A compendium of tweaks and fixes for the PC version

+
Status
Not open for further replies.
Here's a video explaining it: [video]https://youtu.be/TQt5iMLsavQ[/video]. Link for it is in the vid description. I don't use it, myself. But, I've heard it's good from other people. I just add them to the registry myself, because I like to do things like that, manually when pos.
The problem is, I can't find witcher 3.exe based on the path that's described in the OP.

EDIT:

Tried it with the program and it does improve performance. But only a fraction. Like 1-2 fps. But any gain is welcome. :)
 
Last edited:
The problem is, I can't find witcher 3.exe based on the path that's described in the OP.

EDIT:

Tried it with the program and it does improve performance. But only a fraction. Like 1-2 fps. But any gain is welcome. :)

It'll depend on your location in-game a lot. I've noticed it's helped a bit while moving about out in the world. Also, this shouldn't be making much difference. I suspect it's something up with the game. Normally it would only be 1-2fps, if even depending on the game.

I've noticed my CPU usage is way higher since I did it.
 
Any ideas on why sweetfx crashes on startup? I followed instructions and don't have any overlays, bit annoying

The crashing is probably due to the downloaded preset not being compatible with the ReShade/SweetFX version linked in the OP. I've already changed the link to a previous, more stable version (0.18.4), but if you're still having problems, you might want to follow the instructions listed on your favourite preset's individual webpage on the SweetFX Preset Database. Please give that a go and report back with your results whenever you find the time! :p

A few intersting param tweaks, if anyone wants to try them;

Add them to the user.settings, under the [Rendering] section. A few I've found from the game exe;

ForceCinematicModeOn=true (not exactly sure what this does yet)
EnableHighPrecision=true (this appears to increase lighting quality) I presume with an increase to floating point precision.
EnableLightChannels=true
EnableDeferredLightsStencil=true
EnableBuoyancy=true (water related, It's probably enabled by default, though)
UseMipRefiner=true (mipmap texture related)

There's a lot more I've found from checking out the game's binary, but I don't have any bases for the default values of the numeric ones (as in not a true/false bool). Alot of SpeedTree tweaks, and distance stuff, but I need to get around to testing them.

Thank you very much for the heads-up, Asmodean! I don't know much about .exe tweaking, but if you find anything interesting, I will make sure to add it to the OP! ;)

i7 4790K @ 4.6GHz here with HT enabled. Tried the high priority setting to see if there would be some additional fps gains but it proved to be the opposite. In more demanding scenes the game actually ran 2-3 frames slower than usual. Not sure if it's because of overclocking or HyperThreading but it definitely didn't improve the FPS for me.

@Verrenus You might want to update the OP that i7 users might not find this tweak useful.

Thank you for your input! It's true that your mileage may vary with a lot of unofficial tweaks and fixes, but I guess I need to make that clearer in the OP. :D

The problem is, I can't find witcher 3.exe based on the path that's described in the OP.

EDIT:

Tried it with the program and it does improve performance. But only a fraction. Like 1-2 fps. But any gain is welcome. :)

I'm sorry about that, it was my fault for not realising that the previous registry path did not exist on its own. I've amended the OP with a new method for easily adding the "high priority" key to the registry! Thank you very much for your input! ;)

Adding DX 12 to the game when windows 10 comes out would handle most of the GPU issues.

CD Projekt RED will probably add DirectX 12 support when they release the Enhanced Edition next year, after all of the DLCs and expansions will have come out. ;)

how about fix for Witcher 3 stuck in stereo, or missing voice in surround mode? http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...ur-W3-stuck-in-Stereo-this-makes-it-surround)

Great find, I will add it to the OP! Thanks a lot for spotting this! :p

although it modifies DirectX files instead of modding W3 engine.

@Verrenus

You might want to add this .ini tweak to the OP which fixes the HUD positioning when playing the game on 21:9 monitors.

Noted, very good find! I will update the OP immediately! :D

---------- Updated at 10:25 AM ----------

Overhauled the OP with many more tweaks thanks to everyone's generous contributions! :cheers2:

I apologise for not being able to edit the OP fast enough, but I've been really busy with work this week and apparently I can't make any edits from home (those dreaded "505 Internal Server Errors"...), so please bear with me while I make the OP as comprehensive and streamlined as possible! ;)

By the way, there apparently is a 40,000 character limit on any post, so this means that whenever I add a new tweak to the OP, I need to cut fluff out of all the other sections. Nevermind though, as this only serves to make the OP more lean and mean in the end! :D

---------- Updated at 10:42 AM ----------

I played for about 4 hours last night after some extensive tweaking and it would appear that I found the sweet spot between visual quality and performance, at least for my configuration. Here are all my settings for stable 60 FPS with only insignificant dips in towns and villages:

1. In-game options

a) Graphics: Vsync (Off), Maximum Frames Per Second (60), Resolution (1920x1080), Display Mode (Fullscreen), NVIDIA HairWorks (Off), Number of Background Characters (High), Shadow Quality (Medium), Terrain Quality (High), Water Quality (High), Grass Density (Low), Texture Quality (Ultra), Foliage Visibility Range (Medium), Detail Level (High), Hardware Cursor (On).

b) Postprocessing: Motion Blur (Off), Blur (On), Anti-aliasing (Off), Bloom (On), Sharpening (Low), Ambient Occlusion (SSAO), Depth of Field (On), Chromatic Aberration (Off), Vignetting (Off), Light Shafts (On).

