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Our thanks to supporting hardware vendors for supplying some of the test components. We tested using our updated 2015 GPU test bench, detailed in the table below. CPU: Intel i5-2500K or AMD Phenom II X4 940.This is an in-game, site-defined benchmark that encounters water, particle FX, lighting and bloom (conducted at 4AM game time – and real time, for that matter), and common occurrence of NPCs and complex objects. The above video shows our benchmarking course used for testing video cards. The Witcher 3 at Max Graphics Settings (4K) – Benchmark Course Light Shafts: Also known as "God Rays," which are cast down from the sun through gaps in tree coverage or other obstructing items. A photographic vignette applies a soft shadow or darkness around the edges of an image. Vignetting: The final photography term in The Witcher 3's settings. This creates a shimmering glow around objects. Chromatic Aberration doesn't necessarily make a lot of real-world sense in the Witcher, as it is primarily used to describe a camera lens' inability to bring all EM wavelengths (colors) into focus. Depth of Field layering produces a “bokeh” (blurred background) effect surrounding the in-focus object or character.Ĭhromatic Aberration: Also found in photography. Ambient Occlusion, at a top-level, governs how the light interacts with reflective surfaces in the game.ĭepth of Field: DOF, as in the photography term. HBAO+ is an nVidia-enabled AO technology that produces a slight performance hit to hardware, but is optimized for on nVidia GPUs. Bloom is a shader effect that's prevalent when light bleeds into environments an example would be light cast through a window or the "shimmering" seen above an open flame.Īmbient Occlusion: We set this to "SSAO" for all testing. Objects will lose sharpness, texture (as in grit, not as in actual textures), and apparent depth as this is decreased.īloom: Bloom's been around forever in games. Lowering this means that foliage will "pop" into view as the visibility threshold is met.ĭetail Level: The LOD of objects and game elements. The setting governs view distance of grass and unessential shrubs / plantlife that juts up from the terrain. Texture quality contributes to VRAM consumption notably.įoliage Visibility Range: This setting had somewhat large hits to performance as it increased. Texture Quality: The resolution of the game's textures. When immersed in prairies and grassy countrysides, framerate hits can emerge resultant of higher settings here. In the case of the Witcher 3, it's not quite as bad, but still noteworthy. Grass Density: We learned with GTA V that grass density actually can have profound impact on game performance. When the rendered output is more heavily dominated by water, framerate will show greater dips from higher water qualities as defined here. Water Quality: In our test section, this didn't seem to impact performance too heavily – other factors had greater hits to FPS that were more noticeable. More on this as we continue to dissect the game.
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Terrain Quality: There's no direct mention of tessellation or deformation of terrain elements, but terrain quality does impact the detail of hills and other terrain elements. We'll validate this in our next test run, but our current hypothesis is that this setting impacts non-character actors as well, like some unessential wildlife. This slider defines a limit on non-essential actors rendered to the screen. Number of Background Characters: Pretty simple. HairWorks enacts one of the largest hits to performance out of all game settings, even on nVidia hardware. We discuss this more in an older article about the technology, found here. HairWorks draws additional strands of hair and adds a fluidity of motion that assists in realism. We disabled this completely for all testing to eliminate test variance, regardless of which manufacturers was presently on the bench. HairWorks is entirely built for nVidia devices and should be disabled for all AMD devices. NVidia HairWorks: Part of nVidia's GameWorks SDK that's provided to game developers. NOTE: We just got our Witcher 3 texture quality comparison article online, complete with VRAM & FPS measurements against quality settings. We'll skip the obvious ones and keep this at a top-level for now, but check back shortly for more information on the game's settings. Graphics contains the core, familiar game settings post-processing contains filtration FX that are applied to the output or additionally rendered. The options are split into two tabs: Graphics and post-processing. The Witcher 3's settings feel relatively tame in the face of other recent releases, but still require demystification. Note: Our Witcher 3 Graphics Optimization guide is now out!įirst, note that this article makes no intent to comment on gameplay value or worthiness of the game beyond its raw performance output. Briefly Explaining The Witcher 3's Settings