The witcher 3 stuttering problem

[Astreonx]

Hi guys, how are you doing? Im writing this because I have a big problem with the steam version of tw3. Problem is, basically, it stutters horrible and I can't fix the problem.
I have tried all the tweaks on the compendium and a lot others changes...this includes setting prerendered frames to 1/2/3/4, limiting fps in the user.settings archive and on RTSS, messing with the Nvidia control panel and more...I just can't fix it and it drives me crazy because I recall playing the game with no problems.

I must say that the stuttering happens no matter if my system is overclocked or in stock settings.

My setup:
I7 8700k @5.1hz
2x8 trident Z @4300mhz
GTX 1080TI Strix
Asus Maximus X Apex
Samsung 960 evo
Rog pg348q + Vg248qe
Windows 10 Pro 1809 build (17763.316)
Drivers: 399.24 (I tried reinstalling previous drivers and it didn't work at all)

Things i tried:
Clean windows install
Older driver versions
Tweaks in the compendium of tweaks
Overclocked and stock system
Limiting fps and not
Vsync on + Gsync on
Vsync off + Gsync on
Vsync off + Gsync off
Reinstalling the game

So, yeah, I need your help to solve this, please...It's pretty anoying to play at 100 fps and have that hard frametime drops. Also I apologyze for my english, it is not my mother tongue.

 

[devivre]

You might want to check out the discussion here: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/witcher-3-and-serious-issues-with-g-sync.9313731/

In general, please avoid overlocking and keep in mind that gsync and unlimited framerate in general tends to cause issues when it comes to TW3.

Do you have any mods installed?

Closing all applications in the background might also be worth a try. Stuff like Fraps, Uplay for example can cause issues too.

Reinstalling Microsoft Visual C++ might also be an idea:
https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/witcher-3/pc/sp-technical/issue/1003/the-game-is-not-launching-2

 

[SigilFey]

What is your monitor's refresh rate? If 144+, try dropping it to 120 then 60. You've already identified it yourself -- if the stuttering occurs, and it's not due to FPS loss, then it's almost invariably a frame-timing issue. Taking some of the load off can smooth things out.

(Also, be sure your monitor is plugged into a jack on the actual GPU, not the motherboard or a slave board. Someone brought this up in another thread. Never would have considered that unless I was looking right at it. )

 

[Astreonx]

Okay, first of all thanks for answering my question, I appreciate it very much. I managed to solve the stuttering and I'm going to write how I did it for everyone that would to try if it fix their problem.

Like i said, I tried a lot of Windows 10 versions (1607, 1709, 1803, 1809, LTSB 2016 and the current one, LTSC 2019 17763.107) and nothing worked no matter if I use active my overclock or disable it....so what the fk i did? I remembered that in some games, by deleteing the settings and reseting it to default you can solve some issues, and guess what? It did.

For trying this, go to the documents folder and delete the user.settings and user.settings.bak and run the game from the .exe from the installation path (c > program files > steam > steamapps > common > the witcher 3 > bin > x64 > witcher3.exe) and the settings should be reset.

I tested the default settings and I realized that by default the game is setted in "borderless screen" and that destroys the fps for some reason in my win10 version, so changed it to fullscreen and the game was completely smooth.

So then i setted logout the game, open Nvidia control panel and used the following config for witcher3.exe
*triple buffering OFF
*prerendered frames: 2 (it worked better than 1)
*prefered refresh rate: Highest Available
*OpenGL gpu render: select your vga
*power management: Highest Performance
*threaded optimization: ON
*VSYNC: Controlled by the app (and ON ingame). This config seems to work better for me than selecting the vsync ON in NVCP and disabling it ingame.
*monitor tecnology: GSYNC.

*Gsync ON ONLY in fullscreen (at least in my case that i'm running 399.24 drivers which has the gsync bugged in windowed mode).

Then go to the user.settings in the document folder, open it with notepad and search "LimitFPS" and change it to -3 frames of your refresh rate, in my case my monitor is 3440x1440 100hz, so I set it to 97 (LimitFPS=97)
Search, in the same file, the following line: TextureMemoryBudget and change the value to the half of your total vram memory, I'm ussing a gtx 1080ti, so my value is 5632 (TextureMemoryBudget=5632).

Test the game if it works...i drove crazy to fix this issue and this little change seemed to work pretty well.

Forgive my trash english, is all i could learn in videogames without touching a book haha.