Witcher 3 Next-Gen PC Hotfix available

[Shrek]

Apologies if this has already been covered

Witcher 3 Next-Gen PC Hotfix available, at least on steam

It now runs on my machines (didn't before)

 

[delshay]

it's also now working on Windows 7 after the latest patch. Before it will just load up to the main menu then crash when trying to load a mission.

 

[evolucion8]

Are you able to run it with Ray Tracing enabled? I believe it shouldn't run with Ray Tracing as DXR requires the DX12 spec which only runs on Windows 10 and newer, unless if its using Vulkan extensions.

 

[Shrek]

I only managed to get it running on DX11 under Windows 10; but at least it runs.

 

[Thimblewad]

The game runs A LOT better now with the hotfix. More FPS, basically no more stuttering. >100 FPS at all times on 6800 XT with Ultra+ preset and 2560x1080 resolution Both GOG and Steam got the update.

 

[Tomgang]

If any one get msi afterburner overlay to work in witcher 3 after next gen update or use another software that can show fps, cpu and gpu load among other things.

I would appreciate it if you could share it with me how or what you Dit to get it to work or what you use.

I have yet not tried the new fix, but hope it will cure the lag spikes I have.

 

[Thimblewad]

If any one get msi afterburner overlay to work in witcher 3 after next gen update or use another software that can show fps, cpu and gpu load among other things.

I would appreciate it if you could share it with me how or what you Dit to get it to work or what you use.

I have yet not tried the new fix, but hope it will cure the lag spikes I have.

I have it working normally. Didn't have to change anything. These are my settings:

I must say the corners of the screen are bugged for all overlays. Even Steam notifications. If you look at the corners you will see what I mean

 

[Tomgang]

I have it working normally. Didn't have to change anything. These are my settings:
View attachment 275307
I must say the corners of the screen are bugged for all overlays. Even Steam notifications. If you look at the corners you will see what I mean
View attachment 275310

Thanks. So rivatuner works. Will take a look at it.

 

[delshay]

Another new update available today, improved stability & other fixes, version number stay the same, no change. 2.19GB Download.

 

[Thimblewad]

Another new update available today, improved stability & other fixes, version number stay the same, no change. 2.19GB Download.

 

[Space Lynx]

I have not kept up with the updates, I know the first major one made it nearly unplayable for me, has the latest patch notes fixed this game yet? does anyone know?

 

[delshay]

I have not kept up with the updates, I know the first major one made it nearly unplayable for me, has the latest patch notes fixed this game yet? does anyone know?

Last update broke the game for a number of users including myself, awaiting update (if any).

 

[Not4ce]

I have not kept up with the updates, I know the first major one made it nearly unplayable for me, has the latest patch notes fixed this game yet? does anyone know?

Depends on system

Seems to stutter and become cpu bound on nvidia cards, like my 3070, specially when GPU bound and at 90%+ utilisation, which seems to be a bug (check youtube and 4090 perf, same issue)

But very playable and stable on my 6800xt, completely eliminated frame time spikes for me. I'll attach screenshots below

CPU perf has greatly increased, where it now at least tries to saturate more than 2 cores. Now its using 5-6 cores and spreading the load, which has removed all the stutters for me in busy areas like Novigrad and foliage dense areas in Velen. In areas with lots of NPCs it'll now use 4-5 cores at 30-40% and rest at 10-30%. Still benefits the most from single threaded perf, but doesnt stutter anymore. Perf seems to still be lacking on older 4c/8t parts, specially if they dont have strong single threader perf (7700K or laptop 4c/8t intel parts from meteor lake)

So at least for me, I'm not updating the game since it works on 1 of my setup now. I'll do a full 3rd play through in DX12 which has HDR, better volumetrics and improved water caustics and many visual changes. Refer to Digital foundry video, it looks amazing on OLED displays and has brought back HBAO on 4.02. RT is still way too heavy without DLSS3 but if you have a 4080, id recommend RTGI, which is transformative but Nvidia gpus still have perf issue on 4.02

Ports in a better state if it doesn't conflict with your set-up, but it has issues, and it should have been released in a much more polished state. A classic Triple A PC gaming trend

 

[Dragam1337]

Depends on system

Seems to stutter and become cpu bound on nvidia cards, like my 3070, specially when GPU bound and at 90%+ utilisation, which seems to be a bug (check youtube and 4090 perf, same issue)

But very playable and stable on my 6800xt, completely eliminated frame time spikes for me. I'll attach screenshots below

