The Compendium of Tweaks and Fixes for the PC Version
Warm greetings to all of you PC witchers out there!
This thread is meant to be a definitive collection of the tweaks and fixes that make the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt perform and look to the best of its capabilities!
0. Understanding the purpose of this thread
Before you set out to apply any of the tweaks below, you have to first recognise that they are unofficial in nature, meaning that they are not approved by CD Projekt RED as genuine fixes.
However, don't let this put you off tweaking, since you can easily revert back any mistakes without permanently crippling your installation, nor your in-game progress!
All that you need to do is arm yourself with a bit of patience and put a little time on the side for some PC wizardry. That's it, let us begin in earnest then!
1. Updating your system drivers to their latest available versions
The latest GPU drivers can be found here for AMD and here for NVIDIA cards, respectively.
If your GPU driver installer does not offer you the option to perform a clean install (i.e. uninstalling the current drivers before installing the latest ones), then please use Display Driver Uninstaller to remove your current driver in Windows 10 Safe Mode, then reboot back to the normal Windows 10 desktop and install the latest version.
Furthermore, check your motherboard manufacturer's webpage (i.e. ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.) for updated platform drivers (e.g. chipset, SATA, LAN, wireless, audio, etc.), as well as BIOS versions! If you do find driver and/or BIOS updates on your motherboard manufacturer's webpage, you can safely install them right away, but NEVER use any driver updater software to do so, no matter how reliable they may appear to be or how many positive reviews they have! You ONLY want to install driver and BIOS updates that have been validated by your motherboard's official manufacturer!
2. Importing your The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings save files into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Simply copy/paste your desired Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings save files into your "C:\Users\<your username>\My Documents\Witcher 2\gamesaves" folder.
If you happened to play the Steam version of the previous game and do not already have this folder in place, simply create it yourself to match the address provided above and then just copy/paste all of your favourite Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings save files in it!
NOTE: If you do choose to import a save file, the Prologue dialogue setting up Geralt's actions from the previous games will no longer trigger. This is, however, by design and means that the save import worked!
3. Understanding the visual and performance impact of the in-game graphics options
Andrew Burnes compiled an excellent illustrated explanation of each in-game setting in the official NVIDIA graphics, performance and tweaking guide for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. If you are curious to see which settings do what or by how much they will impact your in-game performance, then look no further than his terrific breakdown.
4. Disable the "NVIDIA Streamer Service" and "Xbox Game DVR" to improve performance and reduce crashes to desktop
If you are using an NVIDIA GPU, then you are also likely using NVIDIA GeForce Experience. While the latter can be very useful for determining what settings your rig should lean towards, it also introduces a new service, called "NVIDIA Streamer Service", that is only used for streaming your games to SHIELD devices and is actually causing framerate issues in many modern games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt included.
To turn this service completely off and regain some frames-per-second, as well as prevent any associated crashes to desktop, click on the Start Button on the Windows taskbar, search for "Services" and then right-click on its icon and select "Run as administrator".
After that, scroll down through the "Services (Local)" list, find and right-click on "NVIDIA Streamer Service", then select "Properties". First click on "Stop" to turn the service off, then confirm that you also want to stop "NVIDIA Streamer Network Service" and finally select "Startup type: Disabled" from the drop-down menu for both of these services!
Finally, open the Xbox app from the Windows 10 Start menu, then navigate to the "Settings" panel by clicking the cog icon on the left-hand side of the Xbox app's main window. Finally, under the "Game DVR" tab click on the slider just below "Record game clips and screenshots using Game DVR" to turn this feature off.
5. Reduce the latency of the in-game mouse cursor movement
To force the game to render the mouse cursor via a different pipeline than the rest of the game, thereby resulting in extremely low latency, simply switch on "Hardware Cursor" under the Video subsection of the in-game Options menu.
6. Improve the responsiveness of in-game movement
To increase the responsiveness of in-game movement, navigate to your "...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\platform\pc" folder, open the "platformgameplay.ini" file with a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and tweak the following variable as shown:
LeftStickSensitivity=1.0
NOTE: While setting the file to "Read-only" afterwards is not necessary, do remember to always save your changes before closing it!
7. Fix stuttering by increasing the game's maximum video memory budget
NOTE: The following tweak is especially relevant when running mods that enhance the game's visuals!
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt normally uses less than 2 GB of VRAM even at 4K resolution and this is great news for running the game with maximum texture quality on more modest hardware. Unfortunately, CD Projekt RED restricted the amount of GPU buffer dedicated to loading and storing textures too much even on the highest Texture Quality setting in order to achieve this, which can understandably lead to some prominent stuttering and hitching while exploring the game world, especially on horseback.
In order to circumvent this default limitation and allow the game to make proper use of your GPU's VRAM, navigate to your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder, open the "user.settings" file with a text editor and tweak the following variable as shown:
[Rendering]
TextureMemoryBudget=half of your GPU's VRAM (e.g. "2048" for 4 GB GPUs)
While setting the file to "Read-only" afterwards is not necessary, do remember to always save your changes before closing it!
8. Fix the position of HUD elements at aspect ratios other than 16:9
Navigate to your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder and open the "user.settings" file with a text editor, then find and tweak the following variables:
For 16:10 aspect ratios:
uiVerticalFrameScale=1.1253
For 21:9 aspect ratios (already fixed in the GOTY edition):
uiHorizontalFrameScale=1.3125
Warm greetings to all of you PC witchers out there!
