The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - PC System Requirements are here!

[GuyNwah]

What do you think about the Power PC architecture? It has the ability to have many many threads per core? Would PPC work with gaming or?? would it be a wasted effort? Just curious your thoughts on the subject!! I bring it up due to Nvidia working heavily with IBM......NVLInk has my curiosity peaked for sure. I hope it comes to X86-64 but that looks doubtful. I would like to see a new Architecture besides X86, and Arm jump in to stimulate the market/competition!!!

The previous generation of consoles was Power architecture. Xbox 360 used a 3-core Power very effectively. PS3 had only a single Power core and 7 Cell processors (6 usable), some developers managed to make some use of them.

It's still used to good effect in supercomputing. But for game development, which is far away from what IBM and Cray are doing, supporting multiple CPU architectures that customers don't actually have is burdensome, requiring skills that are scarce in the game developer community and leading to products that nobody has hardware to run.

Computer hardware is not about having the best or most efficient architecture. It is about having a platform that will run software people actually want, right now, and will buy in order to run that software.

 

[ecventor]

CPU Type	QuadCore Intel Core i5-3330, 3000 MHz (30 x 100)
Motherboard Name	ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP (3 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16 3.0, 1 PCI-E x16 2.0, 4 DDR3 DIMM)
RAM	2 x Transcend JM1600KLN-4G - 4 GB DDR3-1600 DDR3 SDRAM
Video Adapter	Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2048 MB)
Drive	Transcend TS128GSSD320 (128 GB, SATA-III)(SSD)
PSU	GlacialPower GP-AL550A(550W)

Any upgrade advice for me? I want to run it at least on High, 1080p, 60 fps. It's clear that the GPU needs to be replaced with something like a GTX 970, and maybe throw another 8 GB RAM in there. But the rest is what puzzles me, will the CPU be really important to justify an upgrade from what I currently have, and if required should I build on my current motherboard or rather dispose of my current PC and build a completely new one.

 

[GuyNwah]

You have a fine system for minimum spec already. The biggest improvement would come from upgrading the GPU. The GTX 970 is about the same power consumption as the older 660, so if that power supply is currently satisfactory, a new one isn't strictly necessary.

There isn't much of a CPU upgrade short of gutting and replacing the whole thing, as Ivy Bridge CPUs are long gone from the market and would have to be bought as used or surplus.

If your only disk is that 128GB SSD, you should give strong consideration to an additional HDD. Stuffing 100 pounds of manure in a 50-pound sack comes to mind.

 

[ecventor]

You have a fine system for minimum spec already. The biggest improvement would come from upgrading the GPU. The GTX 970 is about the same power consumption as the older 660, so if that power supply is currently satisfactory, a new one isn't strictly necessary.

There isn't much of a CPU upgrade short of gutting and replacing the whole thing, as Ivy Bridge CPUs are long gone from the market and would have to be bought as used or surplus.

If your only disk is that 128GB SSD, you should give strong consideration to an additional HDD. Stuffing 100 pounds of manure in a 50-pound sack comes to mind.

Well, I live in a country where Ivy Bridge CPUs are still in stock so I would have a chance of getting something like an I7-3770. I have an HDD, but I was planning to install the game on the SSD so that is why I didn't include it. Btw thanks for the advice!

 

[Crosswar]

So, have looked a bit around the forum and have seen some questions regarding the 765M, I have an Asus G750J with that graph card an i7 that can boost till 3.2 and 14 gigs of ram and I just read the system requirements and I suddenly had a panic attack thinking I won't be able to play the game... have literally been waiting for it for about a year now when I finished Assassin of Kings and now I am just staring at comparisons and wondering what to do... I was thinking of pre-ordering the game since I wanted the discount but at the same time what if I get it and it won't work... I mean I can run every game I played on High/Ultra then this game comes around and tells me I can't play it... and it's not like I can upgrade my laptop's graphic card, and to run it on my desktop am fairly sure I would need to get a new cpu and gpu since I have a quad core of 3.2 and a gtx 260...
What can I do here....

 

[GuyNwah]

I think that GPU is in a "playable subminimum" category. The 765M is equivalent to a desktop 650Ti, which is a step down from the minimum 660. You may end up finding it works better on higher settings and reduced resolution, like 1280x720, than on lower settings and full resolution.

 

[Attar]

I have an i7 4770K GTX titan x using 5K, I plan to use DSR and increase to 6K+ will it be ok?

 

[Crosswar]

Ugh true I did look at some comparisons I just hope it will be ok, it seems rather strange that I can run almost any game then The Witcher comes around and makes me hit the brakes, the requirements seem rather high to be completely honest but the game does look amazing...

