Are AMD users just out of luck?

[Masterchief1752]

Are AMD users just out of luck?

So I put a thread up a few days back asking about an issue with flickering and stuttering that hadn't been there until I upgraded my build. Come to find out, after some research (I got zero replies from anyone or any CDR employees), the issue is with AMD Crossfire. Everyone has had the same issue since day one with stuttering fps drop, flickering of inventory items, Signs, and map icons, and lower quality of life overall. This has been an issue since day 1, and despite some things being resolved, the issues are still very much a problem. Hence my question. Are AMD users just out of luck? Crossfire users are plentiful and the amount of threads are not small. Yet no fix has happened. It makes the game nigh on unplayable, with the amount of fps stutter drop, and the cinematics/inventory/Signs looking like they're having nonstop small seizures.

This makes me very upset as I love this game. I never finished it due to the busy part of the year with work, and I was excited to get back at it now with my brand new $3000 DIY PC build. I bought the expansion, cleared my schedule and sat down ready to go, only for this to happen and to find out that people that go the extra mile for performance, are in fact actually screwed compared to not doing so. I'd just like to know for the future if CDPR is just going to ignore the issue and I should abstain from the next expansion or if this is something that is at least acknowledged.

 

[svizcy]

I don't have crossfire myself but single AMD x290x card and game was working nice until 1.10 was implemented, now i am in living hell, screen is flashing, dots showing collors changing, npcs dissapearing and i could go on like this...

Sad face, still waiting for anyone from the team to answer this...

 

[BTorville]

From what I understand, I don't think TW3 is optimized to work with SLI/Crossfire. Have you tried disabling it?

---------- Updated at 02:03 PM ----------

I don't have crossfire myself but single AMD x290x card and game was working nice until 1.10 was implemented, now i am in living hell, screen is flashing, dots showing collors changing, npcs dissapearing and i could go on like this...

Sad face, still waiting for anyone from the team to answer this...

I have a 290 and am not experiencing any such issues. Worst I have at the moment is the occasional crash to desktop without warning or error messages. I'm waiting on the next patch. (and the next, and the next, and the next, ad infinitum).

Have you tried verifying the game cache after uninstalling any and all mods?

 

[DXMG]

Crossfire is AMD proprietary technology, so its up to AMD to fix it.

If they dont, CDPR probably will eventually, but it is not and shouldn't be a priority to fix another companies proprietary tech.

And yes, I know you "went the extra mile" and paid more than you should have for a graphics setup, but you paid that to AMD, not CDPR.

 

[Brogan80]

Have you tried verifying the game cache after uninstalling any and all mods?

This plus experiment with older drivers as well. Sometimes gfx driver updates are not always ideal for specific games.

... but you paid that to AMD, not CDPR.

yup.

 

[svizcy]

From what I understand, I don't think TW3 is optimized to work with SLI/Crossfire. Have you tried disabling it?

---------- Updated at 02:03 PM ----------



I have a 290 and am not experiencing any such issues. Worst I have at the moment is the occasional crash to desktop without warning or error messages. I'm waiting on the next patch. (and the next, and the next, and the next, ad infinitum).

Have you tried verifying the game cache after uninstalling any and all mods?

I don't see how this would help, game was working fine beffore 1.10, and all other games i play (BF4, Diablo3, SC2, Skyrim) i have 0 problems there, so it has to be the 1.10 patch fault this is happening.

+ No idea how to verify game files, i bought game via Origin so i have everything instaled thrue that...

 

[DXMG]

You dont see how modifying the files could cause a problem with the files?

it worked fine before 1.10, then didnt after 1.10. Honestly, the FIRST thing you should think of in that case is file corruption/failure to patch correctly.

In Origin:

My Games-> Right click titlecard/title-> Repair Game

 

[Premchand]

CDPR is not responsible for the bad AMD drivers.


