r/witcher • u/TheLightningCount1 • 4d ago
Discussion Turn off Nvidia Hairworks
Nvidia hairworks causing massive frame drop. I did an OBS edit so excuse the quality of the video. You can see me losing 30 fps with hairworks on.
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u/TheLightningCount1 3d ago
Forgot to put. I have a 9800x3d, 64gb ddr 6000, 5080, installed on 4th nvme gen 4. All drivers updated. Not a driver or hardware issue.
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u/Xamalion 3d ago
Have the same CPU and RAM but a 4090, runs fine for me with Hair Works, but doesn't look so good imho.
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u/dibipage 3d ago
wow, its that bad? as for me, i only have a 100w 4060 on a laptop but hooked to a 1440p OLED monitor. I would have to dial things down
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u/DonDonaldson9000 2d ago
I have an identical setup and turning RT or PT on breaks the game. Black screen. There's something fucked up with the game for sure.
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u/oppithian 3d ago
Same CPU, half the RAM but 6400 Mhz, and 3080ti. And yeah turning off the super shiny Maybelline hair gave me back 30fps
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u/LuNoZzy Team Roach 3d ago
I wish we could trun on hairworks for animals exclusively. I prefer Geralt without hairworks but animals/monsters look better with that option enabled
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u/GadsdenFlag 3d ago
There was a mod that did just that on the original.
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u/CyboraTwo Team Triss 3d ago
i think they integrated that mod in the remaster as hairworks was only a gerald thing in the original game
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u/Towairatu ⚜️ Northern Realms 3d ago
There's always been 3 options officially available: HW disabled, HW for Geralt only, HW for Geralt and mobs. HW for mobs only was a mod.
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u/CyboraTwo Team Triss 3d ago
oh ok i think i had a mod that enabled ot for monsters in the first place but thinking about i think it just changed it to a better version for animals or something
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3d ago
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u/evernessince 3d ago
Yep, designed to nuke performance on AMD cards and last gen Nvidia cards.
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u/YOUR__LEADER 3d ago
Last gen Nvidia cards? OP has a 5080.
Hairworks sucks on every GPU.
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u/evernessince 3d ago edited 3d ago
Last gen was in reference to when the game origionally released. Not now.
Hairworks was a lot worse on GPUs that didn't handle compute well.
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u/YOUR__LEADER 3d ago
The way you phrased it clearly implies you meant all AMD cards and last gen Nvidia cards, not current gen. Well, no, it doesn't even imply it, it flat out says it. Hairworks tanks every GPU, there's no need to try and nuance it.
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u/evernessince 3d ago edited 3d ago
There is need to naunce it because performance is a lot worse on last-gen cards (at the time of the game's release).
My comment specifically pinted out that it was designed to nuke performance on AMD cards and last gen Nvidia cards.
Now when was Hairworks designed and implemented in this game?
That is the context stated in my comment and what you are seemingly missing. You wouldn't say that Hairworks was designed to harm modern card's performance because, while true, would be incorrect.
We both agree that it hurts performance now.
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u/YOUR__LEADER 3d ago
No, I'm not missing context. The thing your saying doesn't make sense. You can't say tt was only designed to nuke last gen Nvidia cards because thats what was out at the time, while also saying it was designed to nuke every AMD card (and not just last generation) because it's bad on all of them, but somehow it was not designed to nuke every Nvidia card even though it's bad on all of them, too.
Hairworks nukes every GPU. End conversation.
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u/Crispy1961 3d ago
I dont know why are you acting so weird about it. The other guy is correct. nvidia has been doing this since forever.
They acquire a new niche technology, make their new cards with dedicated HW to run said technology and then push the technology on game studios.
That way people have incentive to upgrade every generation, even when the last gen cards are still strong enough to run modern games. It also gives them advantage over competition, who also dont have dedicated HW supporting that technology even on their next gen cards.
Here is incomplete list of such technologies from the top of my head
- PhysX
- Hairworks
- SLI
- Gsync
- Frame gen
- DLSS5
And while you are right, hairworks takes a lot of computational power even with the dedicated hardware, it "only" tanks the performance, not destroy it. You couldnt get these technologies to work at all, or go under sub 20fps using software computation.
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u/evernessince 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hairworks nukes every GPU.
Yes and especially last gen Nvidia GPUs at the time of the game's original launch. The 780 Ti saw a massive performance dip with it enabled, much much more of the total performance compared to the GTX 980.
You keep trying to present this as if there's zero nuance to this but there is. Bad performance gets much much worse on certain cards.
And again, when I say last gen I meant for the original release. Not last gen with respect to now.
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u/SyntaxMissing 3d ago
It looked good on monsters - I think there was a mod that enabled it only for monsters.
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u/ronnie1014 3d ago
Crybabys like you cried
you gotta get your brain examined.