2. User.settings file

MovieFramerate=60
GrassDensity=1000
MaxTextureAnizotropy=16
TextureMemoryBudget=1000

3. Visuals.ini file

MovieFramerate=60.0
MovieUbersampling=false

4. NVIDIA Control Panel tweaks

a) PhysX processing

Select PhysX processor: CPU

b) Manage 3D settings (The Witcher 3 profile)

Maximum pre-rendered frames: 1
Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Texture filtering - Quality: High Quality

5. ReShade + SweetFX

ReShade + SweetFX versions: 0.18.4 and 2.0 Preview 8, respectively

SweetFX preset: K-putt'e Config 1.2 (with Dither enabled)
 
Last edited:
After 15 hours of playing and testing different settings (damn, it feels good to just let myself go when a great games out) I'll just follow Verrenus example and share my current optimal settings for locked 60fps/1440p. And by locked I mean locked 95% of the time. At worst I get drops to 58.
Maybe someone will find this useful when trying to hit that silky smooth spot.

Setup:

GTX 980 @ 1470 Mhz Boost clock and 7982 Mhz memory clock
i5 2500K @ 4.4 Ghz

a) Graphics:
Vsync (Off, using Adaptive Vsync in Nvidia Control Panel instead),
Maximum Frames Per Second (Unlimited, since it causes stuttering. I'm using Riva Tuner to get an external 60 fps lock),
Resolution (2560x1440),
Display Mode (Fullscreen),
NVIDIA HairWorks (Off), Number of Background Characters (High),
Shadow Quality (Medium),
Terrain Quality (High),
Water Quality (High),
Grass Density (High),
Texture Quality (Ultra),
Foliage Visibility Range (High),
Detail Level (High),
Hardware Cursor (On).

b) Postprocessing:
Motion Blur (Off),
Blur (Off),
Anti-aliasing (Off),
Bloom (On),
Sharpening (Low),
Ambient Occlusion (HBAO+),
Depth of Field (On),
Chromatic Aberration (Off),
Vignetting (Off),
Light Shafts (On)

Turning ingame vsync off, setting ingame fps cap to unlimited, playing in fullscreen with an external framelock and external vsync option has been the smoothest experience for me so far. I am allergic to the tiniest stutters, so I usually test how well the sync is by slowly turning the camera with a controller and walking for a minute.

I am not using any .ini tweaks or injectors.
 
Last edited:
Thanks a lot for your config, Sapath, I'm really glad the game is now running great for you! :D

I was considering upgrading to a GTX 980 myself some time soon and was wondering if it would be possible to get a stable 60 FPS at 1080p with everything on Ultra, but with HairWorks completely off? Maybe you can tell me if a locked 60 FPS is possible with a GTX 980 at those settings, seeing how you are the proud owner of one! Otherwise, I might as well wait for the Pascal models next year, with their touted "10x Maxwell" performance. :p

What brand is your card, by the way?
 
Last edited:
I got myself the Strix from Asus due to its "super quiet" promises. It's reasonably quiet with its stock clocks and even relatively ok with a decent custom overclock. But Witcher 3 makes it sweat, so it becomes quite audible, but not on the level of a jet engine, so it's all good :D

The overclock helps me get from 53 avg. fps to 65 (give or take 2), so it's worth it.

I haven't done too much testing on 1080p, but from when I was toying around I could run everything on Ultra at 60fps in White Orchard (I think AA and motion blur were off though). I didn't test that for many hours like I did with my 1440p settings, so I can't promise you 100% stable performance.

Some benchmarks are ranking the 980 (stock settings) somewhere between 40 and 50 fps on balls to the wall Ultra @ 1080p (without Hairworks, can't remember if it's SSAO or HBAO+), so be aware of that. Knocking shadows and maybe grass density down to high should do the trick though.

If I were you I'd keep that 780. There will be a performance increase, sure, but definitely not worth the money. The 980s are overpriced by at least 150 EUR/USD. Pascal or Arctic Islands should be the real deal for you.

