Witcher 3 - How to Go to 1080p60

In Digital Foundry's guide the configuration of your CPU and graphics card is given, based on tests, which are needed to run The Withcher 3 at 60FPS and 1080p.

Here is what you get using a GTX 750 Ti:

Time after time, in game after game, two entry-level enthusiast graphics cards have proved their worth in supplying ballpark PlayStation 4-level visual quality and performance: AMD's Radeon R7 260X and Nvidia's GTX 750 Ti. Both of them have the mandatory minimum 2GB of VRAM, while the price vs performance ratio here is extraordinary - particularly in the case of the 260X, which is often found on sale for as little as £80.

For our tests with The Witcher 3, we worked through each visual setting in the PC game, aiming to achieve as close a match with the PlayStation 4 version as we could. After that, we ran through our benchmark sequence using two different CPUs - the Core i3 4130 and the Core i7 4790K. The idea is relatively straightforward: with the faster quad-core chip, we get to see how these graphics cards perform at their absolute best. When paired with the i3 though, we see a slightly different picture - GPU performance in combination with a more price-appropriate processor.

The results here are fascinating: AMD's Radeon R7 260X is the better, slightly faster, and cheaper card. However, owing to the less efficient driver, the card performs under-par when combined with a budget CPU. This is most noticeable in the third segment of the benching sequence, where we see noticeable stutter. Meanwhile, performance between i3 and i7 when paired with the GTX 750 Ti sees no material difference. This strongly suggests that the Nvidia card will provide the best overall sustained performance throughout the game.

More information.

I'm running a GTX 670 OC at 2560x1440 with medium (& some high) settings and have no probs. I haven't looked at my fps, which I'm sure is taking a hit, but I'm happy with performance and game looks amazing.

It seems Nvidia paid CDPR to kill ATI performance in their game.

Is it a weird article or am I missing something? They set PS4 graphics as a standard and then struggle diligently to find a PC GPU which will manage to match it?

Again an i7 CPU.
I believe it was pcgamer.de with some tables where you could see that i5 can go max settings paired with highend GPU. Why should people buy i7 instead of a new GPU then?

I've had a hard time figuring out performance in this game. I have everything tuned for big outdoor settings, and combat tends to work pretty smoothly too. At those settings, the game is absolutely gorgeous. However, I get major slowdowns in smaller indoor spaces. Might be tied to fire effects, not sure…but it's definitely not tied to the big culprits this article calls out, since stuff like Foliage and Grass draw distance simply doesn't apply to small indoor spaces. These problems also occur with Hairworks turned off (unfortunately, because I actually like it - especially for monsters).

Not enough to get me down about the game, which I think is splendid, but it's a little irritating because small spaces should really be performing better than vast outdoor vistas.

suibhne, seems that you are cpu-bound? or maybe are hitting a weird bug?

Fire do take quite a bit of performance as I have noted where you can ignite/put it out yourself, would guess it's mostly about the shadows it cause. But can't turn shadows off so hard to say for sure.

And I can tell you the game barely heats up my i7 2700k so unless you want 120+ fps I doubt cpu will matter all that much.

I bought my Dell XPS 435T(i7 920 w/9GB RAM) almost seven years ago. Over the past 3-4 years I replaced the power supply with a Seasonic 650w and upgraded the video card several times. I currently have a Sapphire 7970 squeezed in there. I can run the Witcher 3 smoothly with everything maxed except for Foliage range, which is on high.

I have friends that have spent thousands on their systems to have the latest gear, but I've managed to get by with the same set up and a new vid card every year or two. I'm curious to see how much longer my PC will survive before it either dies or can't handle the latest games.

Originally Posted by Zagorin
suibhne, seems that you are cpu-bound? or maybe are hitting a weird bug?

Definitely not CPU-bound, based on all the testing I've seen. Multiple sources have shown that any rig with 4 cores from the past few years is more than capable of saturating the videocard in this game.

I've turned down shadows to Medium and still get those slowdowns in interior spaces, so I'm just not sure where else to get that performance back. Not a big deal, since it's rarely an impact on my actual gameplay, but it is a little irritating.

Originally Posted by spiraling69
I bought my Dell XPS 435T(i7 920 w/9GB RAM) almost seven years ago. Over the past 3-4 years I replaced the power supply with a Seasonic 650w and upgraded the video card several times. I currently have a Sapphire 7970 squeezed in there. I can run the Witcher 3 smoothly with everything maxed except for Foliage range, which is on high.

I have friends that have spent thousands on their systems to have the latest gear, but I've managed to get by with the same set up and a new vid card every year or two. I'm curious to see how much longer my PC will survive before it either dies or can't handle the latest games.

Seven yeares for me too with 920 and 6gb of ram (currently with gtx 680). Nice to know that the old i7 can still run witcher 3 with good settings. I almost got worried when I read the requirements.

Witcher sex glitches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGT4GO0Cn_A#t=90

pretty funny.

Are you crazy?!
Don't spoil me those scenes!!!
My poor heart hardly survived the brothel (just got into Novigrad).

I'm getting a sort of weird, chugging stutter every few seconds when moving thorough the landscape, especially in built up areas. It doesn't seem to be improved by gimping the settings and resolution (on a 980). It almost seems that it is a loading/disk access issue.

I'm thinking about a fresh Windows installation. Anyone else seen this sort of performance hiccup?

I run the game maxed on my new nVidia 960 GTX, but my resolution is 1360x768 and I'm not sure if my FPS hits a steady 60. Not too interested in a high FPS, though. 40-50 is plenty.

And I have an old i7-950 CPU and 6GB RAM.

An i5 should have been in that mix because it is usually considered the sweet spot for gaming.

Heck, I have an Nvidia GTX 560 and this game has played fine since day 1. Yes - 30fps, but still looks and runs great with about half of the settings in high.

guess my 640 gt will still be okay then

Originally Posted by spiraling69
I bought my Dell XPS 435T(i7 920 w/9GB RAM) almost seven years ago. Over the past 3-4 years I replaced the power supply with a Seasonic 650w and upgraded the video card several times. I currently have a Sapphire 7970 squeezed in there. I can run the Witcher 3 smoothly with everything maxed except for Foliage range, which is on high.

I have friends that have spent thousands on their systems to have the latest gear, but I've managed to get by with the same set up and a new vid card every year or two. I'm curious to see how much longer my PC will survive before it either dies or can't handle the latest games.

My PC is 2 yeras old and I have a i5 4670k OC 4.0 GHz and GTX 770. I noticed that the CPU usages never really goes above 50% on all 4 cores. This means that if I want better Witcher 3 graphics (say i want 1440p display or even 4K) all I need to do is just upgrade the graphics card. This mean unlike in the past, I think the same PC can be used for at least 5 years without major upgrades. I hope anyway