PSA: Amazing performance tweaks (and there's a new nvidia driver).

[vesemas228]

PSA: Amazing performance tweaks (and there's a new nvidia driver).

Hey,

Stumbled upon this link today and was too good not to share.

https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/37o6sl/how_i_went_from_35_fps_average_on_low_to_45/

The tips there are completely awesome, my experiences are:

- Turning physx to the cpu (which is the same as tip1) made a small but absolutely noticeable improvement in fps.
- Increasing the garbage collection memory limit (tip 5) made an amazing and really happy improvement to the overall fps. Damn you CDPR are PC's arent consoles!!!

There's also a new whql nvidia driver which claims to improve things for kepler.. but strangely it didn't do a thing for my 780ti. I'm not really that concerned as the above did strongly and well.. its at 99% usage.
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/85823

Hope this helps. Thumbs up that reddit link.

 

[carsomnyr]

Did you get any improvement for deleting Apex_ClothingGPU_X64.dll ? Tried this awhile ago but not even 1 fps for me sadly

 

[vesemas228]

Did you get any improvement for deleting Apex_ClothingGPU_X64.dll ? Tried this awhile ago but not even 1 fps for me sadly

Nope none at all. Thinking it though there's an easy sequence of logic that setting physx to the cpu will achieve the same thing. I tried both just the control panel cpu setting and running without the dll and the performance improvement was the same.

 

[Sharpy47]

First off - welcome to the forums and thanks for Sharing this with us, man!

Can you help me out a bit: What is a "kepler" gpu?
And if I own a GTX 760 will this 'fix' might also work for me?

Thanks in advance

 

[usernamegogo]

my old 660 got a permanent 5+fps gain with the new driver

 

[carsomnyr]

First off - welcome to the forums and thanks for Sharing this with us, man!

Can you help me out a bit: What is a "kepler" gpu?
And if I own a GTX 760 will this 'fix' might also work for me?

Thanks in advance

Well its the architecture of the GPU and yes yours is kepler aswell. So these should give you some boost aswell.

 

[SushiRoll]

never mind.... I think I was wrong

 

[Wintermist]

I'll be damned. I did option 1 and still don't notice any difference with the physics of clothes, perhaps it affects NPC's but I certainly didn't notice anything from my quick tests.

Option 5 I did and set it to 2048.

The result was that I could almost max everything except foliage range and shadow quality. Runs perfectly fluent in Novigrad which I think is the hardest place graphically right?

I never thought it would do anything but it seems I was wrong about that.

EDIT: I got a 760 4GB, and 16GB ram, for the record. Hairworks Off, and Anti-Alias On.

 

[dip0]

Nice tips, but not sure they really apply to me
I run 980 GTX SLI which IIRC is Maxwell rather than Kepler (I may be wrong) and also my CPU tends to overheat before my GPU (usually playing Witcher 3 means my GPUs run in the 65s and my CPU is about 83C, which is almost too hot)

 

[vesemas228]

The result was that I could almost max everything except foliage range and shadow quality. Runs perfectly fluent in Novigrad which I think is the hardest place graphically right?

Yeah i just did some testing myself... I don't think i can live without ultra shadows.. its not just the resolution.. it seems like the number of shadows.. or a class of shadows on the foliage in particular is getting dropped from ultra and it takes away from the realism.

Since patch 1.04, where it looks like they nerfed all LOD distances, and possibly added 2 tiers of it.. i set foliage distance to ultra.. but i just set it back to high and my jaw dropped im getting a constant 50 fps (2560x1600 780ti no hairworks). Yes i can see all this popin and the differences in details is really obvious, but i must take the fps.. the gain and the consistency is too much.. ill just look at the ground infront of me

 

[carsomnyr]

Nice tips, but not sure they really apply to me
I run 980 GTX SLI which IIRC is Maxwell rather than Kepler (I may be wrong) and also my CPU tends to overheat before my GPU (usually playing Witcher 3 means my GPUs run in the 65s and my CPU is about 83C, which is almost too hot)

You should try the garbage collector trick regardless dont see having maxwell would any effect on that part.

