My experience running the Witcher 3 on an HD7950/R9 280

[IrshaadH]

Hey all,

I've been playing the Witcher 3 since launch and I thought I'd write about my experience using a 3 year old GPU...

My specs:

I5 3570K @ 4.2GHz

16gb RAM

HD 7950 @1020/1400

Settings:

Every graphics option set to ultra except distant foliage, which is set to high. I even have hairworks set to all, since I configured max tesselation to 8x in Catalyst Control Centre. All post-processing

options are also turned on.

As many of you know, this game is pretty demanding. Even with all settings on low, I can't even get 60fps. However, the settings I have mentioned net me anywhere between 30-40fps with very little stuttering and virtually no input lag.

So, what's the point of this thread?

With all the talk of high end rigs with SLI 980s and trying to get 4K 60fps, I wanted to assure everyone else with fairly decent, but not groundbreaking hardware, that it is possible to get a solid experience with the game despite its demanding engine.

I would encourage all players, regardless of their GPU, to check out this article, as it provides an extremely detailed description of every graphical setting offered and their impact on performance: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide.

To summarize, the only setting that has any veritable impact on overall performance is the distant foliage option.

I'll edit this thread further once I leave work. However, I just wanted to start a conversation about this, since TW3 really is one of the first truly next-gen titles to push PC hardware.

[Fulgrim]

Nvidia ruining things again. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[IrshaadH]

Nvidia ruining things again. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

It honestly feels like the jokes on them since amd cards can make better use of hairworks with the driver exploit.

[johnt]

The HD7950/R9 280 is a very understated, but competent  card. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[IrshaadH]

The HD7950/R9 280 is a very understated, but competent card. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Thanks for the feedback. Amd definitely struck gold with the 7900 series.

[Th3 Mans1ay3r]

Very good thread. I have a buddy with a 290x and he can run everything on Ultra at about 50+ FPS stable but the cut scenes according to him destroy his shit for whatever reason.

 

I have a 280x and I was wondering what kind of performance I'd get and now it's answered.

[IrshaadH]

Destroy as in low fps? I think cutscenes are supposed to be @ 30 fps.

If you have a 280x you should definitely expect 40 fps with my settings - especially if you overclock.

[Costa]

I'm running the Witcher 3, all settings on MEDIUM, water on high, hair off on a July 2011 HP Pavilion dv6 laptop (1366x768) with an AMD A8-3500M, 6GB ram and a 1GB AMD Radeon 6620G/6750M dual nonsense GPU, and I manage to get 10-35 fps (average 25).

 

After Tomb Raider 2013 this is the best optimized game I've ever played with near perfect scaling.

[Humbug]

Thanks for sharing. 7950 is an old GPU but it's still GCN architecture and AMD's driver support has been good. Well optimized games like GTA V and the Witcher 3 (with catalyst hairworks fix) are a joy to play.

Also agree that those guides from GeForce site are an invaluable source of information on new games. Sometimes it's hard to decide what to turn down and they give nice comparisons of image quality.

[Humbug]

After Tomb Raider 2013 this is the best optimized game I've ever played with near perfect scaling.

Tomb Raider was fantastically optimized. The only thing you can say against it was that original version of tressfx lowered frame rates a bit too much. I enabled it anyway cause I had enough headroom. But if you really need to bump up your framerate that should be the first thing to switch off.

In general AMD can be proud that the games in their gaming evolved program seem to do really well in terms of graphical optimization and scaling nicely across a range of hardware. I look forward to Deus Ex mankind divided with DX12.