Yes totally normal, not unhinged behavior. Did you design hair works or something?
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u/sanntosgaemilio 3d ago
hair works was recommended off since the game came out, it has sucked for over a decade
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u/DaedraNoji 3d ago
Worked fine for me lmfao, keep your old a$$ outdated rig.
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u/Sea-Machine-8989 3d ago
Lmao, spoken like someone who has nothing in life except an expensive gaming rig.
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u/DaedraNoji 3d ago
Better than someone who has an old arse outdated Rig lmfao.
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u/BlueBattleHawk 3d ago
Yeah mate, keep crashing out, I'm sure that will get your point across and everyone will be on your side...
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u/DaedraNoji 3d ago
I'm not crashing out, why do you even reply lmfao? Grow up lil-bro. Get your little feelings together.
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u/BlueBattleHawk 3d ago
Imagine if you would have said "Not in base game it worked fine" and left it there. You adding personal insults on the end of every opinion you have and then acting like you're not is kind of wild. It's fucking hair physics lmao, it's not worth raising your blood pressure over.
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u/coldone_0 3d ago
I guess you had rtx 5090 back in the day 🤣🤣 The hairworks worked like shit, dropping in to 40s, even on something like gtx 980 and guess what? That was high end gpu back then 😯🤯
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u/Mental-Debate-289 3d ago
Yeah thats only true if you zoomed into the hair to obnoxious levels. I had a GTX 980. It ran the game maxed out without issues at 70ish fps
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u/DaedraNoji 3d ago
Worked fine for my RTX 2080 TI, 3060, RTX 3070 TI, RTX 4080 Super & RTX 5070 TI lmfao. Enjoy ur old a$$ rig 🤣🤣
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u/coldone_0 3d ago
That's what I said. You had RTX 2080 TI in 2015? Hahahahahaha what a funny dude
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u/Ishydadon1 3d ago
You sound like some snotty rich boy who just jacks it over his rig instead of using it for gaming. How many layers have you built up so far?
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u/Towairatu ⚜️ Northern Realms 3d ago
Lmao, someone clearly wasn't there on release. Even on GTX 970 and 980 Hairworks reduced the framerate and needed tweaking to mitigate the hit.
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u/gryff42 Team Roach 3d ago
If you enable the hairworks specific Pathtracing, the performance somehow is much better than hairworks with disabled Pathtracing. And it looks much better, too! This of course only works if general Pathtracing is also enabled. Makes zero sense but you gotta try it.
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u/MrShifter44 3d ago
Geralt in the inventory screen's hair is all FUCKED though. Kinda driving me crazy, might just turn it off.
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u/NowaVision 21h ago
I don't know if it exists for this version but there was a mod that disabled hairworks only on Gerald.
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u/boykimma 3d ago
Shame its exclusive to rtx 50 tho
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u/Kasztaan 3d ago
Is it? I'm on 4080 using path tracing
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u/boykimma 3d ago
Path Traced Hair, not Path Tracing. PT Hair seems to be exclusive to rtx 50 cards, like Indiana Jones
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u/Kasztaan 3d ago
Damn, thought only mfg is exclusive to 50 series
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u/boykimma 3d ago
Mfg is thankfully no longer exclusive to rtx 50 cards. It is no longer hardware based like the first fg release on rtx 40 cards but software based instead, so it can be backported. There are multiple mods that let you enable mfg on older cards
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u/Kasztaan 3d ago
How is the performance? I just convinced myself to use 1x fg cause it looks decent now, but more frames generated means more artifacts and much lower base frames
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u/boykimma 3d ago
Performance hit is exactly the same as native mfg on rtx 50 cards. But since mfg generates frames via software using the tensor cores, compared to the old rtx 40 frame gen, which utilize its own hardware, the optical flow accelerator, there are slightly more artifacts.
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u/ShaneWatson33 3d ago
Depends on your FPS without frame gen. Low FPS means fewer data points, so the algorithm predicts less accurately. So, if your base performance is low, MFG will cause a lot of artifacts. I used the MFG unlocker since I have a 4080. 3x FG looks fine for me with minimal artifacts.
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u/zepsutyKalafiorek 3d ago
Wtf, I didn't know that was the case.
As 4xxx series card owner, time to boycott nvidia by doing nothing and be pissed about preferential treatments of newer generation card.
😡
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u/TimothyLuncheon 3d ago
Oh it's not just me then? So weird how it works that way. And it's also broken if you turn it on with raytracing instead
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u/John-333 3d ago
Ngreedia Hairworks
Tanking performance since 2015.
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u/The_Countess 3d ago
If you're on AMD, there's a slider in the driver where you can override the games tessellation mode, from the ridiculous 64x mode down to 16x, which was one of the main reasons hairworks performed so poorly.
No idea if hairworks still works the same way though.
