United by the passion for Gaming

Ahaah, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, what an amazing experience,

only wish my GTX 650 could run it in my flatscreen's native resolution,
23' (58,4 cm), 1920:1080p (=Full HD, 16:9) that is,

sadly it's not nearly powerful enough and so the highest I can go is 1600x900 (every resolution higher and the performance tanks completely no matter which settings). Guess the 128 bit Memory Interface is really a huge bottleneck here, pre nvidia's overhaul in that area with advancement in colour compression, bus interface efficiency and whatnot (eg. see GTX 900 series).

Of course a lower resolution wouldn't be much of a problem on a CRT (aside from general quality issues with us being accustomed to fairly evenly high quality displays) but on TFT/LCD/ flatscreens basically everything you're not displaying in it's native resolution tends to get really blurry due to scaling the monitor has to perform, of course the quality of it also depends on the individual combination of panel and scaling tech and also the resolution you try to use, for one it should match the aspect ratio of the native resolution.

Another option nowadays is to overwrite whatever windows or a specific game tries to set as a resolution and enforce the scaling on your GPU. That way the result is much more favorable.

Further I had to disable ingame AA as they implemented their own soft Antialiasing with a temporal filter component similar to what Nvidia markets as TXAA.

With my already added blur through the non-native-resolution issue, I don't really want that noticeable extra blur on top of it, also the temporal filter comes with quite a performance hit, it's not that huge but when u gotta optimnize that's not helping either, so I disabled that and am forcing FXAA through Nvidia's external driver option, which is also soft AA but with much less of a performance hit and without a temporal filter component and it's performance requirement and visual degradation (even tho it seemed lower compared to what TXAA usually produces).

Then today CD Projekt released another Update for the Witcher 3 and performance seemed to be slightly better as well.

Next I set my textures to high, enabled the 30 fps lock ingame and finally edited the game's config files:

1. C:\Users\urUserName\Documents\The Witcher 3

"user.settings" ( edit this file in a text/ source editor of your choice, eg. Notepad++: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ )

within replace (copy&paste; of course set the resolution you would like to play in, 1600x900 is just an example and what I have to use):

