Yeah I think Nvidia needs to reoptimize hairworks. It wasn't even that taxing in far cry 4, although the versions between them both are different.


Installed on SSD, pretty much zero loading other than dying or landing game.

46c. Watercoooled and OC'd though. SLI 970s.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: May 19 2015, 03:44 PM

Not my pics, but here's a comparison between a maxed out Witcher 3 at 4k, the December "promo" shot vs the final release.

There is a saturation value in the config file, but I cannot confirm if it works or not right now. Haven't had the chance to mess with it yet.
I don't want to saturate it like Witcher 2, but yeah at the same time... the grass can look quite, dead.

Not on a 980, but I do have my 970s OC'd to 1557core/8000mem. A single 970 at this setting is just 3% slower than the 980, VRAM limitation aside.

Just using a single 970, I cannot get the game to run at all settings maxed out in 60fps average on 1440p, not possible. Turning down hairworks did gave me that sub-60fps (jumping around from 55-60) though, but a few dips here and there which I'd say is not too bad.
Texture quality from low to ultra has almost no difference on performance, the game isn't even using more than 3GB of VRAM at 1440p.

This post has been edited by SSJBen: May 19 2015, 04:29 PM

HBAO+ is nice, but it seems a little glitchy in taverns? I don't know, it was either completely absent or was flickering in one of the taverns I went to in Vizima. But a restart didn't cause the issue again. Will check it out more later tonight.

The only thing the W2 save file affect is... the storyline.

Couple hours into the game, you get to talk about the decisions you made in W2. This is the time where you can choose the major choices that happened, of which will largely affect the world.

The problem is that I don't think it is well done. Bioware did it better with DAI, it was indepth enough with their website approach. But in W3, the decisions doesn't explain to you on what happened if you choose between choice A or B, there is just a very brief backstory on each choice you choose.

Witcher 1 isn't really compulsory to be played because the events there are recapped pretty well and choices didn't really make a huge impact on the story overall. But I feel that those who has never even touched W2 should at least play it first, instead of jumping into W3 straight. You can make the major decisions in W3, but you can never make the smaller but still important decisions without importing your save.

I really hope there will be an update next that allows for the use of hairworks JUST FOR the monsters instead of off, geralt or all!
Man hairworks is awesome, but it can so damn taxing!

This post has been edited by SSJBen: May 19 2015, 06:08 PM

O....kay. This is absolutely weird.

Using a 360 or Xbone controller, whenever I pan the camera the game will stutter like crazy! It is absolutely smooth when using the mouse and keyboard!

Wtf?!

You can lower the value in the config file ini. It doesn't seem to lower it by much though, barely noticeable even at the lowest value.


I somehow fixed it, I think. I turned on hardware cursor even though it has nothing to do with Xinput controllers as it is for mouse, then quit the game and connect my xbone controller upon loading the game back up. The stuttering is gone but the input lag remains.

In some areas, Witcher 2 (with uber sampling + hi-res textures mod) actually looks better than Witcher 3. Yeah, I'm not kidding.

Finally got Hairworks to perform better. Just set the HairWorksMSAA value in the ini to 2.
I can finally get the game to run at 1440p 60fps, all maxed out with shadows at high and foliage distance at high. Other tweaks that I have is increasing the shadow distance and cascading in the ini, as well as higher grass density.

For 1080p, users of highly OC'd 970 or a GTX980 can achieve near solid 60fps (no lower than min 55) if you drop HairworksMSAA down to 0 with all other settings maxed out (except foliage distance of course). This will produce shimmering, but if you have blur and motion blur enabled, it wouldn't be too distracting.

Now just have to figure out how to tone down bloom a little bit so that dawn wouldn't be so overbearing.

I will once I finalize all my settings. There is still 1 minor glitch that I need to fix; AO flickering which only happens indoors.

No prob. Will try and finalize it today or tomorrow, as soon as I can fix the AO flicker.


Not sure how it works on GOG, but on my steam version, the 1.02 update automatically installed the DLC for me.

So if it works the same way, you probably already have the DLC in the game. If you can see the Temerian Armor set, then that means you do have the DLC already.

Also one other thing I need to ask you guys, during the cutscenes, do you guys get frame dips erratically?
I'm talking about the none in-game cutscenes, but the ones that play out in a cinematic fashion using the engine as the render.

I cannot confirm this right now, but it seems that the cutscenes are capped to 30fps and can be switched to 60fps in the config file.

Need to check when I get home and go through the config file.


Well.. It's all these little annoyances that kinda takes the fun out of the game. I mean obviously the game is still great, but I think it's better to get all these optimization out of the way first. It's a 200 hours game man... I sure as hell am not going to stand stupid weird cutscene stutters for that long!


Alright got it, so the issue is widespread. I saw some fixes on reddit already, will try later to see if it works.

Yes and no.

Yes because it is just easier to control Geralt. No because the game has a very weird input lag, directly from the engine when using a controller. It's still playable though, but those sensitive to input lag (like me) will be annoyed.

Mouse and keyboard has no input lag as long as you enable hardware cursor.

Okay so 2 quick fixes for you guys.

Disable the annoying pop-up notification when you are using a controller.
1. Go to The Witcher 3 > bin > config > base > hidden.ini
2. Open hidden.ini with notepad or notepad++
3. Change the value of LockControlScheme=0 to LockControlScheme=2
4. Save and set the file to read-only

Make it so that in-game movies are running in 60fps and not capped in 30 to eliminate stuttering.
1. Go to The Witcher 3 > bin > config > base > visuals.ini
2. Open visuals.ini with notepad or notepad++
3. Change the value of MovieFramerate=30.0 to MovieFramerate=60.0
4. Save and set the file to read-only

*Optional
You can disable ubersampling (remember the crazy setting that killed systems in Witcher 2? it's back!) if your rig cannot handle the performance drop with ubersampling. Just set MovieUbersampling=true to MovieUbersampling=false.

If you have PS4, go ahead. Otherwise on PC, prepare to deal with some niggly issues. It's much better than it was before though.


Okay, one other way to check is to your documents > witcher 3 > user.settings > open with notepad++.

Find the parameter -
[DLC]
DlcEnabled_dlc_001_001=1
DlcEnabled_dlc_002_001=1

If it says 1, then yes you have it already. If it is 0, then you don't.