Need opinions on upgrading PC for Witcher 3

[1Wolf]

i3770K running stock speeds
Corsair H100
Asus Z77 Mobo
32 Gigs RAM
EVGA GTX 690
SSD
Single 120Hz Monitor @ 1920x1080

That system has been fine for me running everything I play at max settings for a few years now, but I've recently picked up Witcher 3 and my system needs a bit more help.

What am I going to need to do to run it at 1920x1080 (Don't need huge resolutions here as I only run a single 1920x1080 120Hz monitor) with everything cranked up and the Nvidia HairWorks?

I've got the H100 so I can put a modest overclock on the i3770K. I don't want to put anything extreme on there...just something small...4.2-4.6Ghz and that should help.

Is my GTX 690 going to cut it? Or is it going to be the bottleneck? Will I need to upgrade the video card? Will a GTX 980 get it done?

Thanks!

 

[RJ1892]

I would wait and see how the next Nvidia driver turns out, they say they are going to resolve the poor Kepler performance, the 690 is still a strong card.

If you insist on upgrading I would grab a Titan X or 980 Ti (which should be out in the next month). 390x will be out in the next few months as well.

If you're trying to save on spending I would probably not consider upgrading to a 970 or 980, a 690 is pretty much just as good though it has its occasional SLI issues.

The game will be very playable with your current system though. I have a friend who plays on a 680 at medium-high settings at 1080p.

 

[SilverSliver]

Wait for drivers, overclock the 3770, turn off hairworks until patch fixes for Kepler. The game is surprisingly fluid locked at 30fps in the mean time.

 

[Motley]

Meh, this is [H] right? We always have an excuse to upgrade.

So I say go for it. Might as go with X99 and 2011-3 platform. Get a 5820k, a new X99 mobo, DDR4 RAM, and video card 290X or 970.

 

[SilverSliver]

Meh, this is [H] right? We always have an excuse to upgrade.

So I say go for it. Get a 4760k, a new mobo, RAM, and video card.

[H] is also about making the most of what you have, else we'd all have $10000 rigs and desks.

 

[BiH115]

Wait for drivers, overclock the 3770, turn off hairworks until patch fixes for Kepler. The game is surprisingly fluid locked at 30fps in the mean time.

No guarantee he'll like the 30 fps lock. I know I don't, it feels awful.

Best to wait to see what's around corner in terms of GPU's.

 

[SilverSliver]

No guarantee he'll like the 30 fps lock. I know I don't, it feels awful.

Best to wait to see what's around corner in terms of GPU's.

No harm in giving it a shot if he's not getting smooth framerates above that.

 

[1Wolf]

I think I'm confused about what this lock thing is all about? I've installed Witcher but haven't played it much yet.

The frame rate lock defaulted to 60 and I didn't move it. I'm a bit confused on what it does.

 

[dmonkey]

Get a Titan X if you can't wait to see what the 390X can do. That or you'll need at least 980 SLi if you want minimum 60 fps with all of the settings maxed.

 

[BiH115]

No harm in giving it a shot if he's not getting smooth framerates above that.

No doubt, could work for him.

I think I'm confused about what this lock thing is all about? I've installed Witcher but haven't played it much yet.

The frame rate lock defaulted to 60 and I didn't move it. I'm a bit confused on what it does.

It locks it so you can't go above 60 frames. Or 30 if you choose that. Some people report that locking it at 30 is actually smooth (I don't feel the same notion, personally). You can also unlock it completely.

 

[NotJay]

It locks it so you can't go above 60 frames. Or 30 if you choose that. Some people report that locking it at 30 is actually smooth (I don't feel the same notion, personally). You can also unlock it completely.

i also don't see how people are finding 30 fps smooth... difference is BIG

 

[quadnad]

I would wait and see how the next Nvidia driver turns out, they say they are going to resolve the poor Kepler performance, the 690 is still a strong card

Is there any idea when the new drivers are expected to be released?

 

[BiH115]

i also don't see how people are finding 30 fps smooth... difference is BIG

I mean, I can see how, and it does stay locked at 30 for the most part on even a modern rig, but for me personally, I'm just too spoiled by higher framerates.

There were times back in the early 2000's where I played games like Warcraft 3 on LOW with 15-25 framerates, or hell, even Halo 1 when it came out for PC, on 640x480 LOW, with 25-30 framerates and found that to excellent and entirely playable. These days though...I'm just too spoiled!

 

[[L]imey]

With the motion blur on (and playing with a controller) the locked 30 is not that bad, and in prior patches, was superior to the yoyo 60,50,32,40,60,30,40 I was I getting.

However, the latest patches have helped out somewhere and I can now stay between 52 and 60 with no problems, which is must less erratic than the prior.

