Stutter fix: Set max prerendered to 2.

[vesemas228]

Stutter fix: Set max prerendered to 2.

Was tinkering around again today...

On my machine at least.. Max prerendered at 1 and 4 is complete rubbish. It was pretty close between 2 and 3.. in the end, i found 2 to the best for my configuration.

Max prerendered at 1 feels very stuttery compared to 2.. Admittedly at release i tried using 2 or 3.. but made the mistake at some point over time to believe forum followers and change this to 1 myself... ugh.

Anyways, for anyone upset about their stutter try 2 or 3. Letus know how you go.. id be interested in what people find. There's a difference between 2 and 3.. its almost like 3 is better for scenes with higher fps, but 2 is better for all.. or it could just be 2. Thinking it through with enthusiast (not developer) knowledge on the topic.. clamping the number of buffers sounds like something that could lead to a skipping effect sure

EDIT: Its also look like you want the triple buffering setting OFF in the control panel as well.. definitely increases smoothness (at the risk of sounding silly.. 2 prerendered frames..)

 

[Pierre990429]

I have good results with 1 and triple buffering OFF.
but 2 isn't bad either.
I think triple buffering OFF is more important here (it just eats videoRAM).

but since 1.07, it's really much smoother with 30 FPS (and I have a i7-2700K with a Geforce 980 GTX slightly OC), the game engine seems to like this setting more.

 

[vesemas228]

I have good results with 1 and triple buffering OFF.
but 2 isn't bad either.
I think triple buffering OFF is more important here (it just eats videoRAM).

but since 1.07, it's really much smoother with 30 FPS (and I have a i7-2700K with a Geforce 980 GTX slightly OC), the game engine seems to like this setting more.

Is your setup getting over 60fps or under? I'm probably around 40 average.

A frame buffer hardly eats any ram... for mine its (2560x1600x32)/8 about 16 megs. My card has 3 gigs...

 

[VahnXIII]

Was tinkering around again today...

On my machine at least.. Max prerendered at 1 and 4 is complete rubbish. It was pretty close between 2 and 3.. in the end, i found 2 to the best for my configuration.

Max prerendered at 1 feels very stuttery compared to 2.. Admittedly at release i tried using 2 or 3.. but made the mistake at some point over time to believe forum followers and change this to 1 myself... ugh.

Anyways, for anyone upset about their stutter try 2 or 3. Letus know how you go.. id be interested in what people find. There's a difference between 2 and 3.. its almost like 3 is better for scenes with higher fps, but 2 is better for all.. or it could just be 2. Thinking it through with enthusiast (not developer) knowledge on the topic.. clamping the number of buffers sounds like something that could lead to a skipping effect sure

EDIT: Its also look like you want the triple buffering setting OFF in the control panel as well.. definitely increases smoothness (at the risk of sounding silly.. 2 prerendered frames..)

I was just playing around with this the other day and found a configuration that works best for me.

My specs:
GTX 980 slightly OC'd
i7 5820K slightly OC'd
16GB RAM
27" 1440p monitor

In the NVIDA control panel I made the following changes:
Max pre rendered frames = 4
Display power = single monitor performance
Power management mode = prefer max performance

Settings in game:
Everything on Ultra except for foliage and shadows set to High

Mods:
LOD fix for NPC hair - I took a 3-5 FPS hit for this, but its worth it when NPC's don't have plastic hair when further than 2 feet away.

Overclock settings:
Temp target 80degs Celsius
Power limiter 112%
CPU Clock +115 MHz
Mem Clock +250 MHz
Voltage +25Mv

My GPU stays cool at 75degs C and my GPU fans never go up past 88%. I use a pretty steep fan curve as well (100% at 80degs C).

With all of these settings, I'm able to play with 60-65 FPS (even in Novigrad) on my 1440p monitor. The only time FPS dips to 52-55 FPS is when I'm in a swamp with fog while its raining.

I'm not sure how much of an impact the max pre rendered frames = 4 has, but I seem to be getting better FPS with a higher value. This isn't a first person shooter obviously so I'm not overly concerned about any input lag. I play with an Xbox controller and haven't noticed much of a difference in input lag.

This is just my experience with my set up.

 

[SigilFey]

All settings will have varying results on different systems. The trick is to find the settings that lock your rendering in sync with the rest of the game. The stuttering in TW3 usually occurs when your FPS gets too high. It's caused by a timing issue between the game engine, CPU, and GPU. It is a wholly separate issue from FPS dips, when your draw rate is lowered because of because your GPU can't render each frame quickly enough.

For best results, try to ensure your game runs at steady FPS, not high FPS. The higher you set pre-rendered frames, the faster your GPU will render whole screens, and the more out-of-sync it can become with other processes.

 

[Verrenus]

Its also look like you want the triple buffering setting OFF in the control panel as well.. definitely increases smoothness (at the risk of sounding silly.. 2 prerendered frames..)

I think triple buffering OFF is more important here (it just eats videoRAM), but since 1.07, it's really much smoother with 30 FPS (and I have a i7-2700K with a Geforce 980 GTX slightly OC), the game engine seems to like this setting more.

Thank you very much for your feedback, guys!

Upon researching the issue for myself (here are some great articles about Triple Buffering, by the way: TweakGuides, The Tech Report), I realised that I made a significant mistake by recommending Triple Buffering to be turned "On" in section 14 of the Compendium! :X

Needless to say, I will make the necessary correction straight away and remove Triple Buffering from sections 14 and 20 altogether. Thank you so much once again for your help in making The Witcher 3 play at its very best!

 

[cyberpunkforever]

@vesemas228 what are yout system specs?

 

[vesemas228]

@vesemas228 what are yout system specs?