Just to note(before i get hate) i am a AMD GPU user

 

[svizcy]

You dont see how modifying the files could cause a problem with the files?

it worked fine before 1.10, then didnt after 1.10. Honestly, the FIRST thing you should think of in that case is file corruption/failure to patch correctly.

In Origin:

My Games-> Right click titlecard/title-> Repair Game

Ok, i did it, however, problem persists, ty for trying to help still.

 

[Masterchief1752]

Actually, the issue lies with both companies. Not even a week after TW3 came out AMD jumped at making optimized drivers for the game. Xfire was still an issue but it fixed a TON of things that were going wrong with AMD chipset users. Crossfire support, however, is something the game needs to optimize as well. Same with SLI. A game company needs to work with the company outputting the drivers to use on their game and vice versa in order to optimize things. To be honest I find it very incoincidental (not a word but we're using it here) that Nvidia Hairworks has a huge thing with this game and their GPUs work absolutely fine right out of the gate. Including SLI. I love CDPR and I'm not blaming them 100% but everytime they release a new patch from what I read something else goes wrong on an AMD user's side. Not so much on an Nvidia user. The GAME just isn't optimized for AMD. At all. I find it absolutely ridiculous that I've gone through this with alot of games....GTAV, WoW, Diablo, countless others and it was fixed a month in. Every other game I own is running smooth 100 fps + on ultra. Except TW3.

 

[Prosthetics]

Actually, the issue lies with both companies. Not even a week after TW3 came out AMD jumped at making optimized drivers for the game. Xfire was still an issue but it fixed a TON of things that were going wrong with AMD chipset users. Crossfire support, however, is something the game needs to optimize as well. Same with SLI. A game company needs to work with the company outputting the drivers to use on their game and vice versa in order to optimize things. To be honest I find it very incoincidental (not a word but we're using it here) that Nvidia Hairworks has a huge thing with this game and their GPUs work absolutely fine right out of the gate. Including SLI. I love CDPR and I'm not blaming them 100% but everytime they release a new patch from what I read something else goes wrong on an AMD user's side. Not so much on an Nvidia user. The GAME just isn't optimized for AMD. At all. I find it absolutely ridiculous that I've gone through this with alot of games....GTAV, WoW, Diablo, countless others and it was fixed a month in. Every other game I own is running smooth 100 fps + on ultra. Except TW3.

Game runs fine for me on SLI. Only issue I've encountered was a freezing when using witcher senses, which seem to have stopped once I updated drivers.

Fact is; AMD has notoriously bad drivers, so shoving blame at CDPR is premature. The ball is in AMD's court to either fix their drivers, or work with CDPR to fix the game. Graphical components are developed via interfaces (APIs) that NVidia and AMD provide. CDPR uses those APIs to create the graphical content for the game. Some graphical components CDPR can control, but it boils down to how the APIs interact with the game and the hardware. If the APIs and the drivers suck, its not CDPR's fault. Nobody here is in a place to judge, because nobody here knows the situation. All you can (and should) do is report the issues and where in the game you are experiencing them.

 

[Masterchief1752]

Game runs fine for me on SLI. Only issue I've encountered was a freezing when using witcher senses, which seem to have stopped once I updated drivers.

Fact is; AMD has notoriously bad drivers, so shoving blame at CDPR is premature. The ball is in AMD's court to either fix their drivers, or work with CDPR to fix the game. Graphical components are developed via interfaces (APIs) that NVidia and AMD provide. CDPR uses those APIs to create the graphical content for the game. Some graphical components CDPR can control, but it boils down to how the APIs interact with the game and the hardware. If the APIs and the drivers suck, its not CDPR's fault. Nobody here is in a place to judge, because nobody here knows the situation. All you can (and should) do is report the issues and where in the game you are experiencing them.