However, I would say playing at locked 30 is not bad at all if your rig can't keep the framerate above 50 at your desired settings.

 

[naticus]

No need at all to upgrade anything but the GPU on that system. Get a 980ti when they release or GTX 970 SLI.

 

[cageymaru]

No need at all to upgrade anything but the GPU on that system. Get a 980ti when they release or GTX 970 SLI.

[H]ardocp doesn't recommend 970 SLi because of the stuttering at 1440p and above caused by the 3.5GB of VRAM issue. That's a big consideration if the OP might upgrade his monitor also. He would probably do better with a single 980 since it doesn't have this problem. There is a 980ti coming on June 2nd also. Or maybe even waiting to see what AMD unveils this month wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

[1Wolf]

Thanks for all the help and opinions guys! Much appreciated.

I was having a bit of a cooling issue with my machine. H100 was going bad so I replaced it and now temps are back to normal again. So now that I've replaced it I can go about attempting a mild overclock on the machine so that will at least get me closer to a happy happy Witcher 3 experience.

Using GeForce Experience I let it 'optimize' my settings which set most of them to Ultra, a few (like shadows, foliage distance, and foliage amount) to high, and turned HairWorks off. With those settings, even at stock clock (3.9Ghz), walking around in the room you start out in I was pegged at 60 FPS. Looking out the balcony at the mountains and landscape in the distance, and the NPC's bustling about below, it would drop to maybe 53-56. No big deal. Increasing Foliage Distance and Foliage Amount to Ultra made a pretty big difference when looking out the balcony as the FPS dropped to low forties. Turning Hair on didn't make much difference, just an FPS or two but I'm guessing thats because there wasn't anything besides the main character nearby using HairWorks.

So hopefully a mild overclock will get me most of the way there.

I tried locking the framerate to 30FPS but it wasn't smooth for me. It was pretty awful so I put it back to 60.

I don't want to wait until the 390x is released as thats a bit off so I'm thinking the ticket is either to stick with the 690 and see how it fares with the overclock, or pick up a 980 now, or pick up the 980Ti you guys mentioned next month.

Will there be a huge difference between the 980's available now and the 980Ti?

What kind of performance boost do you think I might get by replacing my 690 with a 980 or 980Ti? Do you think it would be a worthwhile increase to justify removing and shelfing my 690?

 

[Q-BZ]

Let the new cards hit and watch what they do to the pricepoints on everything.

A 980 and forthcoming 980Ti are absolutely compelling and appreciable upgrades to your 690 if you want to stay in the Nvidia camp. If you're sticking with 1080p for a while then anything like this will kick its ass six ways to Tuesday with ease. You would be able to go to 1440p easily with a new monitor or DSR on your present one and likely have some 4K options on the table after that. That's the kind of upgrade we are talking about here.

The 980 Ti is going to hit June 2 to some degree or another. Watch it. Wait for some feedback and reviews like the one I'm sure they will do here and then make your best move as far as what you determine is the best bang for your buck for your system.

The rest of your system kicks ass. Give it the GPU it deserves. Your 690 is a clear bottleneck at present IMHO.

 

[SilverSliver]

*snip*

Try turning shadows to low, foliage distance to high.

Also, I saw this is helping out some people

NeoGAF users are reporting 10-15% extra performance by deleting/renaming the file APEX_ClothingGPU_x64.dll in the x64 folder. Or by disabling GPU-accelerated PhysX in your driver controls.

 

[gawkgawk]

What's your processor usage during the game? 3770k should be more than fine at stock. I just got a GTX970, came with witcher 3 code, runs it awesome!

 

[UnclePauly09]

I think I'm confused about what this lock thing is all about? I've installed Witcher but haven't played it much yet.

The frame rate lock defaulted to 60 and I didn't move it. I'm a bit confused on what it does.

WTF? You been here for 8 yrs and you don't know what fps is? Is this a joke?

To OP: btw listen to the guys who said to wait for the new drivers. Kepler is getting a boost and the 690 is no slouch. Witcher 3 was made with consoles in mind so any intel quad core(or decent AMD quad) will run it perfectly fine. Tests have shown that anything over 2 ghz gives no benefit. Sad but that's the console port we got handed.

[H]ardocp doesn't recommend 970 SLi because of the stuttering at 1440p and above caused by the 3.5GB of VRAM issue. That's a big consideration if the OP might upgrade his monitor also. He would probably do better with a single 980 since it doesn't have this problem. There is a 980ti coming on June 2nd also. Or maybe even waiting to see what AMD unveils this month wouldn't be a bad idea.

The OP clearly stated he's staying at 1080P/120hz. 970SLI would most definitely run this game perfectly at that res/refresh rate.

