Low Frame Rate On The Witcher 3 (GTX 980 Ti)

[Matthew-san]

My brother plays The Witcher on a 2k monitor at ultra settings (no AA and ambient occlusion set on SSAO). In certain demanding areas of the games such as Novigrad he is getting frame rates in the mid 40's and it drops to that fps count quite often. With the PC build he has he should be getting a solid 60 fps even in the most demanding areas of the game and much higher in not so demanding areas. Here is his system:

OS: Windows 8.1 64-bit
MOBO: ASRock H97 Anniversary
CPU: i5-4690k
GPU: PNY GTX 980 Ti
RAM: A-Data 8 GB 1600 MHz
HDD: Western Digital Blue 1TB 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache
PSU: EVGA 600 B

Does anyone know why his frame is so low?

 

[Matthew-san]

There are no problems with the i5-4690k being able to run The Witcher 3. I started this thread a long time ago when the game had come out fairly recently. A few game patches and driver updates and the performance issues were fixed. However, on the subject of CPU bottlenecks, certain i5 CPU's in certain games can bootleneck the GPU. Fallout 4 is one game where the CPU can be a major bottleneck. I upgraded from an i5-4690k to an i7-4790k and gained an average of 20=30 fps in CPU intensive areas of the game. Of course the GPU is usually the bottleneck with most games but it's not always the case.

 

[Victor_36]

There are way more objects (characters) in the major city and those objects are partly calculated using CPU. So try overclocking the cpu and see. Don't forget to turn off Hairworks which is the biggest FPS influencer. Turn off vsync since you are not gonna need it.

 

[Victor_36]

980Ti SLI should not be the problem for Witcher 3 at 2K. 4K is another story.
It's the CPU's problem.

Novigrad has many NPCs and they are taxing the CPU much more than the GPU.

Free Solutions
Adjust Game Settings to lower the ones that taxes more on CPU. You will have to do some experiments by adjusting each setting, apply and compare fps to find out the exact root cause. (No need to change any of the post-processing options since they are all very light on performance). MSI Afterburner can help with that process since you can also see the CPU load differences rather than just fps.

Go to Nvidia Control Panel -> PhysX -> Select 980Ti to run the PhysX. This will relieve CPU a lot.

Overclock your CPU.

More expensive Solutions
Upgrade your CPU (and motherboard, if needed), preferably to the latest i7 6700K. This is the most cost-effective solution.
Get a 4K monitor and play the game at 4K, which will tax more on Graphics Cards and thus relieve CPU. However even 980 Ti SLI can only get Witcher 3 to 40-50 fps at 4K. This solution is not cost-effective at all.

 

[mdsiu]

980Ti SLI should not be the problem for Witcher 3 at 2K. 4K is another story.
It's the CPU's problem.

Novigrad has many NPCs and they are taxing the CPU much more than the GPU.

Free Solutions
Adjust Game Settings to lower the ones that taxes more on CPU. You will have to do some experiments by adjusting each setting, apply and compare fps to find out the exact root cause. (No need to change any of the post-processing options since they are all very light on performance). MSI Afterburner can help with that process since you can also see the CPU load differences rather than just fps.

Go to Nvidia Control Panel -> PhysX -> Select 980Ti to run the PhysX. This will relieve CPU a lot.

Overclock your CPU.

More expensive Solutions
Upgrade your CPU (and motherboard, if needed), preferably to the latest i7 6700K. This is the most cost-effective solution.
Get a 4K monitor and play the game at 4K, which will tax more on Graphics Cards and thus relieve CPU. However even 980 Ti SLI can only get Witcher 3 to 40-50 fps at 4K. This solution is not cost-effective at all.

Yeah... you should re-read. He doesn't have an SLI setup. Single GPU.

 

[Matthew-san]

Yeah, my brother was using a single GTX 980 Ti not two way SLI. He no longer has performance problems with the Witcher 3 anymore.