Witcher 3 at 60 frames: go for Crossfire or get a better card?

warhammer3025

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I'm trying to run Witcher 3 at 60 frames on High or Ultra at 1080p. Right now I have an R9 380, which can't seem to get past 40 frames or so, and even still drops frames at Medium.

Thus I'm wondering if it would be better to add another 380 and crossfire them (which I've never done), or replace the card I have with a beefier one, like a R9 390 or GTX 970.
 
Solution
Yes, the 280 / 380 are just too weak of a card. Witcher 3 w/ twin 970s was, by far the most cost effective alternative for 60 fps. But the 1070s are here now.

Gallarian

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I always tend to suggest the 'sell what youve got and upgrade' option over doubling up 2 mid range cards.

However, there really isnt too much difference in going from High to Ultra in The Witcher 3, it looks pretty much the same really (Ive sunk 300hours into it, and upgraded my system 3 times since it came out, so Ive gotten pretty used to the different graphics settings).

I'd suggest just sticking with what youve got and lowering the settings a little, and then when the new Nvidia GPUs come out in a couple of months, pick one up.
 
W3 is a big hitter on FPS. It's today's Crysis. If you can find a good deal on a second R9 380, that's your best bet for now unless you are willing to wait for Nvidia's Pascal and AMD's Polaris later this summer (or tone down the graphics and run them like you are for the next 4-5 months).

 

PatrioticPickle

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I'm not sure if your specs on your profile are still up to date but it states you have a i5 2500. If this is the case I would be looking at getting a updated i5 (particuarly a K series one if you can afford it). If it was the 2500k you would be alright as its overclockable. But I don't think the regular 2500 would be enough nowadays for the really demanding titles like witcher 3
 

gran172

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What cpu do you have? I also have a R9 380 and managed to get locked 60 fps, with some ocassional drop to 55
 


You are asking way way too much for that card... Ultra or even high is 1sn't going to cut it.

All video card results are obtained on this exact system with exactly the same configuration.
All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.

witcher3_1920_1080.png


I get about 80 fps w/ twin 780s in SLI @ 144 Hz 1080p using settings as recommended by GFE

 

warhammer3025

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I forgot to update my profile after my last system rebuild (thanks for reminding me). My current processor is the i5 4690k, overclocked by the MSI "OC Genie" feature on my motherboard.
 

maxalge

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lower everything to high/medium


go to radeon settings > global settings > maximum tessellation level > and set tessellation to 8x
 

PatrioticPickle

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Okay, well in that case your CPU is fine and it would seem that if you want to run it ultra 60fps you would need a R9 390 or GTX 970. I have never played witcher 3 so I don't know what the graphcs options are like, but you could try lowering AA and a couple of smaller things whilst keeping the main things like textures maxed out.
 

Gallarian

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Pretty much.

Though Crossfire would definitely increase your performance and wouldn't be a 'waste of time' so to speak, it just isnt the best option when you consider that new products are coming out very soon.

Crossfire comes with its own problems - such as power supply requirements, heat issues, microstuttering, the risk of poor/no support in some titles etc - so its almost always better to have one card with twice the power over two cards with half the power.

So yeah, if you can wait until the new ones are out, you'll be glad you did.
 

Olivier Martin

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As someone who is running crossfire with 280x, I am still not able to max out witcher 3 (almost everything set to ultra with most post processing turned off, turn off hairwork and I am hovering around 60fps) therefore I do not recommend getting another 280 or 380.....upgrade to a new gpu.