-------------------------------------------------------------------

[Hidden]
HasSetup=true
uiVerticalFrameScale=1
uiHorizontalFrameScale=1
[Localization]
SpeechLanguage=EN
TextLanguage=EN
[Viewport]
VSync=false
Resolution="1600x900"
FullScreenMode=2
VSyncThreshold=0
OutputMonitor=-1
[Budget]
cvMaxAllowedLightsShadowTime=1
cvMaxAllowedApexDestroTickedTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedGrass=30000
cvMaxAllowedDecalsDynamic=10
cvMaxAllowedDynMeshes=104857600
cvMaxAllowedChunksSkinnedTime=2.5
cvMaxAllowedTrianglesSkinned=100000
cvMaxAllowedDecalsSSTime=0.1
cvMaxAllowedLightsShadow=3
TerrainTileMipDataBudget=100
cvMaxAllowedApexTicked=60
cvMaxAllowedActiveEnvProbesTime=0.1
cvMaxAllowedStatTextures=314572800
cvMaxAllowedSpeedTree=5000
cvMaxAllowedLightsNonShadowsTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedSpeedTreeTime=2.2
cvMaxAllowedChunksStatic=1500
cvMaxAllowedTrianglesStatic=500000
cvMaxAllowedHiresChunks=25
cvMaxAllowedDecalsDynamicTime=0.5
cvMaxAllowedLightsNonShadows=40
cvMaxAllowedChunksStaticTime=1.5
cvMaxAllowedChunksSkinned=400
cvMaxAllowedApexDestroTicked=20
cvMaxAllowedStatMeshes=209715200
TerrainTileMinTimeout=2
cvMaxAllowedHiresChunksTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedApexTickedTime=0.5
cvMaxAllowedCharTextures=209715200
cvMaxAllowedParticlesCountTime=0.2
cvMaxAllowedParticlesCount=1000
cvMaxAllowedGrassTime=1.5
TerrainTileTimeout=10
OcclusionQueryAdditionalMemory=5
TerrainTileLoadingTimeout=5
cvMaxAllowedDecalsSS=160
[Audio]
SoundVolume=90
VoiceoversVolume=96
MusicVolume=84
MasterVolume=64
Subtitles=true
[LoadingScreen/TCR]
ShowProgress=true
[Game]
DoNotPauseWhileStopped=false
[PostProcess]
SharpenAmount=0
MotionBlurPositionTreshold=0.05
AllowVignette=false
MotionBlurRotationTreshold=1
AllowMotionBlur=false
AllowSharpen=false
AllowAntialias=false
AllowDOF=false
SSAOSolution=0
AllowBlur=false
[Input]
PadVibrationEnabled=false
KeyboardCooldownSpeed=0.1
InvertCameraXOnMouse=false
InvertCameraYOnMouse=false
CameraAutoRotX=true
InvertCameraX=false
UIMouseSensitivity=1
CameraAutoRotY=true
RightStickCameraSensitivity=1
InvertCameraY=false
RightStickAimSensitivity=1
MouseSensitivity=1
[Gameplay]
Difficulty=2
[LevelOfDetail]
SwarmHideDistance=200
DecalsHideDistance=15
DimmerHideDistance=60
DynamicDecalsHideDistance=20
StripeHideDistance=60
[General]
ConfigVersion=1
[LoadingScreen/Editor]
Disabled=false
[LoadingOverlay/TCR]
FadeOutCooldownExtraTime=1
FadeInSpinnerTime=1
NoninteractiveSpinnerTime=3
FadeOutSpinnerTime=1
NoninteractiveEndCooldown=1
[Visuals]
InventoryBgColorScaleB=0.036
InventoryFixedLuminance=0.25
InventoryBgColorScaleG=0.034
MovieFramerate=30
GammaValue=1
InventoryBgColorScaleR=0.02
[Rendering]
GrassDensity=1400
DecalsSpawnDistanceCutoff=10
TextureStreamingHeadsDistanceLimit=10
GlobalOceanTesselationFactor=8
TextureStreamingCharacterDistanceLimit=50
CascadeShadowFadeTreshold=2
CascadeShadowDistanceScale2=1
MaxTextureAnizotropy=2
TextureStreamingDistanceLimit=40000
MaxCascadeCount=3
UseDynamicWaterSimulation=true
CascadeShadowDistanceScale3=1
MeshLODDistanceScale=1
MaxSpotShadowSize=64
ScaleformTextureUnstreamDelay=2.5
DecalsChance=1
TerrainReadAheadDistance=200
HairWorksLevel=0
MaxTextureAnisotropy=2
TerrainScreenSpaceErrorThreshold=3
MaxTerrainShadowAtlasCount=2
MaxCubeShadowSize=64
HardwareCursor=true
TextureInFlightCountBudget=12
TerrainErrorMetricMultiplier=20
CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=1
MeshRenderingDistanceScale=1
CascadeShadowDistanceScale1=1
[Input/Gestures]
EnableSwipe=true
EnablePan=true
EnableGestures=true
EnablePinch=true
[LoadingScreen]
FadeInTime=3
SkipShowWithAnyKey=true
GameRevealTime=3
SkipHideDelay=3
SkipInputDelay=0.25
FadeOutTime=1.5
SkipAutoshow=false
[Engine]
LimitFPS=30
[Rendering/SpeedTree]
GrassGenerationEfficiency=0.075
GrassDistanceScale=0.5
FoliageDistanceScale=0.8
FoliageShadowDistanceScale=8
GrassRingSize=4194304
[Save]
ShowCompatWarning=false
[Kinect]
Kinect=true
[Foliage]
MaxVisibilityDepth=4

-------------------------------------------

note: spot-Shadow size options ebove: a value of "64" is not that pretty but if you can use the performance gain this should help!


There is more you can do, if you're interested, see the full post over here:
http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/groups/PassionateGamer/discussions/0/617336568068885352/