OFFICIAL The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Discussion)

[rtwjunkie]

@DinaAngel did you install the new driver? If you did, that's probably why it is running like poo and crashing. Try reverting back. I'm hoping it will give you an even smoother experience than I am having. It should, based on your system specs.

@Ferrum Master yes, only 26GB (hangs head ). However, I have been seeing alot of games that dont install what the specs say. As @RCoon says, we still have two large DLC which you can pre-purchase now and won't be out for months, and 13 Free DLC's of indeterminate size, so who knows, that may account for the final install size.

 

[Valeriant]

Wait, so apparently NVidia now have HairWorks? Latest driver allows you to turn on magical hair processing in The Witcher 3.

I heard HairWork uses DX11 Tesselation and other PhysX effects like clothing and destructible are using CPU. I will try PhysX indicator when I'm home. Or might try adding another card and set it as dedicated PhysX. I'm curious. ()'

I bet it has something to do with boob physx too , so it might have a point .

Would love that and more.

Hairworks is very demanding for my old 660 Ti. Had to turn it off to get 50-60 FPS (1600x900) at Medium-High setting on my PC.

If HairWorks indeed using tessellation then only Maxwell GPUs can handle it with ease.

 

[Kaynar]

Can I get an accurate FPS counter in game? or using EVGA Precision X ingame fps counter is the only solution?

 

[rtwjunkie]

Can I get an accurate FPS counter in game? or using EVGA Precision X ingame fps counter is the only solution?

You can use Precision X or even Afterburner (I believe) if you are playing the GoG version. If in Steam version, they have a FPS counter now (set it in your settings), but I don't know how accurate it is.

 

[Kaynar]

You can use Precision X or even Afterburner (I believe) if you are playing the GoG version. If in Steam version, they have a FPS counter now (set it in your settings), but I don't know how accurate it is.

ohh yea thanks I just noticed that now that you tell me (for Steam).

My only problem now is that the game doesnt seem to run in VSYNC mode when i set the FPS option to "unlimited", therefore GSYNC is not working. I can set only 30 or 60 fps for VSYNC

 

[rtwjunkie]

ohh yea thanks I just noticed that now that you tell me (for Steam).

My only problem now is that the game doesnt seem to run in VSYNC mode when i set the FPS option to "unlimited", therefore GSYNC is not working. I can set only 30 or 60 fps for VSYNC

30 or 60 were my only two options too. I just set it to 60 and didn't look back.

 

[Kaynar]

uhh my bad, there is VSYNC "on" "off" option above the FPS unlimited-30-60 option

With every possible option maxxed out, I get 27-30 fps stable with 1440p screen, 4.4ghz 4930k, 16gb ram and a GTX Titan.

disabling hairworks gives me a boost of up to 5 fps at best
disabling motion blur gives me around 3 fps boost stable
disabling other post process effects give me almost zero gain (even AA has maybe only 1 fps difference)
setting shadows to high gives me up to 5 fps boost
setting grass and foliage density from ultra to high gives me a stable 5fps boost (when everythign else is maxxed out) and apparently no change in anything visual.

I will try to see how I can get a stable 50+ fps so that I can run smoothly with GSync.

 

[RCoon]

With every possible option maxxed out, I get 27-30 fps stable with 1440p screen, 4.4ghz 4930k, 16gb ram and a GTX Titan.

Well I'm screwed, or Kepler optimisation sucks. 1440p on a 970 and an i7.

 

[rtwjunkie]

uhh my bad, there is VSYNC "on" "off" option above the FPS unlimited-30-60 option

With every possible option maxxed out, I get 27-30 fps stable with 1440p screen, 4.4ghz 4930k, 16gb ram and a GTX Titan.

disabling hairworks gives me a boost of up to 5 fps at best
disabling motion blur gives me around 3 fps boost stable
disabling other post process effects give me almost zero gain (even AA has maybe only 1 fps difference)
setting shadows to high gives me up to 5 fps boost
setting grass and foliage density from ultra to high gives me a stable 5fps boost (when everythign else is maxxed out) and apparently no change in anything visual.

I will try to see how I can get a stable 50+ fps so that I can run smoothly with GSync.

Most of those options are part of High anyway. Try setting it to High with motion blur off and be amazed. High is a fantastic looking setting. No reason to do Ultra other than to say you can. If the FPS is important to you it will really help you out. And High setting, let me repeat, is BEAUTIFUL!

@RCoon: ^

 

[RCoon]

Most of those options are part of High anyway. Try setting it to High with motion blur off and be amazed. High is a fantastic looking setting. No reason to do Ultra other than to say you can. If the FPS is important to you it will really help you out.

@RCoon: ^

Have to do Ultra for benchmarks anyways For benchmarks everything gets maxed except for Motion Blur which gets turned off.
FPS charts have VSync off, hardware performance charts have VSync ON (otherwise they all end up sat at 99%).
I can OC my monitor though, so I can probably run VSync on at 70hz. Decent smoothness, if I can pull the frames.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Have to do Ultra for benchmarks anyways For benchmarks everything gets maxed except for Motion Blur which gets turned off.
FPS charts have VSync off, hardware performance charts have VSync ON (otherwise they all end up sat at 99%).
I can OC my monitor though, so I can probably run VSync on at 70hz. Decent smoothness, if I can pull the frames.

I just don't want it to give people the wrong impression that it's unplayable or unoptimized. It's a HELL of a well-optimized, smooth game. Are you benchmarking High settings also, which gives normal people something to compare to? My feeling is Ultra on Witcher 3 is a setting they reserved for the next generation of GPU's to max out.

