Extremely low framerates upon starting game

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Hi everyone,

I'm new to the Witcher 3 franchise and purchased the game after having seen raving reviews.

I have been experiencing extremely low framerates upon starting of the game (at Kaer Morhen) with 5-8 FPS consistently based on MSI Afterburner.
  • Running the game on low settings for graphics and post-processing.
  • Discrete GPU utilisation around 20+% and the CPU utilisation around 10%.
  • I've tried googling and all the fixes listed here in the forums to no avail, including but not limited to reinstalling the game and clean installs of my drivers.
When I exit to the main menu (of the game), the FPS recovers to 30 (or 60 FPS, whatever setting I choose), which is extremely puzzling.

While I appreciate the MX450 is on the low end of the spectrum of acceptable graphics cards, most published benchmark tests have decent (30-40 FPS) running on medium settings. As you can see from above, I'm not remotely close to those numbers.

My laptop (brand new, 1 month old Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro)
  • Ryzen 7 5800HS Creator Edition 3.2 GHz
  • 16GB RAM (2 slots, 4266 MHz)
  • 1TB SSD
  • GPU1: NVIDIA GeForce MX450 (2GB, 25W, DDR6)
  • GPU2: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics

Would greatly appreciate anyone's help on how I can salvage this and hopefully get to play this great game!

Many thanks!
 
What's the second GPU you mentioned, the AMD one?

If you are using two GPUs did you make sure the game only uses the MX450?

If that doesn't help it might be worth checking out this topic from the official support website:
And yes, it's not the same topic, I'm aware of that, but the solutions work for all sorts of issues.
If nothing helps, you can contact support by clicking on "contact us"

Problems like that can be a GPU driver issue. In case of TW3 sometimes slightly older GPU drivers are sometimes better. Unfortunately it's usually difficult to predict what driver works best.
 
Sometimes it could be something as simple as the game using the onboard gfx chip instead of the card. Happened to me once or twice.
 
Thanks devivre and everyone for your help!

Options 1-3 didn't work for me but option 4 did (Please try launching The Witcher 3 in a clean boot mode. Here is how to perform clean boot - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135/)

Oddly, it's a combination of Citrix processes (which I use for my work) and the "Nvidia FrameView SDK service" (in msconfig >> Services) that were causing the low FPS problems. I get minimally 30 FPS (I capped it at that) but can probably run it with higher FPS using my Nvidia MX450 + Radeon 7 5800HS.

Cheers!

P.S. this game is so addictive!
 
Thanks devivre and everyone for your help!

Options 1-3 didn't work for me but option 4 did (Please try launching The Witcher 3 in a clean boot mode. Here is how to perform clean boot - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135/)

Oddly, it's a combination of Citrix processes (which I use for my work) and the "Nvidia FrameView SDK service" (in msconfig >> Services) that were causing the low FPS problems. I get minimally 30 FPS (I capped it at that) but can probably run it with higher FPS using my Nvidia MX450 + Radeon 7 5800HS.

Cheers!

P.S. this game is so addictive!
You are literally my hero right now. I just got this game on my PC and could not figure out why I was getting max 3 FPS regardless of system settings. I have spent literally the last 3 hours troubleshooting different workarounds for similar issues and no luck. After I disabled Citrix services I am running at a smooth 57 FPS at max settings.

For the benefit of the search algorithm, to save other poor lost souls like us who work from home on the same PC they game on, let me spell it out one more time: if you are playing The Witcher 3 on PC and are experiencing severe frame drops or suffering from an absolutely unplayably low frame rate, follow the instructions above.
 
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