 

[Wintermist]

Yeah i just did some testing myself... I don't think i can live without ultra shadows.. its not just the resolution.. it seems like the number of shadows.. or a class of shadows on the foliage in particular is getting dropped from ultra and it takes away from the realism.

Since patch 1.04, where it looks like they nerfed all LOD distances, and possibly added 2 tiers of it.. i set foliage distance to ultra.. but i just set it back to high and my jaw dropped im getting a constant 50 fps (2560x1600 780ti no hairworks). Yes i can see all this popin and the differences in details is really obvious, but i must take the fps.. the gain and the consistency is too much.. ill just look at the ground infront of me

Yeah I'm gonna play around a bit too to find settings that allows me to use shadows perfectly as well. Some things I can happily lower to make everything else as I want it.

I really want foliage range far, and shadows that goes with it. Everything else I can tweak, just wanted to do a quick check to see if it even worked, and apparantly it did

 

[dip0]

You should try the garbage collector trick regardless dont see having maxwell would any effect on that part.

I was reading about it, but I don't really get any hiccups generally except in some fancy lighting swamp areas with drowners with lots of different shadows.
If anything though, I think increased GC limit would negatively impact on my CPU temps, which are already really bad

 

[vesemas228]

If anything though, I think increased GC limit would negatively impact on my CPU temps, which are already really bad

Shouldn't do that at all. It reduces the amount of time some garbage collection process is run. There's less stuff going on if anything.

 

[tiamatloc]

my CPU tends to overheat before my GPU (usually playing Witcher 3 means my GPUs run in the 65s and my CPU is about 83C, which is almost too hot)

Here is a tip for that: Look under Power Options in your control panel. Click Change Plan Settings->Change Advanced Settings and look under Processor Power Management. Set the maximum to 80-90% and you will sacrifice a tiny amount of power for a cooler CPU. Mine is set to 80% as my CPU runs hot and the fan sounds like a jet engine when it cranks up and now it runs cooler and I never hear the fan. I can't even tell the difference when gaming.

 

[Canuckodile]

Nice tips, but not sure they really apply to me
I run 980 GTX SLI which IIRC is Maxwell rather than Kepler (I may be wrong) and also my CPU tends to overheat before my GPU (usually playing Witcher 3 means my GPUs run in the 65s and my CPU is about 83C, which is almost too hot)

Yes, that's Maxwell, and while 65c is perfectly fine for a GPU, 80c+ isn't quite good for anything. Consider buying a basic CPU cooler like the Hyper 212 EVO.

 

[dip0]

Here is a tip for that: Look under Power Options in your control panel. Click Change Plan Settings->Change Advanced Settings and look under Processor Power Management. Set the maximum to 80-90% and you will sacrifice a tiny amount of power for a cooler CPU. Mine is set to 80% as my CPU runs hot and the fan sounds like a jet engine when it cranks up and now it runs cooler and I never hear the fan. I can't even tell the difference when gaming.

Will try that, thanks

Yes, that's Maxwell, and while 65c is perfectly fine for a GPU, 80c+ isn't quite good for anything. Consider buying a basic CPU cooler like the Hyper 212 EVO.

Unfortunately I run a laptop - MSI GT80, so I couldn't reach the CPU with a fan unfortunately (and a basic laptop cooler would do little as the fans are left+right only)

 

[White_Wolf77]

There's a good thread in this forum that gives detailed tweaks that I find it useful: http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/36088-A-compendium-of-tweaks-and-fixes-for-the-PC-version?p=1658887#post1658887

 

[Jembuy]

thank you just apply number 1, works great on me.

 

[VickerC]

Number 1 and 5 combined = stable fps. Before i sometimes dropped below 50, now after +2 hours of play not once below 60! Thanks for the tips.
All on ultra, shadow high and foliage distance high + no hairworks. 2x GTX680 @1080p