Need help with graphics settings

[Beefy McWhatnow]

Hi there !
Having completed both Witcher 1&2 I wanted to finish the trilogy with Witcher 3 :)

Here are my specs - windows 10 64bit, i7 6700HQ 2.60GHz, 16gb ram, nvidia geforce gtx 960m

Could anyone tell me the best graphics settings for this specs? Since I'm not that good with this I thought it would be better asking someone who actually knows!

Thanks in advance, if I missed something tell me :D

[Vellari]

Medium to high @1080p.

As it is a laptop a lot depends on how hot your GPU gets before it starts to throttle back, which will cause lower fps and/or stutter.

[Beefy McWhatnow]

Originally posted by Vellari:

Medium to high @1080p.

As it is a laptop a lot depends on how hot your GPU gets before it starts to throttle back, which will cause lower fps and/or stutter.

Thanks for your answer! :D
Im using a cooler, which I think has been doing a good job, I never felt the laptop getting hot as I would without it. But yeah, I was on the tutorial and with low - medium settings i was getting between 20~26fps and with high - ultra settings 7~18fps..

[Vellari]

Biggest killers are Hair-works (off for anything less than a 1080) and foliage distance.

[Beefy McWhatnow]

Originally posted by Vellari:

Biggest killers are Hair-works (off for anything less than a 1080) and foliage distance.

Thanks for the tip, tomorrow I'll test it out :)

[Hoop]

Try medium without the hair works crap at 1080P

Anti-aliasing and SSAO shouldn't be a problem either

[nynex]

I have a GTX 670 and the game looks beautiful at a stable 45fps with these settings:

NVIDIA HairWorks: Off
Number of Background Characters: Ultra
Shadow Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: Ultra
Water Quality: High
Grass Density: Medium (low for more fps)
Texture Quality: Ultra
Foliage Visibility Range: Medium (low for more fps)
Detail Level: Ultra
Motion Blur: On (I recommend leave this on if you cant get 60fps, plus this games motion blur is done amazingly well)
Blur: Personal preference
Anti-aliasing: On
Bloom: On
Sharpening: On (Low)
Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+ (SBAO for slightly more fps but I don't recommend off)
Depth of Field: On
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: Personal preference
Light Shafts: On

[Vellari]

Originally posted by nynex:

I have a GTX 670 and the game looks beautiful at a stable 45fps with these settings:

NVIDIA HairWorks: Off
Number of Background Characters: Ultra
Shadow Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: Ultra
Water Quality: High
Grass Density: Medium
Texture Quality: Ultra
Foliage Visibility Range: Medium
Detail Level: Ultra
Motion Blur: On
Blur: On
Anti-aliasing: On
Bloom: On
Sharpening: On (Low)
Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+
Depth of Field: On
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: Off
Light Shafts: On

It's a 960M though, so dial back a bit from that.

[meep_meep]

Originally posted by Crisp Rat:

Originally posted by Vellari:

Medium to high @1080p.

As it is a laptop a lot depends on how hot your GPU gets before it starts to throttle back, which will cause lower fps and/or stutter.

Thanks for your answer! :D
Im using a cooler, which I think has been doing a good job, I never felt the laptop getting hot as I would without it. But yeah, I was on the tutorial and with low - medium settings i was getting between 20~26fps and with high - ultra settings 7~18fps..

Turn down the resolution. Try 900p, medium settings, and 30 fps cap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHD7O7Bs_Lc

[Beefy McWhatnow]

Thanks everyone for your answers!
Well, apparently my nvidia geforce experience was not updated so I updated the drivers to see if this had anything to do with the performance

I tried a lot of settings ''combinations'', none seems to be working so far

Originally posted by Vellari:

Medium to high @1080p.

Originally posted by Hoop:

Try medium without the hair works crap at 1080P

Anti-aliasing and SSAO shouldn't be a problem either

These two kept me at max 10fps

Originally posted by nynex:

I have a GTX 670 and the game looks beautiful at a stable 45fps with these settings:

NVIDIA HairWorks: Off (etc etc)

This one kept me between 5~8/9 fps

Originally posted by Unquestionable Presence:

Turn down the resolution. Try 900p, medium settings, and 30 fps cap.

This one kept me between 10~13 fps. I checked the video you posted and I found out another video, used those settings and kept me with a minimum of 12fps but always changing between 12 to 13fps

Im definetly missing something, like I said, i'm not that good with computer specs and optimizing video games.

Btw, just like to share that I dont really mind about the graphics per se, I just want to enjoy this game as much as I did with the previous two. I will be happy if I can get the game to run smoothly which isn't happening so far, its really laggy. I even tried to set everything to low settings and still doesn't work

I know my specs aren't the best and, yes, I knew this before getting the game xD but since I've seen videos with the same rig getting good performances during gameplay I was trying to get the same :)

Anyway, if any of you have some other tips that I can try tell me! Again, thanks for the help everyone :)

[meep_meep]

Are you sure you have the game set to use the 960M and not the integrated graphics on the CPU?

[Beefy McWhatnow]

Originally posted by Unquestionable Presence:

Are you sure you have the game set to use the 960M and not the integrated graphics on the CPU?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Thank you very much my friend, that did the trick! See, like I was saying it was probably some noob thingy I was missing :) it's working great now, I can see differences now from medium-high-ultra settings :)

[meep_meep]

Good, I'm glad that worked. Enjoy the game!

[♠ Radovid V. ♠]

Try these settings :
Textures → ultra
Water → ultra
Foliage visibility → High
Shadows → medium or low
Number of NPCs → High
Details → ultra
Nvidia Hairworks → really demanding, try ON with 2x AA and if you get low FPS then just switch it OFF
Grass density → ultra

Postprocessing → everything ultra

FYI the most demanding settings are : Foliage visibility, Shadows and Nvidia Hairworks
Hope it helps!