gb RAM and gtx780 and im aiming to play at 1080p@60hz.

After doing some quick tests at the tutorial level its clear to me I will have to play at high with hairtech turned off. Am i insane if i want to buy gtx980 just to get that beard blowing in the wind and catch the sunrays?

In a few days im done with my playthrough of Witcher 1 and 2 and this is nagging me day and night.

Wish they could patch an option to disable Hairworks for Geralt only, leaving it on for creatures. Fur and feathers look great with it enabled but Geralt's hair looks like it has no volume and stringy as if each strand of hair never gets tangled. Reminds me of angel hair pasta. Hairworks enabled, my framerate is around 40-50 fps fighting wolves, but any closeup of Geralt's head knocks my framerate to 20 fps. Just reached the second area and my primary goal is to get to the barber on that island.

EDIT: Found a barber and compared hairstyles with FRAPS on. The "shaved with ponytail" hairstyle offers the best Hairworks performance.

For folks wanting to run Hairworks, here are some tips for improving performance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36jpe9/how_to_run_hairworks_on_amd_cards_without/

Basically, for AMD you have to turn down the tessellation level, and for Nvidia you can turn down the anti-aliasing samples.

Running in 4k, I can turn anti-aliasing off completely and the hair and it still looks good, while only costing me 3-4 frames compared to disabling Hairworks completely.

Everything maxed out except for the hairworks and i'm getting an almost solid 60fps at 1440p

i7-3770 3.5GHz

16GBDDR3

Titan X

i5-2500 3.3 Ghz, Radeon 5770, 8gb ram. I am pretty amazed it runs at all. With everything on low I generally get about 30 fps. With some text file tweaks I get closer to 60 fps, but nearby trees and foliage has severe pop-in. If anyone who doesn't mind the pop-in wants some help I'm glad to help out.

AMD setup for me, and hairworks seemed to be the major culprit. With that turned off FPS more than doubled, even on ultra.

@maginnovision: He also didn't say what resolution he was running on, could be 1280x720 for all we know. At 1080p, those results are a little suspect, though.

i7 4790k 4.5 GHz, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 680 SLI. Getting between 40-50 FPS most of the time w/ hairworks on (with reduced 2x MSAA), running Ultra shadows and Detail Level, everything else on high at 1440p. All post processing on except Sharpening (which is on low) and motion blur (personal preference). It gets a little dicey in cities and large towns (I suspect my 2 GB of VRAM is the culprit), but it never dips below 30 and the combat has all been smooth, even with lots of hairworks-enabled monsters on screen (like packs of wolves).

@mb: I've messed around with 1080p Ultra (hairworks off) on my setup (680 2GB SLI), and I get 60 in *most* places outside of cities. In Novigrad 50 is the norm.

@maginnovision: I haven't used Fraps in years because it was always such a resource hog. MSI Afterburner is a good, free resource to overlay information such as frame rate, GPU/CPU utilization, temps, and stuff like that while using minimal resources. The overlay can be customized extensively, too.

Also, get a haircut ye hippies.

Geralt's default cut seems to produce lower framerates with hairworks than the other hairstyles available in Oxenfurt.

i7 4770 3.4 Ghz, 12 GB of RAM, and a GTX 970

I run everything on Ultra save for High shadows. Hairworks is off. I also have motion blur and sharpening off, which has actually improved performance quite a bit. I get about 60-50 fps.

Imagine if this game didn't get downgraded? Jesus Christ, our PCs would be weeping right now.

@tokensonly: I noticed that too. It seems that the looser and longer the hair, the lower the frame rate.

@viqor: Shaved sides with a ponytail seems to work pretty well, and since Geralt's fat dome is onscreen all the time, the framerate increase is universal.

I'm half and half on ultra and high and I get 60fps

i5 4690K @ 4.2GHz, 32GB 1600MHz DDR3, 2x GTX 980 @1.5GHz, with the game installed on a low-end SSD, and playing at 3440x1440.

With everything at max except with Motion Blur off, Frame Rate set to unlimited, and Sharpening set to low, I get 40 - 60 FPS. Averages around 52/55, I believe. So I get higher frame rates more than I get lower. HairWorks is set to whatever the setting is selected with the Ultra preset. For the amount of horsepower I'm throwing at it, it's odd that I get these dips to 38/40 FPS, but it's completely tolerable.

@m3cha: You're more likely to have a more consistent higher framerate by turning off the hairworks setting. That feature feels like more of a hog than it should be

@colourful_hippie: Yeah, you're probably right. I like the visual effect it provides, but I hear it's a performance hog. I might turn down the AA on the hair in the .ini file to something lower and see how that affects my frame rate.

I'll experiment with turning HairWorks off and see how the game looks without it. The griffon looked fantastic with HairWorks on.

My specs are :

• Intel i7 920 at 3.2 GHz
• Nvidia GTX 770
• 12 GB or RAM
• Installed on a regular 7200 RPM HDD
• Running at 1920x1200

I have most things on Very High/Ultra with bells and whistles on except for Hairworks, V-sync and Antialiasing. Performance is pretty good. Framerate is usually in the 40s, it sometimes dips in the 30s but rarely lower. I'm happy with it so far.

I might be pressing my luck here, but the PC I want to play it on has these specs...keep in mind that I'm looking to play it on medium with a locked 30 FPS framerate:

i5-4670K with 3.4 GHz

GTX 760 EDIT: only 2 gigs of VRAM.

8 gigs of ram

running at 1600X900.

So based on my liberal expectations...can I do it?

@shivermetimbers: Seems reasonable, especially since the resolution is low and you're only expecting 30 FPS.

The VRAM isn't a problem, I haven't seen Witcher 3 take up more than 2 GB yet and that is at 1920x1200 with everything on Ultra.

@mb: Textures are 2GB apparently, on both High and Ultra so it's not surprising the VRAM requirements are not immense. On Ultra they stream in earlier.

Core i7-5820k @ 4GHz; 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM; GTX 680

Yeah, my 680 can't run this game too well. Had to settle for Medium settings at 1080p. No Hairworks, and Ultra textures.

I get about 35-50 fps, but I have a Gsync monitor, so it's buttery smooth.

@gruebacca: Are you waiting for the 980 Ti or Pascal GPUs or something? That's quite the unique system configuration you have there.

The game runs surprisingly well on my R9 280x. It's amazing how there are no framerate dips at all, even in areas where the machine is clearly struggling, weirdly enough the game is somewhat smooth and not jarring at all as it happens traditionally which makes me suspect there is some computer wizardry going on here. However, I wouldn't mind better performance. The 15.5 drivers were normally meant to arrive this week according to an official tweet but so far nothing. Hopefully they will make the game a little more playable as the optimized drivers for GTA V did. That was like a clean 10 frame boost.

@mb: I might wait next year for a card. I'm not into the idea of spending another wad of cash so soon after blowing 800 bucks on a monitor. It's funny to think that as a PC gamer my video card is the weakest link.

At least I can run The Witcher 3 just fine with 40 Chrome tabs open.