Try turning shadows to low, foliage distance to high.

Also, I saw this is helping out some people

NeoGAF users are reporting 10-15% extra performance by deleting/renaming the file APEX_ClothingGPU_x64.dll in the x64 folder. Or by disabling GPU-accelerated PhysX in your driver controls.

THIS. Silver knows exactly what he's talking about. Shadows barely look any different at each setting but uses massive amounts of GPU power. Foliage at high because any lower and distance looks barren. Driver setting physx to the CPU instead of GPU because this game barely stresses the CPU. Might as well relieve the GPU of physx duties since you have all those spare CPU cycles idling.

Although from what I hear physx only runs on CPU already due to being a console port. Maybe setting it to CPU in driver fixes some confusion and reduces overhead or something idk I'll have to check it out.

 

[1Wolf]

WTF? You been here for 8 yrs and you don't know what fps is? Is this a joke?.

lol. No...I know what FPS is. It was the concept of "Locking" your FPS to a value that I am confused about. The only other game I've played that had a "Lock" in the options was FSX. FSX, with all the aftermarket addons and software available, is still really demanding on hardware and in FSX if you "lock" your FPS to a certain value, then as you fly and encounter more "stuff" in your flight that is bogging down your system FSX will begin automatically reducing detail and dropping settings in order to keep your FPS stable at the locked value. I didn't know if Witcher worked the same way and so didn't understand what the FPS locking did there.

To OP: btw listen to the guys who said to wait for the new drivers. Kepler is getting a boost and the 690 is no slouch. Witcher 3 was made with consoles in mind so any intel quad core(or decent AMD quad) will run it perfectly fine. Tests have shown that anything over 2 ghz gives no benefit. Sad but that's the console port we got handed.

snip...

Awesome. Thanks!

THIS. Silver knows exactly what he's talking about. Shadows barely look any different at each setting but uses massive amounts of GPU power. Foliage at high because any lower and distance looks barren. Driver setting physx to the CPU instead of GPU because this game barely stresses the CPU. Might as well relieve the GPU of physx duties since you have all those spare CPU cycles idling.

Although from what I hear physx only runs on CPU already due to being a console port. Maybe setting it to CPU in driver fixes some confusion and reduces overhead or something idk I'll have to check it out.

Thanks for the setting advice. I'll definitely do that! Thank you

 

[Dayaks]

i also don't see how people are finding 30 fps smooth... difference is BIG

30 FPS felt smoother to me than 60 until I switched the game from borderless to fullscreen. God knows why borderless is default but it caused all sorts of stuttering for me. At fullscreen 60 FPS seems a lot smoother.

A 690 to 980/970/290x would be an upgrade but marginal... I'd probably only think about a 980ti or 390x. Or wait till next year for Pascal. A 3770k is a beast, no reason to upgrade that, even with Pascal.

 

[1Wolf]

30 FPS felt smoother to me than 60 until I switched the game from borderless to fullscreen. God knows why borderless is default but it caused all sorts of stuttering for me. At fullscreen 60 FPS seems a lot smoother.

A 690 to 980/970/290x would be an upgrade but marginal... I'd probably only think about a 980ti or 390x. Or wait till next year for Pascal. A 3770k is a beast, no reason to upgrade that, even with Pascal.

Question is...I'm guessing a game like Witcher 3 is using all kinds of VRAM and my 690 may have a ton of horsepower but its skimpy on the VRAM. Its only got 2 gig. Granted, I'm only running 1920x1080 but I'm wondering if the lack of VRAM is going to be where my card would be really hurting in Witcher 3 compared to the 980?

 

[dmonkey]

Question is...I'm guessing a game like Witcher 3 is using all kinds of VRAM and my 690 may have a ton of horsepower but its skimpy on the VRAM. Its only got 2 gig. Granted, I'm only running 1920x1080 but I'm wondering if the lack of VRAM is going to be where my card would be really hurting in Witcher 3 compared to the 980?

No, the game is pretty well optimized when it comes to VRAM usage.

 

[1Wolf]

Thanks dmonkey.

Just been skimming the reviews of the 980ti and its looking like that will be the ticket. So I'll probably stick with my 690 for now, and then look into a 980ti when they are available.

 

[Dayaks]

Thanks dmonkey.

Just been skimming the reviews of the 980ti and its looking like that will be the ticket. So I'll probably stick with my 690 for now, and then look into a 980ti when they are available.

Make sure you check out DSR (basically SSAA) for games that you have headroom on. DSR + a little bit of AA make your 1080P monitor look better than you thought possible.

 

[Draax]

The game felt smooth at 30 FPS for me, until I went full screen to get crossfire to work .... now the texture flickering makes it feel much less smooth.