 

[Guest 3790055]

I have an i7 4770K GTX titan x using 5K, I plan to use DSR and increase to 6K+ will it be ok?

I think you overestimate your Titan X a little bit. I guess it will be something like high/ultra at 4K. Pure estimation though, we don't know anything on how TW3 handles very high resolution and very high end graphic cards.

 

[Attar]

I am playing GTA 5 on 2880p and its fine!

 

[YTF]

i5-3570K
8GB
GTX660Ti 2GB

So, I meet the minimum requirements, but I'm on thin ice with this video card.
If I connect my old GTX 260 and use it as PhysX card would that help... or make things worse? I did a quick search and apparently it can make things worse... or so some people say.

I was also considering upgrading, but for various reasons I was planning to get my next card from AMD and considering CDPR is working with NVIDIA it doesn't sound like that would be a wise choice right now.

Also, I'm going to play at 1360 x 768, so that might help I guess and I'm not really 60 FPS fanatic so 30 FPS is fine.

What do you guys think? I'm especially curious about PhysX? yes/no?

 

[DexiD]

I'm going to be cautious and not be too sure about that. 980 and 780Ti are different architectures. The 980 has a lot of optimizations that the 780Ti does not.

Yep. But I hope that Nvidia will optimized drivers for GTX 780 ti for Witcher 3 too. Cuz this card is very popular and has pretty good characteristics, which better then GTX 980 characteristics except VRAM (3gb vs 4gb)

 

[eskiMoe]

Don't worry i don't think it will be. There's a chance you might run into problems if you intend to play at 4k or something.

Watch this video if you like. This guy tests the card through a few demanding games (apart from skyrim) at 1080p to check the Vram usage and if the 3.5GB can actually cause problems. I don't think that the witcher will draw more than this at 1080p or 1440p. It's worth watching if you are into these things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6k55epUBCE

Am I the only 970 user here that doesn't hit a wall @ 3,5GB?

Spoiler

I seem to hit problems in games near 3.8GB mark. GTAV sometimes uses close to 3.7GB of vram yet both frame rates and frame times are solid.

 

[GuyNwah]

i5-3570K
8GB
GTX660Ti 2GB

So, I meet the minimum requirements, but I'm on thin ice with this video card.
If I connect my old GTX 260 and use it as PhysX card would that help... or make things worse? I did a quick search and apparently it can make things worse... or so some people say.

I was also considering upgrading, but for various reasons I was planning to get my next card from AMD and considering CDPR is working with NVIDIA it doesn't sound like that would be a wise choice right now.

Also, I'm going to play at 1360 x 768, so that might help I guess and I'm not really 60 FPS fanatic so 30 FPS is fine.

What do you guys think? I'm especially curious about PhysX? yes/no?

660Ti's a pretty good step up from the minimum-spec 660. Especially at the reduced resolution, I don't think you'll have any problems.

 

[Giovanni1983]

@eskiMoe I don't have any problems either. Played Shadows of Mordor with the HD pack, Far cry 4 and other games and i never saw any fps drops even a little above 3.5GB Vram

 

[shaedhen]

Finally got my new computer !

i7 4790k
Asus MAXIMUS VII RANGER
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW ACX 2.0
DDR3 G.Skill RipJaws X, 2 x 8 Go, 2133 MHz
Samsung 850 EVO, 250 Go, SATA III

I think I should be fine running the game in high/ultra at 1080p.
But i'm wondering what would be the result at 1440p.

 

[GuyNwah]

I don't know how closely performance of this game will track pixel count. But 1440p is 78% more pixels, so frame rate at 1440p and same settings could be down 22% to as much as 44% (say, 60 down to 45 or at worst 35).

 

[shaedhen]

I don't know how closely performance of this game will track pixel count. But 1440p is 78% more pixels, so frame rate at 1440p and same settings could be down 22% to as much as 44% (say, 60 down to 45 or at worst 35).

I see.
Well if it can run at around 30 fps at 1440p I'd be quite happy already =)

 

[Liuhu77]

Will running on ultra spec include hairworks? If it's off I suspect turning it on might hit a gtx 980/970 around 10 fps.
Personally I can't tell from those tube videos if hairworks is on or not. Video compilations might also include footage from different graphical settings ie hairworks on in some scene and off in another.

 

[Guest 3790055]

I am playing GTA 5 on 2880p and its fine!

GTA V devs said a 760 is enough to run the game at 4K in decent conditions. It is not even the recommended card in TW3.