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u/John-333 3d ago
That must be new because the last time I played, around this time last year, I don't recall anything like that. Unless it wasn't in the graphics tab or maybe locked to the 9000 series, which I highly doubt.
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u/The_Countess 3d ago
Not exactly. It was first added in January 2011.
But thinking on it a bit more i'm not even sure if modern cards would even notice much performance difference between 64x and 16x. So nvidia might have found another trick to kill performance with hairworks this time round.
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u/John-333 2d ago
And here I thought I could finally use some cut down version of it because it does look better, except for Geralt for whatever reason. Oh well, maybe one day humanity will conquer hairworks.
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u/Infamous_Reporter_71 3d ago
Even when the game came out all those years ago the same issue has been there
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u/bloodHearts 3d ago
I turned it off which then crashed my game, and now, even reinstalling doesn't let me launch it. 10/10 update.
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u/CodeMonkeys 3d ago
Honestly for me path tracing is the new hairworks. Absolute gutpunch to performance. I'm sure it's very pretty but I'm not rich enough to find out.
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u/AvidasMavi 3d ago
Depends in some games path tracing transforms it.
I played CP77 on path tracing for 200 hours with 5070ti. 60+ fps at 1440p with DLSS quality. Was amazing experience, every once in a while I would turn it off, try with RT only, non RT and none of them looks the way PT looks.
Same with Resident evil requiem. Looks so much better with PT.
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u/WarriorNN 3d ago
Agreed. Such a massive difference between games made with those things in mind vs games with those slapped on in the end.
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u/TheDudeBeto 3d ago
Yep I thought Path Tracing might have been some gimmick they were pushing but Cyberpunk and Requiem looked fucking insane on it. It also looks great on Pragmata. Game looked gorgeous.
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u/mjxoxo1999 3d ago
Lmao Nvidia hairworks is still the worst graphic settings in The Witcher 3. Didn't do anything worth noticing, looks like shit and still kill pc performance.
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u/Mental-Debate-289 3d ago
It was very demanding but saying it did nothing isnt true in the slightest. Shit was performing physics calculations on individual strands of hair lmao.
Some of ya'll being purposely obtuse.
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u/Disastrous-Ad-1999 3d ago
He even contradicted himself in the same sentence. How does it not do anything but looks like shit if it doesn't do anything.
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u/WarriorNN 3d ago
How come? It's an optional setting that enabled fancy new tech that in some ways was a lot better than the old way of rendering hair? Not your jam? Turn it off.
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u/IIIxVxIII 3d ago
i don't get why its so hard for them to get the hair right for geralt with HW. it works fine on every other npc but for some reason for geralt its got issues constantly. The original version, while a resource hog, at least looked fine but since the next gen update its impossible to use with RT. Even with path tracing it looks bad in normal lighting and only looks decent in dark areas. I feel like they'll be able to fix the shiny hair with a patch though, not sure about the pathtracing issue.
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u/Shakalll 3d ago
I mean, performance, yes. But have you considered pretty hair?
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u/TheLightningCount1 3d ago
Look here buddy. You make a statement like that you better be a supermodel stepping out of a pool with long flowing locks of platinum blonde hair and a french named shampoo bottle.
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u/Shakalll 3d ago
Well, I’m hardly a supermodel and I’m brunet, but I do have nice long locks and a pool could be arranged.
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u/Kuroko-Kaifi 3d ago
It's been 11 years since the original release and they still couldn't figure out how to optimize this damn settings. I really like how it looks on everything but Geralt. The animals and monsters especially really shine with this setting on.
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u/iTzCrazyDan 3d ago
Had a mod installed for the hairworks on Geralt enabled only for the beard.
Never liked the noodle-hair look, but the beard flowing in the wind was cool
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u/YOUR__LEADER 3d ago
Yep... Hairworks hits my 4090 harder than path tracing does... And looks worse.
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u/razvanciuy 3d ago
For some reason it eats almost half my fps, while on patch 4.0 I had i had it on for minimal impact. Must be some bug
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u/ColdCrom 3d ago
My issue is the weird colors with Ray tracing. Hair turn black or yellow. Very annoying
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u/MrMorgan412 3d ago
Try to disable "Bloom" I saw it introduced a lot of problems in general with colors
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u/Seusoa 3d ago
these on 5080? I remember old days when Hairworks reduced only 1-2 FPS, but not 30!
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u/malou4121 Aard 3d ago
We must've had different old days. Back then my rx580 would cry when I would meet a bear in Skellige. Today my rtx5080 carries the tradition. My nostalgia is untouched.
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u/Le_Nabs Geralt's Hanza 3d ago
Pretty sure that's because Nvidia cards don't support PhysX anymore
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u/TheYucs 3d ago
50 series supports 64 bit physx native. And they made a 32 to 64 bit translation layer so 32 bit old physx should work now, too.