 

[v12dock]

This game is BRUTAL... really utilizes the mature rating.

 

[rtwjunkie]

This game is BRUTAL... really utilizes the mature rating.

Yes it is! Limb and head dismemberment already. Wasn't prepared for that.

 

[RCoon]

I just don't want it to give people the wrong impression that it's unplayable or unoptimized. It's a HELL of a well-optimized, smooth game. Are you benchmarking High settings also, which gives normal people something to compare to? My feeling is Ultra on Witcher 3 is a setting they reserved for the next generation of GPU's to max out.

I'll have to consider that. All past 43 game benchmarks have been done on maximum possible settings with motion blur off, so I kinda need to keep things the same. I'll have a look at how badly it performs on my rig, though in my recommended hardware sections I usually tell people when to turn the settings down for the hardware available.

 

[64K]

I just don't want it to give people the wrong impression that it's unplayable or unoptimized. It's a HELL of a well-optimized, smooth game. Are you benchmarking High settings also, which gives normal people something to compare to? My feeling is Ultra on Witcher 3 is a setting they reserved for the next generation of GPU's to max out.

I saw one benchmark that ran mid 60s on a Titan X at 1080p Ultra with hairworks off and mid 50s with hairworks on. For 1440p and up it might struggle on Ultra until Pascal. From what I've see so far it looks like CD Projekt Red hit another home run and the complaints about a downgrade in the visuals doesn't seem to be true. People are saying the game looks great. I saw one guy complaining on Metacritic that you can't remap the movement keys and he's left handed but overall it's been good news.

There's probably a good 100 hours of gameplay for a completionist if it's like Witcher 1 and 2.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@64K Yes I agree. They hit a homerun on visuals, gameplay, and content. And yes, it runs beautifully. The bug-hunt they needed the additional 7 months for was worth the wait.

As to gameplay time, I think 100 hours is far too short. The world is twice as big as Skyrim, with side quests out the kazoo. Like I said, it's four hours and i haven't even finished the first little village. I think 200-300 hour range is more accurate.

 

[Devil-Walker]

i have 7 hrs in game and im still exploring the first area. this game is going to be a pretty decent size. i have everything maxed on 970 sli 1080p, runs great so far.

 

[dyonoctis]

So this just come out http://pclab.pl/art63116-15.html and the 780 is indeed faster than the 960, but not by a huge margin
according to the place you might be in. But i was right to say that medium was going to be tuf on my r9 270x....the 3 year old gpu is starting to show his age. The game look indeed well optimize, but the way it was made seems to favor the improvement of gcn 1.2, most of the time the 285 is being stellar for a 170-200 gpu.

 

[rtwjunkie]

So this just come out http://pclab.pl/art63116-15.html and the 780 is indeed faster than the 960, but not by a huge margin
according to the place you might be in. But i was right to say that medium was going to be tuf on my r9 270x....the 3 year old gpu is starting to show his age. The game look indeed well optimize, but the way it was made seems to favor the improvement of gcn 1.2, most of the time the 285 is being stellar for a 170-200 gpu.

Good find! Looks like 780 is between 4 to 6 frames per second faster than 960.

 

[Fluffmeister]

The clocks are also pretty consersative for all the cards tested, but it does seem to put the whole Kepler doesn't get any love debate to bed, or at least put it in another light.

 

[Kaynar]

Far Cry 4 had slighty better graphics at ultra and was running around 40-50 fps on my system. Meanwhile, it had a lot of fps spikes and generally not smooth performance.

What I can say after around one hour of messing around with the Witcher 3 Is that the game is super-smooth even at the low 30fps average, it doesnt seem to produce the frames at an inconsistent rate. I just lower a few things to high or off and I run around 40 fps and im ok for now.

However, most settings really have zero visual difference and I am sure that the devs will release a free enchanced edition with real ultra graphics, since the downgrade is really really obvious. The graphics are still very nice though, and the atmosphere too.

 

[dyonoctis]

The clocks are also pretty consersative for all the cards tested, but it does seem to put the whole Kepler doesn't get any love debate to bed, or at least put it in another light.

Well linustechtips will most likely release a benchmark will all cards oc to the maximum stable setting, although it seems they only use current gen gpu...

 

[dyonoctis]

Far Cry 4 had slighty better graphics at ultra and was running around 40-50 fps on my system. Meanwhile, it had a lot of fps spikes and generally not smooth performance.

What I can say after around one hour of messing around with the Witcher 3 Is that the game is super-smooth even at the low 30fps average, it doesnt seem to produce the frames at an inconsistent rate. I just lower a few things to high or off and I run around 40 fps and im ok for now.

However, most settings really have zero visual difference and I am sure that the devs will release a free enchanced edition with real ultra graphics, since the downgrade is really really obvious. The graphics are still very nice though, and the atmosphere too.

yhea but i don't really see any "affordable" non 16nm gpu running this game like easy pie with all the geometry that would add...seeing just how far amd and nvidia were able to take the 28 nm process (the 680 is really far behind a 980) a HUGE performance bump is to be expected in 2016....

 

[the54thvoid]

Running two 780Ti's at 1150Mhz. Getting 45-55fps. Most settings on ultra, only number of background characters(?) and shadow quality on high, 1440p. Kepler seems fine.

Looks awesome.

 

[Devil-Walker]

I have encountered a couple of bugs they don't happen to often so it isn't game breaking for me. first one is the most annoying cuz it freezes on cut scenes sometimes and i have to hard shutdown the pc, the other is a crash to desktop happens very rarely but the auto save has saved me on that one big time.