The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Performance Guide

[Deadbubble]

zhrooms (https://twitter.com/zhrooms ) posted this Performance Guide on Reddit and I thought I'd share it here

https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36x97d/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_performance_guide_rwitcher/

System Specifications

Intel Core i5-2500K QuadCore 3.7GHz Turbo 6MB (January 2011, 4.5 years)

16GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 Kit (November 2010, 4.5 years)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Reference (May 2013, 2 years)

Use the GeForce Guide
by Andrew Burnes with this one, for comparison screenshots http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
as he did a great job with them

I will be going through the settings and the performance impacts of them, using the settings below as default, this guide was made to show the more realistic performance differences of the settings using a mid to high-tier gaming PC and a resolution of 1920x1080, no advanced tweaking.

GRAPHICS

VSync: Off

Maximum Frames Per Second: Unlimited

Resolution: 1920x1080

Display Mode: Full Screen

NVIDIA HairWorks: Off

Number of Background Characters: Ultra

Shadow Quality: Ultra

Terrain Quality: Ultra

Water Quality: Ultra

Grass Density: Ultra

Texture Quality: Ultra

Foliage Visibility Range: High

Detail Level: Ultra

Hardware Cursor: On

POSTPROCESSING

Motion Blur: On

Blur: On

Anti-aliasing: On

Bloom: On

Sharpening: On (v1.03: Low)

Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+

Depth of Field: On

Chromatic Aberration: On

Vignetting: On

Light Shafts: On

I've read several people report a higher frame rate going back to older drivers, but basically every single time someone reports this, for whatever game, it's placebo, most people don't know how to properly measure the FPS.

NVIDIA GeForce Display Driver 347.88 WHQL / PhysX 9.14.0702

(No Driver Profile)

Village: 50 FPS (HairWorks On 36 FPS)

Field: 55 FPS (HairWorks On 39 FPS)

NVIDIA GeForce Display Driver 352.86 WHQL / PhysX 9.15.0428

("The Witcher 3" Driver Profile)

Village: 50 FPS (HairWorks On 36 FPS)

Field: 55 FPS (HairWorks On 39 FPS)

As expected, there's no difference, "The Witcher 3" Driver Profile mainly enables SLI. A few people reported they've gained up to 10 FPS, that's crazy talk, you don't gain 20% performance by removing the latest NVIDIA drivers with an optimized game profile, and if you did, odds are the game now has graphical bugs, and it's the reason for the FPS increase, or some specific in-game settings no longer work properly, can be things like Ambient Occlusion or Anti-Aliasing. Never go back to older drivers, unless it's confirmed Nvidia or the Developer actually did screw something up, which is extremely rare.

UPDATE: Patch v1.03 Gameplay & HairWorks Performance Improvement

Village: 50 FPS (HairWorks: On, 37 FPS) Gameplay +0 FPS / HairWorks +1 FPS

Field: 55 FPS (HairWorks: On, 40 FPS) Gameplay +0 FPS / HairWorks +1 FPS

No frame rate improvement in gameplay, and gained 1 FPS using HairWorks.

GRAPHICS

Maximum Frames Per Second

This should be set to 60 if you have a 60 Hz monitor, you will not gain anything from rendering more than 60 frames per second. The GPU will be used more, reaching a higher temperature/a higher fan speed is required, so it will be louder for no reason. This is not VSync, there is no input lag, it's simply just limiting the FPS. For anyone with a 120 or 144 Hz monitor, this should be set to Unlimited, but you could argue that if you're barely pushing over 60, it could be a more enjoyable experience overall staying at a constant 60, than to fluctuate up to 80 for short periods and then back to 60.

Recommended: 60 if you have a 60 Hz monitor, Unlimited if you have a higher refresh rate monitor like a 120-144 Hz one.

Edit: There has been confirmed reports of the game crashing for some users when accessing the menu or inventory after using the frame rate cap, solved by setting it to Unlimited.

NVIDIA HairWorks

Already tested above, dramatically decreased the FPS, from 50 to 36 (v1.03, 37) and 55 to 39 (v1.03, 40), so around ~40% in that example, HairWorks should never be used unless you have a Multi-GPU system capable of maintaining well over 60 FPS, there are more important settings (Foliage) to focus on before this as it's not always that noticeable, it's really the last thing you should think about turning on regardless of what system you have. One could even argue that at times, Geralts hair looks better with it Off.

Recommended: Off

Number of Background Characters

This setting has no impact on performance, the same is mentioned in the GeForce Guide, very few places have enough NPCs to test it out, this should be kept on Ultra, possibly it could have an effect in some late game cutscenes.

Recommended: Ultra

Shadow Quality

The visual difference between Low and Medium is almost non existent, which the FPS is proving. Though the distance seems to be slightly increased by going Medium. And at the cost of only one FPS, that's worth it. But I see no real reason to go High or Ultra over Medium, 3-7 FPS loss for mainly lightly softened shadows, you wouldn't notice it during regular gameplay. High is a possibility if you can afford it, the main 2 settings here I'd say is Low (Enabled) and High (Improved), the settings Medium and Ultra makes almost no difference visually over Low and High.

51 FPS (Forest, Low)

50 FPS (Forest, Medium) -1 FPS (2%)

47 FPS (Forest, High) -3 FPS (6%)

43 FPS (Forest, Ultra) -4 FPS (9%)

Recommended: Medium

Terrain Quality

This setting has no impact on performance, the same is mentioned in the GeForce Guide.

Recommended: Ultra

Water Quality

Quoting Andrew Burnes, author of the GeForce Guide

"On High and Ultra, water simulation is activated, enabling your boat to realistically bob up and down, and for Geralt to create ripples when swimming or wading through water."

I'd say it's essential to use at least High, Ultra only gives it slightly more detail, which is hard to notice. And even if your frame rate is decreased when let's say you're our boating, the setting should still never be lowered from High because it's extremely immersion breaking, way worse than loosing a few FPS.

Recommended/Essential: High

Grass Density

It's not very performance heavy but also not all that easy to tell the difference during regular gameplay, though comparing Low to Ultra there is a clear difference, and only a 3 FPS decrease, but keep in mind this does scale with Foliage Visibility Range below.

58 FPS (Field, Low)

57 FPS (Field, Medium) -1 FPS

56 FPS (Field, High) -1 FPS

55 FPS (Field, Ultra) -1 FPS

Recommended: Ultra

Texture Quality

Not much needs to be said about this, highest VRAM usage I've managed to reach by running around the entire starting zone is 1728MB, every setting enabled and/or highest (including HairWorks).

1920x1080: 1728MB

2560x1440: 2447MB

Quote from the GeForce Guide,

Low is 1024x1024 textures, with downscaling

Medium is 2048x2048 textures, with downscaling

High is 2048x2048 textures

Ultra is 2048x2048 textures with increased memory budget to avoid loading textures in front of you

Recommended: Ultra, you might consider High if you only have a 1 to 1.5GB card or run 1440p.

Foliage Visibility Range

I set this to High before I started because it's the most demanding setting of the game, very few people are going to be able to run Ultra and maintain even close to 60 FPS.

For example, on High, I'm as low as 43 in the Forest, turning it up to Ultra the FPS is now 34, completely unplayable, to be able to use it with a very good frame rate you need a Multi-GPU system or spend a lot of time tweaking the settings and config.

49 FPS (Forest, Low)

44 FPS (Forest, Medium) -5 FPS (11%)

43 FPS (Forest, High) -1 FPS (2%)

34 FPS (Forest, Ultra) -9 FPS (26%)

66 FPS (Field, Low)

58 FPS (Field, Medium) -8 FPS (13%)

55 FPS (Field, High) -3 FPS (5%)

42 FPS (Field, Ultra) -13 FPS (30%)

The visual difference is extreme between Low and High, I would say it's necessary to play on at least medium, but the performance impact of going medium to high is so small it's best to just go straight to High, regardless of what computer specs you have, it plays such a huge part of the game immersion. Going High to Ultra increases it further, now also adding shadows to foliage in the distance, lowering Shadow Quality has a bigger impact when using Ultra here.

Even if I now turned down Shadow Quality and Grass Density to Low, and incrased Foliage to Ultra, the 42 FPS I now have is still barely playable just as before. A 8 FPS gain, from 34 to 42, but lost Shadow Quality and Grass Density.

Recommended: High, any lower and the game looses a lot of it's atmosphere and immersion, vegetation will pop up close to you.

Detail Level

This setting has no impact on performance, the same is mentioned in the GeForce Guide.

Recommended: Ultra

Hardware Cursor

Recommended: On

POSTPROCESSING

Many of the settings below has no performance cost,

Motion Blur

No performance cost as far as I'm aware, tested by turning the camera slow and fast, creating a little to a lot of motion blur, FPS remained the same.

Recommended: It's a personal preference, though it can help make lower frame rates appear smoother

Blur

No performance cost as far as I'm aware, tested using spells that blurs the image and the FPS drops the same amount as with it turned off.

Recommended: It's a personal preference

Anti-aliasing

Essential in my opinion, it's not very effective, but it's all that's available to us.

43 FPS (Forest, On)

44 FPS (Forest, Off)

Recommended/Essential: On

Bloom

Bloom is also a must have, makes the sun cast Light Shafts amongst other things, it really does a lot for the atmosphere.

44 FPS (Forest, Off)

43 FPS (Forest, On)

56 FPS (Field, Off)

54 FPS (Field, On)

Recommended/Essential: On

Sharpening

Sharpens the image, but almost impossible to notice even when comparing still screenshots, no performance impact.

UPDATE: A slider was introduced in the v1.03 Patch, "On" is replaced by "Low", and "High" is new, which sharpens the image by a lot, and doesn't look very good at 1920x1080, but at 2560x1440 I think it works, and at 3840x2160 it looks good, no performance impact.

Recommended: On (v1.03, Low)

Ambient Occlusion

Having this turned on improves the atmosphere, gives a depth to the scene, the performance cost is worth it. HBAO+ looks slightly different from SSAO, in a good way.

46 FPS (Forest, Off)

44 FPS (Forest, SSAO) -2 FPS (5%)

43 FPS (Forest, HBAO+) -1 FPS (2%)

54 FPS (Village, Off)

51 FPS (Village, SSAO) -3 FPS (6%)

50 FPS (Village, HBAO+) -1 FPS (2%)

Recommended: HBAO+

Depth of Field

It's very important to have this on, without it we can see every low detail of the game in the distance. Also since the game barely has any Anti-aliasing, this helps mask the lack of it immensely. No performance impact.

Recommended/Essential: On

Chromatic Aberration

Blurs (distorts) the entire image slightly, textures doesn't look as sharp, no performance impact.

Recommended: Off

Vignetting

Darkens the edge of the screen, no performance impact.

Recommended: It's a personal preference

Light Shafts

Enables rays of sunlight, also known as God Rays.

55 FPS (Field Morning, Off)

54 FPS (Field Morning, On)

Recommended/Essential: On

Anisotropic Filtering

Forcing on 16xAF HQ through NVIDIA Control Panel or NVIDIA Inspector

50 FPS (Village, Off)

49 FPS (Village, On)

55 FPS (Field, Off)

54 FPS (Field, On)

43 FPS (Forest, Off)

42 FPS (Forest, On)

Recommended/Essential: 16x AF HQ, a must have as it makes textures remain sharp at a distance

UPDATE: Patch v1.03 added MaxTextureAnisotropy=1 to 16, this is set by clicking the Presets In-Game

Low = MaxTextureAnisotropy=1

Medium = MaxTextureAnisotropy=4

High = MaxTextureAnisotropy=8

Ultra = MaxTextureAnisotropy=16

But it has no effect, they also added this line, MaxTextureAnizotropy=8

Did they really misspell the setting? Turns out, yes, they did.

Not only that, it doesn't work above 2x, going back to earlier screenshots, the game has always been using 2x Anisotropic Filtering, so in conclusion, in this patch they added a config line to change the Anisotropic Filtering, but the game changes the wrong line, and even if you manually change the correct config line, the Anisotropic Filtering does not improve above 2x, so none of it is working.

This will most likely be fixed in the next patch. Until then, you still have to force it on through the NVIDIA Control Panel or NVIDIA Inspector.

Summary list of all recommended settings,

NVIDIA HairWorks: Off

Number of Background Characters: Ultra

Shadow Quality: Medium

Terrain Quality: Ultra

Water Quality: High

Grass Density: Ultra

Texture Quality: Ultra

Foliage Visibility Range: High

Detail Level: Ultra

Motion Blur: It's a personal preference

Blur: It's a personal preference

Anti-aliasing: On

Bloom: On

Sharpening: On (v1.03: Low)

Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+

Depth of Field: On

Chromatic Aberration: Off

Vignetting: It's a personal preference

Light Shafts: On

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x High Quality (Not In-Game)

Maximum Settings excluding HairWorks

36 FPS (Village)

42 FPS (Field)

32 FPS (Forest)

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/tmpw66t.png

(Rendered in 4K Resolution, so that the difference is more clear)

Tweaked Settings (Recommended Settings)

52 FPS (Village) +16 FPS (44%)

57 FPS (Field) +15 FPS (35%)

49 FPS (Forest) +17 FPS (53%)

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/a6Kq3I6.png

(Rendered in 4K Resolution, so that the difference is more clear)

Still not reaching 60 FPS, only way without turning down settings now is,

Overclocking the NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB from the stock speed of 900 MHz to 1200MHz (+33%), every GTX 780 can achieve this OC and only takes a seconds to apply.

65 FPS (Village) +13 FPS (25%)

72 FPS (Field) +15 FPS (26%)

62 FPS (Forest) +13 FPS (27%)

Solid 60 FPS+ everywhere in the starting zone except outside the Tavern where it drops (lowest) down to 53. Turning off SSAO/HBAO+ and the lowest was raised to 58.

Turning up Foliage Visibility Range from High to Ultra, and Grass Density from Ultra to Low, Overclocked

52 FPS (Village)

60 FPS (Field)

49 FPS (Forest)

So with the card overclocked, it managed to get about the same frame rate as the card on stock speeds with Foliage Visibility Range on High and Grass Density on Ultra.

[Deadbubble]

Overclocking the CPU and Memory does not improve performance (generally), a Core i5-2500K at 3.8GHz can reach over 100 FPS with everything enabled/highest (roaming), even with three GTX 780s in Tri-SLI the CPU was not bottlenecking. Only when the cards were overclocked 33% each it became a problem, then I had to increase the CPU speed all the way up to 4.6GHz to not hold the GPUs back in the village, outdoor roaming it only required about a 4.2GHz clock, in other words the village is a lot more demanding, or more like building(s) in general. Either way, now we're talking about FPS between 110 and 140, and this is using three GPUs, so a Core i5-2500K at 3.8GHz should have no issues with a single GTX Titan X in most places of the game, so don't worry about your CPU, it's the GPU that is important here for the majority of locations in the game.

Edit: It's been pointed out that I need to very clear with where in the game, running on roads, forests and in battle, which is the majority of the game, the game requires very little of the CPU, in villages with a lot of buildings, NPCs and Cities, the CPU can bottleneck the GPU and the frame rate will go down, but not using a NVIDIA GTX 780 at Stock Speeds (900MHz), overclocking it 33% raised the frame rate of the game by 25%, and requires a slightly higher CPU speed to keep up, but something that needs to be mentioned, even if the CPU at 3.8GHz "can" bottleneck lowering the frame rate, we're talking about up to 5 FPS at most, and that's from 60, so worst case it would drop 55 to 50 in a Village, and most of you don't have the performance of a overclocked GTX 780, that's why I stand by that overclocking the CPU and Memory does not improve performance for the game, at least not in general. And this is a 4.5 year old CPU running at stock speed, any newer CPU should be considerably faster, having no problems with even a GTX Titan X.

Overclocking the Memory from 1600MHz CL9 to 2400MHz CL9 did not improve the frame rate anywhere.

As for the SLI scaling, it's a disaster,

Single Card

52 FPS (Village)

57 FPS (Field)

49 FPS (Forest)

2-Way SLI

70-78 FPS (Village) +18-26 FPS (35-50%)

74-84 FPS (Field) +17-27 FPS (30-47%)

69-78 FPS (Forest) +20-29 FPS (41-59%)

It's the engine "REDengine 3" that is the problem, REDengine/2 powering The Witcher 2/EE also had this problem with multiple GPUs.

After loading in, the FPS held a solid 69 in the Forest for between 20 and 40 seconds, then jumped to 78 FPS, leaving the area shortly reset it back to 69 FPS, but after roaming the area for a few minutes, it did not reset by shortly leaving. So which is the real measurable FPS is debatable. Either way, the numbers are terrible, from 30 to 59%, worst and best case, this game has the worst SLI scaling I've seen in recent years from an AAA title, and again, this is not on Nvidia, but on CDPR and their engine.

To end this, these are the settings that would increase the frame rate, after applying the Recommended Settings,

Shadow Quality from Medium to Low: 1 FPS

Grass Density from Ultra to Low: 3 FPS

Grass Density from Ultra to Medium: 2 FPS

Grass Density from Ultra to High: 1 FPS

Foliage Visibility Range from High to Low: 11 FPS

Foliage Visibility Range from High to Medium: 3 FPS

Anti-aliasing from On to Off: 1 FPS

Bloom from On to Off: 1 FPS

Ambient Occlusion from HBAO+ to SSAO: 1 FPS

Ambient Occlusion from HBAO+ to Off: 3 FPS

Light Shafts from On to Off: 1 FPS

Anisotropic Filtering from 16x HQ to Off: 1 FPS

/h1]Removing the ones that only increase the FPS by 1.[/h1]

Grass Density from Ultra to Low: 3 FPS

Grass Density from Ultra to Medium: 2 FPS

Foliage Visibility Range from High to Low: 11 FPS

Foliage Visibility Range from High to Medium: 3 FPS

Ambient Occlusion from HBAO+ to Off: 3 FPS

Turning HBAO+ to Off increased the FPS from 49 to 54 (+5)

Reducing Grass Density to Low increased the FPS from 49 to 52 (+3)

Both combined increased the FPS from 49 to 57 (+8)


Visually the difference is not that noticeable during gameplay, but if you look for it, you'll see it.

And if you absolutely have to, there is the Foliage Visibility Range, but lowering it from High to Medium only increases the FPS by 3, it's much better to remove three 1 FPS settings instead, because Foliage Visibility Range has such a huge impact on visuals. For example the three 1 FPS settings could be Shadow Quality, Light Shafts, Bloom. But in reality, I think most of you agree that 50 FPS is playable, so is it really worth it to remove several graphical settings to gain only a few frames per second?

Summary

Recommended Settings (No Overclocking)

52 FPS (Village)

57 FPS (Field)

49 FPS (Forest)

Recommended Settings (Overclocked GTX 780 by 33%)

65 FPS (Village) +13 FPS (25%)

72 FPS (Field) +15 FPS (26%)

62 FPS (Forest) +13 FPS (27%)

Ambient Occlusion and Grass Density Off (No Overclocking)

60 FPS (Village) +8 FPS (15%)

67 FPS (Field) +10 FPS (18%)

57 FPS (Forest) +8 FPS (16%)

Overclocking is the best thing you can do to improve your performance for this game, instant gain from between 10 to 15 FPS, overclocking the CPU or Memory will/might not increase the frame rate using only one graphics card. (I'd say you should look into overclocking the CPU if you have a 900 Series Card, that gets higher performance because of GameWorks optimizations and what not, but it will still only gain you very little performance as most newer CPUs today will handle it with ease)

I hope this guide was of some use, it was as mentioned earlier meant as sort of an addition to the GeForce Guide, some of it's performance comparisons were misleading for mid-tier PCs, because the Guide was with a resolution of 3840x2160 (4K).

I encourage people to ask questions and take at least a few minutes to go through the settings of your game, try them out yourself, check the comparison screenshots over at the GeForce Guide, because you're most likely going to spend an awful lot of time playing the game, why not take a few minutes to make sure you get the best graphics and frame rate your PC can handle?

[Deadbubble]

Any interest for these kind of things?

[TheHonoredOne]

Originally posted by Deadbubble:

Any interest for these kind of things?

your probably unaware as 99% of people are about this the anti aliasing in this game is something very close to fxaa in edge quality but blur quality its closer to a in between off smaa and fxaa it has temporal supersampling applied with it as well that samples data between two frames and fix's temporal aliasing and does a very good job at it so good in fact its actually better then TXAA at removing temporal aliasing which explains why it wasn't included in this game with gameworks.TAA(temporal anti aliasing) can only be seen in motion this is why it gives the opinion its not very effective its useless when your not in motion ;P .Suggestion for those who dont care about a bit of blur which goes away at higher resolutions if you downsample of a value of at least 1.78x your axis other words at 1080p it would be 1440p and combine this with driver forced fxaa almost all aliasing goes away and texture detail gets recovered some from the fxaa pass's bump the downsample up to 2880x1620 and fxaa being on doesnt even look like your normal blurry fxaa with all settings at ultra a gtx 780 can manage a steady 30fps and still appear smooth.Motion blur is needed if they go this way reason why motion blur doesn't cost anything is its combined with the ssao/hbao+ and the TAA pass's and is being re-used so there isnt any extra compile time.Another thing to add to this SSAO adds a halo to objects if bloom or light shafts are viewable in front of the object so its suggested to use hbao+ at all times if you can afford the cost which is around 5-8fps probably on most gpu's it will run faster on 600 series up and run like crap on amd or anything older then 600 in comparison