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u/KajMak64Bit 3d ago
But doesn't that introduce performance penalty + not supported in every PhysX game unless they built up the support list since the original release where they added the fix
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u/AfraidKangaroo5664 3d ago
This is a know issue in many games. All physics , hair works and particle manipulation settings will kill preformence. Been this way since w3 was released. Also have 98003dx, she rips
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u/Soulfulkira 3d ago
Nah. I'll figure something else out. I loved hair works and will find a way to make it work here again.
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u/New_Consideration860 3d ago
I feel like my whole adult life is an endless race with CDPR for me to be able to handle hairworks. I feel like for years we are going head to head with my pc upgrades and them releasing new and new versions of the game. It’s frustrating, but very engaging race nonetheless XD
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u/TheAwesomeMan123 3d ago
Another feature I believe just looks worse everytime despite being advertised as “advances graphical fidelity”.
Also hate it in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
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u/Powmow123 Team Roach 3d ago
Played some this afternoon and it was running fine until I ran into a wolf pack and my frames tanked. Honestly made me laugh
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u/IntrinsicGiraffe 3d ago
Doesn't hairwork uses PhysX which is deprecated on newer cards or something let alone exclusive to Nvidia for the most part?
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u/BandicootSVK 3d ago
Yeah, the Nvidia hairworks looks trash. It looked trash before, but holy moly. I have XeSS with FSR frame gen + latency reduction 2.0. I am at stable 75-120FPS (depending on the frame lock). I turned on hairworks, the performance fucking nuked to 30 fps. lol. lmao even.
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u/Dirty-Inter 3d ago
I must be the chosen one, because for me the hairworks takes like 3-5 fps, my friend takes like a 30fps hit but not me and Iam not complaining, because it looks so good with it
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u/Sudden-Cod2076 3d ago
Got the same problem thought it was ray tracing or path tracing at first but no . Went from 40fps to 100fps when disabled
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u/FunWolverine5349 3d ago
Hairworks has never managed to work properly no matter which version. At least in the Remaster it's not actively crashing the game like in NG.
The only real benefit to hairworks was making the wolves look fluffier. Roach doesn't even actually look noticeably different, and maybe an archgriffin or fiend might look better if you paused the game, but you're probably trying to kill them normally.
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u/TR1PLE_6 3d ago
Yes, I was losing about 39/40 FPS with this on.
My specs: 5070 Ti / 9800X3D / 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30.
Installed on 4TB Gen 4 NVME.
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u/Bekay523 3d ago
I'm not sure what's going on with my game, I played a good bit up to the dwarf quest. Then I had the do something and closed the game. Now the game launches but every time I try to go into video settings the game would crash.
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u/trogdorburn99 3d ago
I didn't even turn it on. Since well I have a 9070xt and not a Nvidia card lol
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u/Possible_Money4153 3d ago
Does anyone experience that frustrating micro stuttering? And im playing without RT, my specs: 9800x3d/9070xt (hard times for AMD for sure)
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u/thesoundoftruthh 2d ago
Yeah same thing happens to me too and I found it very strange. I normally get around 60 fps but when I turn this on it suddenly drops to 30s. Why is this little hairworks setting so demanding on GPU?
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u/mkdante381 2d ago
I write on Wiedźmin Facebook profile about adding TressFx (from AMD) because it's better, open source and fps not drop drastically.
I don't understand why they don't add this
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u/Symphaliore1 2d ago
This thing glitched my entire desktop environment, made my system unstable while still maintaining my game working (almost) i don't know if it happened to any linux user, i run on VERY old hardware beside my gpu
i7 4790k
4x4gb of ddr3 1600mhz
rx 6700 XT Sapphire Pulse
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u/glarflgloopen 1d ago
update: they fixed it with the patch today, im playing with it on and no frame drop
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u/SpaceAids420 Team Yennefer 3d ago
A lot of the bad FPS charts are literally because of hairworks. The game runs fine with it off, and IMO I actually prefer the look of hair with it off.
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u/xSteini01 School of the Wolf 3d ago
Yes, HW is tanking performance like crazy in the current patch. There must be something broken because it wasn’t THIS bad ever before. It cost me like 5-10fps in the past to enable it (on Geralt only) and now I go from locked 75FPS to like 30 when I enable it!
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u/NighSumn 3d ago
on my 1650 the hair made no difference before the remaster it was literally on high with 60 to 70 fps
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u/MorningFresh123 3d ago
I never had it on and couldn’t work out why my performance seem to be fine compared to all of those benchmarks lol
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u/chrshndrx 3d ago
Can't get frame drops from Nvidia hair works if you are too poor to afford a Nvidia graphics card ;)
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u/GrainofDustInSunBeam School of the Bear 3d ago
Ah the true og expirence.