Lower you're shadow setting

[00Rubberducky]

Lower you're shadow setting

Just a friendly reminder, there seems to be a lot of people that complain at not having a consistent 50-60fps on their rigs (970/980 owners mostly) and whenever I ask them, they tell me they have shadows on high.

Shadows is a ridiculous setting in this game, between medium and Ultra there is virtually NO difference and it costs up to 10-30+ fps (depending on area). For example, fully maxed out (980 rig) I can achieve 60fps constant (no hairworks) even in Novigrad but in RANDOM areas of the map, my framerate completely tanks (it only happens at night time strangely enough), for example in Raerdon Manor (where you meet Letho for the first time) my framerate TANKED from the usual 60fps constant to fucking 45-50fps (vsync enabled), now I manage to stay at 60fps in fucking Novigrad (which in theory would be more demanding than a random remote village) but lose 20fps in an empty manor? Turning shadows to medium for me completely eliminated this problem.

Here's some exact comparisons (obviously the difference is noticeable side by side, but unless you think it's worth 20+ fps then I wouldn't recommend even 980/Titan X owners to use it, it's essentially free FPS).

Comparison 1 - http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide#the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-shadow-quality (scroll down to the 'shadow' section)


Foliage set on Ultra also causes random lag spikes in certain areas but not as large (usually in densely populated villages) or noticeable (55-58fps is the lowest i've encountered) and i've also turned this on high. Though the visual difference between high and Ultra is significant enough to consider leaving it on Ultra in my opinion, for me, I prefer performance over an extra bush in the distance, though a little bush never hurts

Turning Foliage and shadows to those settings will keep the game looking gorgeous whilst giving you maximum performance. Note that you can even turn on hairworks (speaking to 980 owners, can't comment on 970 / lower GPU owners) and NEVER dip below 60fps, even fighting Fiends, Griffins, packs of wolves nothing causes the framerate to tank when you lower foliage and shadow settings to what I specified above (of course zooming into geralts head causes dips to mid 40s but this is unavoidable, the hair is rendered at x8 MSAA, even a Titan X and possibly SLI 980 build would dip below 60fps by zooming into Geralts head).

So, just a friendly tip for more high end owners that seek that constant 60fps. It took me days to finally find the sweet spot in terms of settings whilst not sacrificing much/anything in the way of visual fidelity.

EDIT: Sorry if this belongs in the 'Tech' sub forum, feel free to move it there if this is the case.

DOUBLE EDIT: The misspelling of 'your' in the title was totally intentional.

 

[tyrindor]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but shadows update much less on the lower settings so screenshots don't do them justice. On Ultra, the shadows update in milliseconds, while on Medium/Low many of the shadows take much much longer to update and can be jerky. There is a bigger differences than some people claim.

Based on screenshots, low seems almost better than Ultra... but screenshots don't show everything when it comes to shadows.

 

[Sainur]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but shadows update much less on the lower settings so screenshots don't do them justice. On Ultra, the shadows update in milliseconds, while on Medium/Low many of the shadows take much much longer to update and can be jerky. There is a bigger differences than some people claim.

Based on screenshots, low seems almost better than Ultra... but screenshots don't show everything when it comes to shadows.

This.

Also, shadows on low will only render for like 5-10 meters in front of you, shadows that are any furtherer than lets say 10-20 meters look absolutely awful, for example shadows from trees or other objects will have a terrible low quality and only render slowly when you get closer to them.

So think twice before applying this so-called "tweak".

 

[tyrindor]

Not at all, I thought that exact thing m8 and compared the distance at which shadow would pop in between Ultra and medium (I even did low). All of them were virtually identical. Feel free to try it yourself and tell me i'm wrong (it would certainly make me consider bumping up Shadows which as of now, seems like a useless, messed up setting to me).

I'll try it next time I play but certain shadows are likely affected more than others and doing it in one area won't tell the full story.

People claimed this same stuff about GTA V and other titles, and every time i've lowered them they were noticeably worse in motion and/or distance.