I could have just kept my little beast 7950 with a high overclock for (mostly)mid/high settings for 30fps even at 1440p. I just had to blow my Amazon vouchers on something, I basically got a 980 for a price of 970 :p

On another note - do the MovieFramerate tweaks even do anything? I've tried those in different situations and the movies are still stuttering. I realize it's just the way it is due to the background loading, but for some reason the ingame menu background video is stuck between 37 and 38 fps.
 
Hi Verrenus,

I own a EVGA GTX 980 SC ACX 2.0 and the game runs with everything on Ultra at 1080p with stablest 60 youve ever seen! ;) If you turn on HairWorks I get stable 55. ONLY when i get next to geralts head and the only thing you see is his hair, then the frames drop to something about 35 fps. still playable though. ;)

btw card stays quiet, super smooth, and its not overclocked. at least not by me :p best card i ever had, but not low priced at all :D
 
Thank you very much for the suggestions, guys! I really appreciate your input since even if I sell the GTX 780, I'm not sure the performance increase will justify the price difference for the upgrade to a GTX 980 (~£300 for a few extra frames). Not only that, but I think 4 Gb of video RAM will soon become too little to max out games at 1080p, so I think I'm going to pass on a GPU upgrade for now at least. On the other hand, Sapath, you made a great jump from the 7950 to the GTX 980 - now that is a real upgrade! :D

Besides, the GTX 980 Ti and Radeon 390x will launch in a few weeks, so I'm really curious how the GPU market will change with these new additions! :p
 
Last edited:
I think something is wrong with my game. I know it's demanding but i almost can't run it properly.
I have 40-50 fps when everything is on LOW. And i have a GTX 970 and a i5 4690k (both unclocked).
The funny thing is that i only lose about 10 fps when i turn everything to high (except Hairworks wich is completely off). Tough that brings me down to thirty which is unplayble for me.
I also feel some stuttering. Especially in cutscenes where it becomes really affecting.
Another thing is the bad upscaling ( i use a 4K monitor) which is present in some games. Far Cry 4 did it very well and Crysis 3 good. The Witcher 3 just look very blurry.

Thankfull for help. Can't play it in this stage which is really pity cuz the storry and gameplay seems top notch.

@Mr. Barvo , Might be your processor holding your frames from hitting 60. Recommended on the box is an i7. 40-50 isn't bad, but that being said, I average 98fps on a mix of high-ultra settings.

Bravo, something is wrong but its definitely not due to specs, I've got the same CPU at stock speeds but with a GTX 760 factory OC and I'm averaging 45fps. I'll need to double check later but I'm 95% sure my CPU usage isn't getting maxed during gameplay. Did you already try updating your driver or just doing a clean install of your video driver? As for the settings, I let Nvidia Experience set it for me (mix of high and medium for my card) and I'm likely not tweaking until a few launch patches in (so time consuming).
 
On another note - do the MovieFramerate tweaks even do anything? I've tried those in different situations and the movies are still stuttering. I realize it's just the way it is due to the background loading, but for some reason the ingame menu background video is stuck between 37 and 38 fps.

I am not exactly sure, but I know for a fact I haven't seen any cutscene or pre-rendered in-game video run lower than 60 FPS with these tweaks, so I'm guessing they do work! I have "MovieFramerate" set to 60 both in user.settings and in visuals.ini, by the way, so maybe that does it?
 
Oh snap, I only edited visuals.ini.

I'll edit the other .ini and test it when I get home from work. Not doing much here anyway, got enough time to post on Witcher forums :D

Yeah, I really think the variable needs to be set to 60 in BOTH files to work properly! Try it out and please report back later with your results if you find the time. :p

Thanks again for saving me from an expensive side-grade! I will probably overhaul my other components next year as well, including an Intel Skylake i7, 16 Gb DDR4 RAM and a Pascal GPU. Using an NVLink motherboard, this should amount to a considerable jump in overall performance! :D
 
The crashing is probably due to the downloaded preset not being compatible with the ReShade/SweetFX version linked in the OP. I've already changed the link to a previous, more stable version (0.18.4), but if you're still having problems, you might want to follow the instructions listed on your favourite preset's individual webpage on the SweetFX Preset Database. Please give that a go and report back with your results whenever you find the time! :p

Hi thanks for reply but I changed the version to 0.18.4 and it works! No longer crashes but I don't get the text overlay before the game starts to confirm that sweetfx is in effect? I'm using your sweetfx preset by K-putt and he said disable ingame AA which I did but looks really harsh so don't think it's in effect...
 
No problem, I hope I could be of help in the end! It was my mistake for linking the 0.18.5 version in the OP - it apparently got pulled by the ReShade creator in the meantime, probably because it was causing these very issues. ;)

The text overlay should be displayed for a few seconds when the game boots up and the intro screens are shown. It can be quite easy to miss if you don't look for it, or try to spam the spacebar to get into the menu quicker. Are you sure you are not seeing it at all?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom