The Witcher 3 Discussion Thread!

E3FX isn't that great a deal. It just overlays a blue filter over the entire game. Looks fake. I appreciate the author for making it but it really isn't all that it's made out to be.

 

Screens looked really good tho... But it does add some things, like SSAO among other things. But I dunno, played for an hour, didn't see why I should bother with it, reverted back.
I do use SweetFX/ENB in other games (Skyrim, FSX, Dishonored, X-COM EW, etc.), but I felt like TW3 doesn't need one, or I didn't find the right one. There are few other presets, but for now I'm enjoying the game as it is.

 

So uhmm, 1,07 has been released. 2,1GB in two parts (installer and .bin thingy) on GOG.com. There's also a new DLC available.

 

I've seen no improvement in performance with the new patch. But I've also seen no degradation, which some have over on Steam forums.

I'm getting crashes to desktop every so often. Not sure if it's due to my overclock (which I've tested for stability in Valley) or a game-related bug. Will try it without the overclock.

 

Yeah, I had a couple of crashes as well, without overclock.

 

Just out of the blue. The screen will freeze for a few seconds and then bam, next thing you know you're at the desktop and the game has closed. That kind of thing?

 

Sounds about right.

 

Downloading the patch now, will report if crashes also happen to me.

 

I've just found that my overclock settings in fact weren't stable in Valley (ugh, finding stable overclocks is such a tedious process!). But from the sounds of it, that might not be the issue anyway if you're also experiencing the crashing.

That'll be useful to know. Thanks!

 

How long until the crash happen?

 

A few minutes. No more than 5.

 

Oh, like that. Mine lasted for a couple of hours.

 

Ah ok, probably my unstable overclock in that case.

 

Sadly i can even open the game since update, got EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (3221225477) error in the crash report

Click the exe and got this.


Edit: Looks like it cause by debug console enabler plugin

 

Happens to me too. My OC is more meta-stable, meaning I get crashes in 50% of Valley and Fire Strike runs, and works perfectly for the other 50%. So I don't know what to think. I'm considering RMAing the board since I have a rather crappy ASIC score (67.3%). I want +300/+350 stable overclocks with a +175 mV over volt.

But in general Witcher 3 has crashed my GPU ever since release and even at stock clocks, when GTA V and other games work perfectly. Note that I change drivers to 350.12 whenever I want to play GTA since every driver since then has screwed up my GTA performance.

 

Ahhh well, turns out the overclock wasn't stable in Valley, I just hadn't let it run long enough to find the instability was there.

So far I've got;

+190 core with +12.5mV (1.075V)
+225 core with +37.5mV (1.100V)

Both seem stable with quite a while spent in Valley just looping over and over.

I'm unwilling to go any further with the voltage because of my 180W adapter. I'm currently debating what to pick for my daily non-benchmark overclock. I've found that the Metro Redux benchmarks really gobble up the power at 1.1V - consistently running between 180-210W (which is undoubtedly borderline for a 180W adapter with 87% efficiency rating). The Witcher 3 will hover around 170-190W. Then again, the points in the Metro benchmarks where the power consumption really ramps up is where the framerate exceeds 60 - I always enable VSYNC in games so this may be less of an issue.

 

My W230SS adapter is 67% the power rating of yours, but it admittedly has a GPU half as powerful as well. Do you mind divulging how you get power consumption readouts of the entire notebook while gaming?

 

Got a power consumption meter: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plug-In-Power-and-Energy-Monitor/dp/B000Q7PJGW

 

Tried the new 1.07 patch for an hour today, finished one of the early side quests about the arsonist and killed an enemy or two around the river.

All settings ultra, no vsync, framerate capped to 60, nvidia hairworks enabled with no AA, everything else ultra/on

Had basically locked on 60fps all the time. Maybe drops to 56 for a second, but mostly fluid perfect 60fps. My system is not overclocked either. So far, very happy with the game and getting accustomed to use a controller hah.

 

I'm not seeing that level of performance. Are you using SLI? Sorry, Tapatalk app doesn't show forum signatures.

 

Yes SLI

 

Yep. When it originally launched, my performance was very dodgy and I could never hit consistent 60fps with max settings. Since we can now tweak more settings, and with the improvements they have made, I can finally enjoy consistent performance. Though I noticed if I use vsync, my fps drops are much more common.

 

Seems like Witcher is just not my game...
Witcher 2 was extremely stuttery on my macbook pro with 6750m 1gb. I had to massively over clock the cpu to have steady 30fps but mbp kept shutting down due to overheat.

Now i got a Windows laptop with GTX 860m 4gb and i am unable to play witcher 3 even at 1360 with lowest settings / no effects etc. FPS drops below 20 is common and 24/7 audio stuttering, latest drivers etc. What's wrong... I seem to play other modern games more or less fine.

 

Performance improvements is there but not really noticeable, i've been playing about an hour and there's no crash.
Need to get used to the new inventory style.

 

MacBooks, Pro and otherwise, are utterly horrible for gaming. Sorry, they just are (and that's not just me saying; I've owned three MacBooks and a PowerBook G4 over the years).

Now i got a Windows laptop with GTX 860m 4gb and i am unable to play witcher 3 even at 1360 with lowest settings / no effects etc. FPS drops below 20 is common and 24/7 audio stuttering, latest drivers etc. What's wrong... I seem to play other modern games more or less fine.[/QUOTE]

GTX 860M is below the minimum requirements for Witcher 3.

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Witcher-3-Notebook-Benchmarks.143187.0.html
This clearly suggests that it's not, right? Did they benchmarked it while zooming in to the wall?

 

Highly agree with that. Forget the hardware. The software itself is badly optimised for gaming. For example, OS X's implementation of OpenGL usually lags one or two versions behind the latest, and Apple doesn't really bother supporting it much, if at all.

I have a bit of contention with that - the 860M is an extremely capable GPU for its TDP rating (I'm speaking about the Maxwell GM107 chip). I have my settings to Medium-High, and texture settings are at Ultra. I have nearly all post-processing effects on as well, sharpening to medium, SSAO and depth of field. I get a fairly decent 35-45 FPS, even in very demanding areas like Crookback Bog. Framerates occasionally reach 55-60 in less-demanding indoor areas (V-sync ON, of course).

Perhaps @Lieto could detail his settings, system specs and if his 860M is the Kepler version (use GPU-Z to find out)? If it is indeed Kepler, then his low performance is to be expected since TW3 makes use of a lot of tessellation, which Maxwell chips are better at.

 

Ah just play for about 20 minutes and the game crashes right to desktop with no messages. This time i turned off VSync, could it be because of that?

 

I retract my statement about there being no performance improvements. There are - HairWorks no longer bogs the framerate of cutscenes down dramatically like it used to. Cutscenes now run as fluently as the actual gameplay does.

 

You also have yours significantly overclocked, enough to put it noticeably above the GTX 660 minimum. Still, that doesn't account for the 2-3 times better performance that you're getting. There must be something else going on.

 

Is Optimus defaulting to the Intel GPU?

 

My point exactly. @Lieto might have the Kepler 860M. If not, his Maxwell 860M is throttling badly...

 

Yup, me too. I just finished one story quest and on my way to Velen to look for mah stash . Though with the distractions on the roads (question marks) I will be lucky if I get there in a week...
As for performance improvements, previously I would get some stutters here and there, but after I played it now I didn't see any more. Hope it stays that way

 

Any idea what chip do i have?
Also i am sorry to hijack the thread, maybe someone can help me troubleshoot in PMs i d really appreciate it, i am new to windows and might have screwed something up

 

Maxwell

 

That's Maxwell indicated by GM107 if it's Kepler it would be GK.
What's your notebook?

Try to right click on The Witcher shortcut, Run with graphics processor and choose NVIDIA
Or
Try update your VBios to the newest available.

I still got stutters with in-game VSync off but not with VSync on.
With VSync on i got FPS drops.

 

It appears I still get some stutters in White Orchard area, yet I still haven't encountered any in Velen.
Speaking of White Orchard, they still haven't fixed that iron gate bug in White Orchard cemetery. I can't complete that damn treasure hunt!

 

Are you sure it's not running on the integrated GPU? I can play on 940m and ULV i7:

 

I started a new game with the updated 1.07 and the training area is borked. It doesn't tell you what you're supposed to do or tell you what keys, etc. Vesmir just stands there and says "what are you waiting for" blah blah blah.

 

So, I did this Ladies Of The Wood + the other quest within it, got a pretty screwed up result. Then decided to look up what would have been if I did it the other way... Yeah, not that great, still the same screwed up result...



Now I know why Geralt has grey hair...

Screw it all, imma gonna re-install Skyrim and be happy. At least there I can go on killing sprees and annihilate everything, and still feel good about my decisions.
Oh wait, if I decide to reinstall Skyrim that would also mean I would have to spend a day and a half installing and configuring all the mods...
Video games, why do you have to be so cruel to me?!?

 

Pretty sure it's not.
I have i5 Haswell CPU with presumably 2 cores, 6gb ram and a normal non-sad drive — do you think any of those can be an issue?

My overal system performance is slightly sluggish but i was blaming the hdd (since i am used to SSD)

 

For future reference:
Step 1: Install Mod Organizer.
Step 2: Install your mods.
Step 3: You can back up and restore your Mod Organizer directory at any time.
Step 4: Profit?

 

Previously I had a backup copy of an entire Skyrim folder, but last time I deleted the game I kinda said "fudge it." And now I pay...
I do usually install mods manually, with managing load order through NMM. Tried MO once, but it was too much of a hassle, found doing it manually way easier, especially when you have combine parts of various mods.

 

I found NMM vs. MO to be the opposite, especially for mods that need to be installed in specific orders. With NMM, when Mod C depends on Mod B which depends on Mod A and I want to update Mod A then I need to uninstall Mod C, then B, then A in that order, then update, then install new A, then B, then C. If I forget to uninstall C and B, or I uninstall in the wrong order, then I get an irreparably broken Data directory and time to do a wipe and clean install of the game, clean my masters, reinstall everything. Ugh.

With MO I install new A, check the left panel to ensure A is above B (left panel is installation order), run LOOT, check the right panel to ensure plugins are enabled (right panel is load order). Done. MO has a steeper learning curve than NMM but I think it's worth the effort.

 

These are just tools, so everyone chooses the one which he/she finds convenient to his/her use. Like I've said, I do pretty much everything manually, just use NMM for sorting mod load order (by hand as well). So far I rarely encountered instabilities.
And when I said I combine few mods, I meant that I take few mods (easiest example would be animation mods), take various parts from them, and combine everything in one. You can do it in MO, obviously, but when I tried it, drag'n'drop was much more straight forward.

Anyway, back on topic... So yeah, glad to see knuckle fights made their way back into TW3. Can't imagine a Witcher game without them . From now on call me Geralt of Rivia, Master Thief (dammit, that's Garrett, not Geralt!) Master Witcher and a Knuckle Fight Champion of Velen.
Also feel like a boob for not figuring out how to level up Delusion skill. Seriously, it was right there under my nose... Figured it out a bit too late, but those were the easiest 3 skill points spared. I blame Keira for distracting me, if you know what I mean ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

Your CPU might be a factor, but not to such an extent. Open GPU-Z and open the Sensors tab. Set the refresh rate to 1.0 seconds. Then run Witcher 3 at the medium preset settings, whatever the FPS you get. Then alt-tab out to GPU-Z to see the utilisation and stats of the various GPU components. Post a screenshot here. You might be experiencing throttling, or the Intel GPU is taking over.

 

On my desktop which I haven't been able to play the last month I released the evil spirit in the ladies of the wood quest, I am going to try to do it the other way on my other playthrough.

 

The interesting thing about that quest is that it kind of teaches you in later quests that sometimes that the "good guy" route isn't always going to lead to the "good guy" outcome.

Looking forward to the season pass content... should be about the same size as The Witcher 2.

 

Seems like it's the trend of TW games.
I know I've said this already, but the more I play this game, the more quests fascinate me. Hard to put down this game. Well done CDPR!

Herehere! The chance that I will buy the Expansion Pass grows bigger with every hour I spent in the game.

 

Yep, just finished out the ladies in the woods tonight. After I finished the tree spirit part of the quest, I actually started doing some reading in my guides (they are more for the lore of it) and ended up seeing that the choice I made would have an impact down the line. . . sure enough it did. When I read initially about all the choices you would have to make that effected how the game was played, I didn't see it till now. - Bonus points - in witcher 2 you either saved or killed a certain person: At the start of witcher 3 when you first meet a certain guard before you meet back up with yennifer for the first time, he asks you about this. IF you had the save file for the witcher 2 on your PC it would read the file for the answer, or you could just answer what you did - or make up an answer if you didn't play. Apparently, this has a great impact toward the third act in the game! Great to see choices in the previous game, pop up as effects in the new