CPU perf has greatly increased, where it now at least tries to saturate more than 2 cores. Now its using 5-6 cores and spreading the load, which has removed all the stutters for me in busy areas like Novigrad and foliage dense areas in Velen. In areas with lots of NPCs it'll now use 4-5 cores at 30-40% and rest at 10-30%. Still benefits the most from single threaded perf, but doesnt stutter anymore. Perf seems to still be lacking on older 4c/8t parts, specially if they dont have strong single threader perf (7700K or laptop 4c/8t intel parts from meteor lake)

So at least for me, I'm not updating the game since it works on 1 of my setup now. I'll do a full 3rd play through in DX12 which has HDR, better volumetrics and improved water caustics and many visual changes. Refer to Digital foundry video, it looks amazing on OLED displays and has brought back HBAO on 4.02. RT is still way too heavy without DLSS3 but if you have a 4080, id recommend RTGI, which is transformative but Nvidia gpus still have perf issue on 4.02

Ports in a better state if it doesn't conflict with your set-up, but it has issues, and it should have been released in a much more polished state. A classic Triple A PC gaming trend


View attachment 289671

The cpu bound at 90% gpu utilization with nvidia gpu's is due to reflex - if you disable reflex it will go to 99% load, and a noticable fps increase aswell. However, it will have considerably more inconsistent frametimes.

 

[Not4ce]

The cpu bound at 90% gpu utilization with nvidia gpu's is due to reflex - if you disable reflex it will go to 99% load, and a noticable fps increase aswell. However, it will have considerably more inconsistent frametimes.

Im not referring to reflex, just google around or use your own nvidia card, on 4.02 it has inconsistent frame rate when maxing out Nvidia gpus. On my 6800XT that does not happen, but the 3070 is unplayable where VRR cant help the micro stutters.

However, it will have considerably more inconsistent frametimes.

That should not be the case, thats the bug. DX12 stutters when above 95% gpu utilisation with nvidia cards, the below shows how bad the frame times are and worse 1 and 0.1% lows in 4.02. This is with RT off, I have also linked the video, you can test your own card to verify.

 

[Dragam1337]

Im not referring to reflex, just google around or use your own nvidia card, on 4.02 it has inconsistent frame rate when maxing out Nvidia gpus. On my 6800XT that does not happen, but the 3070 is unplayable where VRR cant help the micro stutters.

That should not be the case, thats the bug. DX12 stutters when above 95% gpu utilisation with nvidia cards, the below shows how bad the frame times are and worse 1 and 0.1% lows in 4.02. This is with RT off, I have also linked the video, you can test your own card to verify.

View attachment 289709

What i'm saying is that the culprit is having reflex on or off... and by nature reflex will always lower fps slightly, as its purpose is to prevent the gpu from being maxed out, thus get lower latency, and as a consequence also get much better frametimes...

And yes, i have tested it on my nvidia card, and it plays perfectly fine...

 

[Not4ce]

What i'm saying is that the culprit is having reflex on or off... and by nature reflex will always lower fps slightly, as its purpose is to prevent the gpu from being maxed out, thus get lower latency, and as a consequence also get much better frametimes...

And yes, i have tested it on my nvidia card, and it plays perfectly fine...

I'm confused, why do you keep bringing up reflex? I know what reflex does, also just to be clear, what im talking about has nothing to do with reflex anyways

And I'm happy If you have no stutter, but there have been reports of worse frame consistency on patch 4.02 with nvidia cards. It's worse for me, specially in NPC heavy areas. Game becomes choppy in novigrad or oxenfurt with lots of NPC on screen. This is also the case for 4080/90 13600k/900k combos as shown on the video above

Mind you FG was broken, till they released a hot fix, where you had to use FG1.0.7 to avoid crashes. Texture now flickers more often on 4.02 on my 3070 and 3060M

4.01 was more stable and seems to not exhibit those issue on my system

CPU performance did improve overall on patch 4.02, but there seems to be some issues with some rtx gpus that may be due to system specific configurations. It's also worse on my 3060M where I've reverted to 4.01

Once again, ymmv, it's been smoother in general on both the 6600 and 6800xt for me

 

[Dragam1337]

I'm confused, why do you keep bringing up reflex? I know what reflex does, also just to be clear, what im talking about has nothing to do with reflex anyways

And I'm happy If you have no stutter, but there have been reports of worse frame consistency on patch 4.02 with nvidia cards. It's worse for me, specially in NPC heavy areas. Game becomes choppy in novigrad or oxenfurt with lots of NPC on screen. This is also the case for 4080/90 13600k/900k combos as shown on the video above

Mind you FG was broken, till they released a hot fix, where you had to use FG1.0.7 to avoid crashes. Texture now flickers more often on 4.02 on my 3070 and 3060M

4.01 was more stable and seems to not exhibit those issue on my system

CPU performance did improve overall on patch 4.02, but there seems to be some issues with some rtx gpus that may be due to system specific configurations. It's also worse on my 3060M where I've reverted to 4.01

Once again, ymmv, it's been smoother in general on both the 6600 and 6800xt for me

Because not using reflex causes precisly the frametime inconsistency you are seeing. I have inconsistent frametimes with reflex off, but not on.