Ahh this post was from 2 months ago..

My specs are 780ti at 1160/3850 if2500k at 4.2, running of an ssd. Running at 2560x1600, with reshade.

EDIT: Hilarious.. since you guys brought it up.. right now on 1.08.2 im loving triple buffering on, and max prerendered at 1!!!

2 months ago what build were were running 1.07? I could have been running 1.04.

Pox on the lot of yous.

 

[SigilFey]

Ahh this post was from 2 months ago..

My specs are 780ti at 1160/3850 if2500k at 4.2, running of an ssd. Running at 2560x1600, with reshade.

EDIT: Hilarious.. since you guys brought it up.. right now on 1.08.2 im loving triple buffering on, and max prerendered at 1!!!

2 months ago what build were were running 1.07? I could have been running 1.04.

Pox on the lot of yous.

This was my point -- it doesn't matter a dime's bit of difference what others claim works "the best" for a "guaranteed fix". The only tweaks that matter are the ones that work on your specific system and configuration. Yes, they can be complete opposites and provide exactly the same results.

 

[DXMG]

This was my point -- it doesn't matter a dime's bit of difference what others claim works "the best" for a "guaranteed fix". The only tweaks that matter are the ones that work on your specific system and configuration. Yes, they can be complete opposites and provide exactly the same results.

This post should be stickied and put into the news section in bright red letters.

 

[Verrenus]

This was my point -- it doesn't matter a dime's bit of difference what others claim works "the best" for a "guaranteed fix". The only tweaks that matter are the ones that work on your specific system and configuration. Yes, they can be complete opposites and provide exactly the same results.

I've always upheld the same thing - apply whatever tweaks make your game run best on your particular configuration - but forcing Triple Buffering "On" via the GPU Control Panel really doesn't seem to have any positive effects, if at all really! That's why it's best to just leave it on default - "Off" - if only to keep your tweaking lean and mean!

 

[vesemas228]

This was my point -- it doesn't matter a dime's bit of difference what others claim works "the best" for a "guaranteed fix". The only tweaks that matter are the ones that work on your specific system and configuration. Yes, they can be complete opposites and provide exactly the same results.

Well, only because you implied it, i never claimed this

Lol, its probably like a snowflake lattice of game configuration vs users hardware vs what people prioritize in graphics (iq vs fps etc) to make everyones bottleneck scenario slightly unique, and therefore require a different prescription to get the 'it works!!!!' outcome. You're gonna need to design a full blown expert system @Verrenus

 

[Kidoki]

I tried a lot of things to fix a small stutter i get sometimes when walking around... Some things made it very hard to notcie while others made it worse. Novigrad still stutters a lot here, i even tried low-- settings and resolutions. I don't seem to be having problems like this in any other game.

Tomorrow i'll check if my PC is clean. It should be. But i don't know what to do anymore, really. I thought Adaptive V-Sync fixed it but it didn't, although it did actually help.

I'll also rollback to 1.07 and make a comparison. I've always had the impression my performance got worse (regarding stuttering and the likes, not FPS) with every patch

Max pre-rendered frames set to 1 actually made my game super smooth some weeks ago. Now my game stutters no matter what. I'm really mad because of this, as i don't want to play the expansion while suttering around.

 

[vesemas228]

I tried a lot of things to fix a small stutter i get sometimes when walking around... Some things made it very hard to notcie while others made it worse. Novigrad still stutters a lot here, i even tried low-- settings and resolutions. I don't seem to be having problems like this in any other game.

Tomorrow i'll check if my PC is clean. It should be. But i don't know what to do anymore, really. I thought Adaptive V-Sync fixed it but it didn't, although it did actually help.

I'll also rollback to 1.07 and make a comparison. I've always had the impression my performance got worse (regarding stuttering and the likes, not FPS) with every patch

Max pre-rendered frames set to 1 actually made my game super smooth some weeks ago. Now my game stutters no matter what. I'm really mad because of this, as i don't want to play the expansion while suttering around.

Turn down heads distance to 10, AND texture streaming distance to 50.. mind blown (I did this yesterday).

There are heaps of tweaks that didn't evaluate as worth the fps cost i found. I can live with popin and the lod and foliage settings seem more like living beings rather than settings so i found you could turn them back down to closer to default and let the engine roll with it.

Also the cascade shadows tweaks on the compendium page specify hardcore values.. super extreme. Will probably be fine if you're out on a field watching wind blow in the grass... head into trees or anywhere on skellege and the framerate stutter will be brutal. I found for cascade shadows leaving the last 2 at their default values was fine, and just slightly increasing the first two values by a few points was enough to not see the shadow ring anymore.

 

[MUPPETA]

Also the cascade shadows tweaks on the compendium page specify hardcore values.. super extreme. Will probably be fine if you're out on a field watching wind blow in the grass... head into trees or anywhere on skellege and the framerate stutter will be brutal. I found for cascade shadows leaving the last 2 at their default values was fine, and just slightly increasing the first two values by a few points was enough to not see the shadow ring anymore.

max hardcore place for FPS even without modifications of shadows is some manor in velen (sorry forgot the name-of that place)
Always windy, lit thorches and thick forest and plus when it starts to rain -real test for gpu

 

[MitchB84]

FYI to all, the triple buffering setting in the NVCP only affects OpenGL games.

 

[SigilFey]

FYI to all, the triple buffering setting in the NVCP only affects OpenGL games.

This wholly depends on the driver version being used. It was initially a feature introduced for OpenGL games, but Nvidia has repeatedly incorporated it to function (with varying degrees of success) with DirectX. Often times, even when it is functioning properly with DirectX...the effect is almost non-existent. In general, it doesn't do that much for OpenGL games anymore, either.