Nah man. See that's the entire problem. I'll be the first to tell you that AMD has had issues with drivers in the past. But the fact isn't that the drivers are bad permanently, just that they don't work as well out of the gate. They always fix the issues with a patch or a new beta driver etc. They may not even work as well as an Nvidia driver performance wise, but the important part is it still WORKS. Fact of the matter is AMD has released an optimization guide, videos, everything they can on trying to get their products to work with TW3. The thing that can't be ignored, and the fact of the matter is, CDPR has a contract with Nvidia. I'm not an AMD fanboy, I'm a fan of whatever works for me. I've had both companies products. But between every single new patch from Witcher 3 completely breaking performance on AMD , Xfire or single gpu (I mean at this point I can't even use 1 GPU only on LOW settings and get over 50 fps...), zero response from CDPR on the AMD issues, and the little squabble between AMD and Nvidia about THIS GAME (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-and-amd-argue-over-who-has-the-best-hair-again/) just kind of points to them not prioritizing AMD products at all. We'll never really truly know, but in the end, when the game has been out 5 months now, 'AMD crappy drivers' doesn't cut it. Something is going on with how the game was created that appeals completely to Nvidia products and has left AMD to fend for themselves. Games that come out have AMD and Nvidia working with game devs to make sure their products will be optimized while development goes on. It isn't "K Fallout 4 is released, here's the game, get your stuff to work good luck". Nvidia products have had zero issues since day 1. I think with what I mentioned above and that huge fact is all that needs to be said. Which is a shame. I had alot of respect for CDPR with how they fight against DRM etc.

I'll leave this as my last post about this as well as about Witcher 3 in general since I see it's not something that will ever be resolved. This user on the AMD forums has tons of forum replies helping people get their drivers, hardware, etc working. He worked a ton on trying to find a fix to this issue with TW3 and this was his most recent, and final reply about the issue. I may not be as passionate about it but I don't blame him considering how much he worked to try to get his GPUs to work on his, what hes said, favorite game franchise to date. Here's to hoping CDPR and AMD can fix this in the future. Cheers mates.

It's out of AMD's hands now, they did what they could.
The rest is up to CDPR.
But judging by the fact they haven't replied to any thread concerning Xfire, and that they have to pretty much every SLI issue, I wouldn't get my hopes up.
It would seem Nvidia's got some dirty clause at play here too, unfortunately that seems to be the trend lately.

You can check out the above mentioned thread, that's the closest to perfect I've been able to get it.
The more I deepen my search, the more I keep hitting that Nvidia wall of licensing.
The remaining flicker (after the fixes in the above thread) seems to be a lighting issue, for which there is no setting.
That would mean it's either handled by the engine (CDPR must fix it), or it's provided by some Nvidia 'tech' (Nvidia must fix it).

The blame completely lies with CDPR on this, SLI is working fine, SLI and Xfire are essentially the same thing.
No new tech needs to be implemented, it's just slightly different settings.
I can't think of one sensible reason why this hasn't been fixed yet, however I can think of many dubious ones.

You want things to change? Then convince CDPR to break their contract with Nvidia.
I'll wait for 1.07 to pass final judgement, but as you can tell I have my doubts it will address crossfire at all.
Every article about patch 1.07 is missing that crucial word...Crossfire.

It's not a driver issue, it's a game issue, and by extension Nvidia sabotage,which can never be proven unless someone at CDPR feels like spilling the beans and getting their *sses sued off.
In the end it's AMD that takes the blame (as always), and the Nvidiots just jump on the bandwagon with their....AMD drivers suck....bull.
If only they knew...

 

[eloj]

"CDPR is not responsible for the bad AMD drivers." is both true but perhaps also irrelevant. You can be a good citizen or you can be a bad citizen. It's impossible (without investigation) to know if the problem is with the drivers or if CDPR are Doing The Wrong Thing.

The whole problem we currently have is that IHVs are trying to help developers who don't know WTF they're doing by essentially live-patching games in their drivers. This is unsustainable, and hopefully DX12/Vulkan will make it a thing of the past, finally.

Also don't buy multi-card setups, they're always trouble not matter what 'side'. HTH.