I'm running into a strange fps issue concerning v-sync and the 60fps cap.
Now, I'm playing on the max settings except for hairworks which I have on low and without v-sync on and with unlimited frame rates I get an average of around 90fps, with it dipping down to around 80 at times and being as high as 120 at others, however if I turn on v-sync and limit my frame rate to 60 I sometimes get drops to 45ish at seemingly random locations.
Any idea what could be going on here?
Also what are the most system demanding areas in the game so I can test my fps there.
I'm running into a strange fps issue concerning v-sync and the 60fps cap.
Now, I'm playing on the max settings except for hairworks which I have on low and without v-sync on and with unlimited frame rates I get an average of around 90fps, with it dipping down to around 80 at times and being as high as 120 at others, however if I turn on v-sync and limit my frame rate to 60 I sometimes get drops to 45ish at seemingly random locations.
Any idea what could be going on here?
Also what are the most system demanding areas in the game so I can test my fps there.
Rest assured, you are not the only one - I, too, am still going through a lot of trouble to get a locked 60 FPS when my rig is actually capable of running the game 80-90 FPS when not using a framerate limiter (e.g. RivaTuner Statistics Server).
If you want to test your framerate in a few locations, look for the Abandoned Village in White Orchard, or any part of Novigrad in Velen. Running through the latter is what I personally use to measure the effect of any performance tweaks.
I really don't understand why I'm seeing framerate dips when limiting my framerate to 60 FPS with such a massive overhead available, but they do happen and at an annoying frequency I might add. Below you can find everything I have done to stabilise my framerate to 60 FPS 99% of the time (click "Show spoiler" to expand the list)!
GOG Galaxy settings:
In-game overlay: Unticked (disabled)
In-game video settings menu:
VSync: Off Maximum Frames Per Second:Unlimited Display Mode: Full Screen
All other settings apart from HairWorks (Off), Anti-aliasing (Off) Sharpening (Off), Motion Blur (Off), Vignetting (Off) and Chromatic Aberration (Off) were set to their maximum values before applying the tweaks below!
In-game gameplay settings menu:
Movement mode: Alternative
RTSS
Framerate limit: 60
NVIDIA Control Panel:
a) PhysX processing
PhysX processor: CPU
b) The Witcher 3 profile
Anisotropic filtering: 16x Maximum pre-rendered frames: 1 Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance Texture filtering - Quality: High quality Threaded Optimization: On
One other thing I would like to ask: are you seeing any hiccups/stuttering at all when looting containers/corpses?
My game always drops 1-2 frames whenever I open any container or use a quickslotted potion, for instance. Upon opening the inventory window, my framerate simply takes a nosedive to the mid 40s for 1-2 seconds while everything loads up. This is also reproducible while changing menu tabs (e.g. inventory, journal, bestiary, alchemy, crafting, etc.). Am I really the only one experiencing this? ???
Rest assured, you are not the only one - I, too, am still going through a lot of trouble to get a locked 60 FPS when my rig is actually capable of running the game 80-90 FPS when not using a framerate limiter (e.g. RivaTuner Statistics Server).
If you want to test your framerate in a few locations, look for the Abandoned Village in White Orchard, or any part of Novigrad in Velen. Running through the latter is what I personally use to measure the effect of any performance tweaks.
I really don't understand why I'm seeing framerate dips when limiting my framerate to 60 FPS with such a massive overhead available, but they do happen and at an annoying frequency I might add. Below you can find everything I have done to stabilise my framerate to 60 FPS 99% of the time (click "Show spoiler" to expand the list)!
GOG Galaxy settings:
In-game overlay: Unticked (disabled)
In-game video settings menu:
VSync: Off Maximum Frames Per Second:Unlimited Display Mode: Full Screen
All other settings apart from HairWorks (Off), Anti-aliasing (Off) Sharpening (Off), Motion Blur (Off), Vignetting (Off) and Chromatic Aberration (Off) were set to their maximum values before applying the tweaks below!
In-game gameplay settings menu:
Movement mode: Alternative
RTSS
Framerate limit: 60
NVIDIA Control Panel:
a) PhysX processing
PhysX processor: CPU
b) The Witcher 3 profile
Anisotropic filtering: 16x Maximum pre-rendered frames: 1 Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance Texture filtering - Quality: High quality Threaded Optimization: On
One other thing I would like to ask: are you seeing any hiccups/stuttering at all when looting containers/corpses?
My game always drops 1-2 frames whenever I open any container or use a quickslotted potion, for instance. Upon opening the inventory window, my framerate simply takes a nosedive to the mid 40s for 1-2 seconds while everything loads up. This is also reproducible while changing menu tabs (e.g. inventory, journal, bestiary, alchemy, crafting, etc.). Am I really the only one experiencing this? ???
On the matter of hiccups: I don't believe I get any fps drop when looting however I do seem to drop a few frames when bringing up the menu and also when changing tabs; guessing this is due to it loading your inventory when it gets so filled up with crafting items due to the unnecessarily bloated alchemy and crafting mechanics in this game.
On the matter of hiccups: I don't believe I get any fps drop when looting however I do seem to drop a few frames when bringing up the menu and also when changing tabs; guessing this is due to it loading your inventory when it gets so filled up with crafting items due to the unnecessarily bloated alchemy and crafting mechanics in this game.
Please try out a few, if not all, of the above tweaks and see how well they work for your system. While I believe the looting hiccups are indeed due to the game having trouble managing my inventory, I would also greatly appreciate if you could measure your own framerates while looting, as I don't know what else could be causing them on my end.
I would have thought that playing off an SSD would prevent such things from ever being an issue, but The Witcher 3 proved me wrong on this account.
Please try out a few, if not all, of the above tweaks and see how well they work for your system. While I believe the looting hiccups are indeed due to the game having trouble managing my inventory, I would also greatly appreciate if you could measure your own framerates while looting, as I don't know what else could be causing them on my end.
I would have thought that playing off an SSD would prevent such things from ever being an issue, but The Witcher 3 proved me wrong on this account.
Thanks a million for this information, GhostRider, I truly appreciate it!
Some people on NeoGAF reported that enabling VSync via NVIDIA Control Panel and disabling all other frame limiters provided the smoothest gameplay experience, so when I get back home I'm going to try enabling Adaptive VSync (half refresh rate), which will cap my framerate at 60 FPS (since I'm using a 120 Hz monitor) and hopefully also pace it better than RTSS currently can.
I will let you know how that goes, but I really hope it will improve my weird framerate issues!
Thank you very much for taking the time to record and upload these issues for everyone to see, Gallarian!
It really boggles the mind how CDPR manages to break the game's performance even further with every patch they release. To make matters worse, there doesn't seem to be a single combination of tweaks that reduces (not even fixes) these issues for everyone, so at the end of the day it's up to each and every one of us to find that magical configuration for our systems that provides both stability and sufficient eye candy.
I really hope CDPR step up their game and patch these performance issues now that their free DLC offerings are coming to a close.
Thank you very much for taking the time to record and upload these issues for everyone to see, Gallarian!
It really boggles the mind how CDPR manages to break the game's performance even further with every patch they release. To make matters worse, there doesn't seem to be a single combination of tweaks that reduces (not even fixes) these issues for everyone, so at the end of the day it's up to each and every one of us to find that magical configuration for our systems that provides both stability and sufficient eye candy.
I really hope CDPR step up their game and patch these performance issues now that their free DLC offerings are coming to a close.
What makes matters worse is their customer support. I sent a ticket in about my issues (seen in the video) explaining it in detail and even linking the video to them so they could actually see it for themselves, here's what I got in reply:
"Hello there,
Expected FPS for GeForce GTX 970 on Ultra, in FullHD without HairWorks is ~30 FPS. (min. 21, avg. 43)
GeForce GTX 970 is not powerful enough to run The Witcher 3 on stable 60+ FPS on Ultra in FullHD."
So instead of actually reading what I said and watching the video that clearly demonstrates it, they only tell me I shouldn't expect more than 43fps in Ultra.
But the video shows I run at medium-high with hairworks off, running at 75fps average! The only thing at ultra is textures, which doesn't decrease fps at all!
I hate it when "Technical Support" responds with such patronizing feedback. That always gets my blood up a bit.
While I have no help to offer you, I just wanted to encourage you to send that video back in to CDPR, and keep sending it in, until someone takes a serious look at it. It's not happening on my end , but it is a plainly obvious issue that needs to be addressed by the dev team.
I don't think a GTX 970 should have any reason to drop down to 20fps in any situation at 1080p as they seem to claim. Are we supposed to have Titans for 1080p & 60 fps (with decent settings) now?
Finally I managed to achieve pretty stable framerate with minimum stutter with GTX 970. But I play on my 40' Full HD TV, 1680x1050 resoultion, mix of High and Ultra. I got 90% of time 60 frames, in most intense situacions (Novigrad) drops to 50 - 45 fps. Overall it's playable and looks very solid when you sit around 3 meters away from TV.
In patch 1.06 I had a better performance. Mostly same framerates but much much less stutter. I could enjoy the game with higher settings.
One other thing I would like to ask: are you seeing any hiccups/stuttering at all when looting containers/corpses?
My game always drops 1-2 frames whenever I open any container or use a quickslotted potion, for instance. Upon opening the inventory window, my framerate simply takes a nosedive to the mid 40s for 1-2 seconds while everything loads up. This is also reproducible while changing menu tabs (e.g. inventory, journal, bestiary, alchemy, crafting, etc.). Am I really the only one experiencing this? ???
This tiny microsecond pause when looting has been there since day 1 I think. I've noticed it too but it's noticable only when you loot during movement. I think it's part of the game mechanics. This pause is so tiny that I'm not surprised that not everyone notices it.