As for your performance being worse in novigrad. Well... obviously. And that has everything to do with the game bottlenecking on 2 cpu cores, especially so on nvidia gpus, as their cpu overhead with dx12 in particular is much higher than amd gpus.

 

[Not4ce]

Because not using reflex causes precisly the frametime inconsistency you are seeing. I have inconsistent frametimes with reflex off, but not on.

Well I guess I wasn't clear enough, reflex on doesn't solve frame time spikes in 4.02. So reflex on/off doesn't matter here

As I've been trying to say, capping/turning reflex on still feels worse than the perf i was getting on 4.01, which makes me think 4.02 is doing something weird

 

[Dragam1337]

Well I guess I wasn't clear enough, reflex on doesn't solve frame time spikes in 4.02. So reflex on/off doesn't matter here

As I've been trying to say, capping/turning reflex on still feels worse than the perf i was getting on 4.01, which makes me think 4.02 is doing something weird

Fair enough, if you have tried with reflex on, and it didn't help at all.

Can't say what's causing it on your end - for me it's buttery smooth, except for the occasional load-in cpu related frametime spikes in novigrad.

Im curious though, what are your exact specs for the 3070 rig, and what drivers + windows version are you using, and what game settings are you using ?

Aside of system specs on my profile, im using win 10 pro 21h2, version 19044.2728 and nvidia driver 531.41. Hardware accelerated gpu-schedueling disabled (find that it causes it to stutter), and game settings 4k, dlssq, interpolation (aka dlss3) turned off, reflex on, rt ultra, everything maxed.

 

[Not4ce]

Fair enough, if you have tried with reflex on, and it didn't help at all.

Can't say what's causing it on your end - for me it's buttery smooth, except for the occasional load-in cpu related frametime spikes in novigrad.

Im curious though, what are your exact specs for the 3070 rig, and what drivers + windows version are you using, and what game settings are you using ?

Aside of system specs on my profile, im using win 10 pro 21h2, version 19044.2728 and nvidia driver 531.41. Hardware accelerated gpu-schedueling disabled (find that it causes it to stutter), and game settings 4k, dlssq, interpolation (aka dlss3) turned off, reflex on, rt ultra, everything maxed.

It's a H610 paired with a 12100F and 3070 hooked up to a 240hz AW251HFL on a old mag case

This one's mainly for RT, since the 3070 isn't good enough for RT+Higher res, as much as I wanted the 4k Oled + RT set up, I can't justify dropping 2k on a 4090 yet, so waiting for a 4080 super refresh

Anyways, the other pc runs win10 pro, latest build. Drivers are 531.29, the rams basic ddr4 3200 and cl16 since its a h610 and 12100F. In game It's on high with dlss quality 1080p with RTGI on

I've tried RT off which helps, but still choppier on 4.02

I'll be honest, haven't tested much on the laptop that has a 5800h and 3060M, probably on driver 520.X, but that seemed better with 4.01. Apparently the 3060M 130W is apparently quite close to a desktop 3060, but the laptops an actual jet engine so it's designated to work only

 

[Dragam1337]

It's a H610 paired with a 12100F and 3070 hooked up to a 240hz AW251HFL on a old mag case

This one's mainly for RT, since the 3070 isn't good enough for RT+Higher res, as much as I wanted the 4k Oled + RT set up, I can't justify dropping 2k on a 4090 yet, so waiting for a 4080 super refresh

Anyways, the other pc runs win10 pro, latest build. Drivers are 531.29, the rams basic ddr4 3200 and cl16 since its a h610 and 12100F. In game It's on high with dlss quality 1080p with RTGI on

I've tried RT off which helps, but still choppier on 4.02

I'll be honest, haven't tested much on the laptop that has a 5800h and 3060M, probably on driver 520.X, but that seemed better with 4.01. Apparently the 3060M 130W is apparently quite close to a desktop 3060, but the laptops an actual jet engine so it's designated to work only

The newest nvidia driver has improved performance with witcher 3 - should deffo try that.

Does it have hardware-accelerated gpu scheduling on or off ?

I'd be curious to see how your 3070 does in one of your other rigs with a beefier cpu.
Anyways, schedueling (having it turned off that is) along with newest nvidia driver would be my best bets