This thread is meant to be a definitive collection of the tweaks and fixes that make the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt perform and look to the best of its capabilities!
0. Understanding the purpose of this thread
Before you set out to apply any of the tweaks below, you have to first recognise that they are unofficial in nature, meaning that they are not approved by CD Projekt RED as genuine fixes.
However, don't let this put you off tweaking, since you can easily revert back any mistakes without permanently crippling your installation, nor your in-game progress!
All that you need to do is arm yourself with a bit of patience and put a little time on the side for some PC wizardry. That's it, let us begin in earnest then!
1. Updating your system drivers to their latest available versions
The latest GPU drivers can be found here for AMD and here for NVIDIA cards, respectively.
If your GPU driver installer does not offer you the option to perform a clean install (i.e. uninstalling the current drivers before installing the latest ones), then please use Display Driver Uninstaller to remove your current driver in Windows 10 Safe Mode, then reboot back to the normal Windows 10 desktop and install the latest version.
Furthermore, check your motherboard manufacturer's webpage (i.e. ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.) for updated platform drivers (e.g. chipset, SATA, LAN, wireless, audio, etc.), as well as BIOS versions! If you do find driver and/or BIOS updates on your motherboard manufacturer's webpage, you can safely install them right away, but NEVER use any driver updater software to do so, no matter how reliable they may appear to be or how many positive reviews they have! You ONLY want to install driver and BIOS updates that have been validated by your motherboard's official manufacturer!
2. Importing your The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings save files into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Simply copy/paste your desired Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings save files into your "C:\Users\<your username>\My Documents\Witcher 2\gamesaves" folder.
If you happened to play the Steam version of the previous game and do not already have this folder in place, simply create it yourself to match the address provided above and then just copy/paste all of your favourite Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings save files in it!
NOTE: If you do choose to import a save file, the Prologue dialogue setting up Geralt's actions from the previous games will no longer trigger. This is, however, by design and means that the save import worked!
3. Understanding the visual and performance impact of the in-game graphics options
Andrew Burnes compiled an excellent illustrated explanation of each in-game setting in the official NVIDIA graphics, performance and tweaking guide for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. If you are curious to see which settings do what or by how much they will impact your in-game performance, then look no further than his terrific breakdown.
4. Disable the "NVIDIA Streamer Service" and "Xbox Game DVR" to improve performance and reduce crashes to desktop
If you are using an NVIDIA GPU, then you are also likely using NVIDIA GeForce Experience. While the latter can be very useful for determining what settings your rig should lean towards, it also introduces a new service, called "NVIDIA Streamer Service", that is only used for streaming your games to SHIELD devices and is actually causing framerate issues in many modern games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt included.
To turn this service completely off and regain some frames-per-second, as well as prevent any associated crashes to desktop, click on the Start Button on the Windows taskbar, search for "Services" and then right-click on its icon and select "Run as administrator".
After that, scroll down through the "Services (Local)" list, find and right-click on "NVIDIA Streamer Service", then select "Properties". First click on "Stop" to turn the service off, then confirm that you also want to stop "NVIDIA Streamer Network Service" and finally select "Startup type: Disabled" from the drop-down menu for both of these services!
Finally, open the Xbox app from the Windows 10 Start menu, then navigate to the "Settings" panel by clicking the cog icon on the left-hand side of the Xbox app's main window. Finally, under the "Game DVR" tab click on the slider just below "Record game clips and screenshots using Game DVR" to turn this feature off.
5. Reduce the latency of the in-game mouse cursor movement
To force the game to render the mouse cursor via a different pipeline than the rest of the game, thereby resulting in extremely low latency, simply switch on "Hardware Cursor" under the Video subsection of the in-game Options menu.
6. Improve the responsiveness of in-game movement
To increase the responsiveness of in-game movement, navigate to your "...\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\platform\pc" folder, open the "platformgameplay.ini" file with a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and tweak the following variable as shown:
LeftStickSensitivity=1.0
NOTE: While setting the file to "Read-only" afterwards is not necessary, do remember to always save your changes before closing it!
7. Fix stuttering by increasing the game's maximum video memory budget
NOTE: The following tweak is especially relevant when running mods that enhance the game's visuals!
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt normally uses less than 2 GB of VRAM even at 4K resolution and this is great news for running the game with maximum texture quality on more modest hardware. Unfortunately, CD Projekt RED restricted the amount of GPU buffer dedicated to loading and storing textures too much even on the highest Texture Quality setting in order to achieve this, which can understandably lead to some prominent stuttering and hitching while exploring the game world, especially on horseback.
In order to circumvent this default limitation and allow the game to make proper use of your GPU's VRAM, navigate to your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder, open the "user.settings" file with a text editor and tweak the following variable as shown:
[Rendering]
TextureMemoryBudget=half of your GPU's VRAM (e.g. "2048" for 4 GB GPUs)
While setting the file to "Read-only" afterwards is not necessary, do remember to always save your changes before closing it!
8. Fix the position of HUD elements at aspect ratios other than 16:9
Navigate to your "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" folder and open the "user.settings" file with a text editor, then find and tweak the following variables:
For 16:10 aspect ratios:
uiVerticalFrameScale=1.1253
For 21:9 aspect ratios (already fixed in the GOTY edition):
uiHorizontalFrameScale=1.3125
Last edited:
