The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt v.1.04 GPU test

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

   

Well, 10 days have already passed since the game was released. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which can be considered a rather short period of time. But during this period, two major patches and new drivers from AMD Catalyst 15.5 beta were released for the game, which somewhat increased the performance of video cards in this project. For these reasons, we decided to conduct a new test of the game. Below we have presented the requirements for maximum configurations, based on today's testing:

Comparison of AMD and NVIDIA modes

In this article, we decided to compare the graphics quality on AMD and NVIDIA products at identical maximum graphics settings. It should be noted that the picture on NVIDIA is slightly different for the better - on AMD solutions some “flaws” are visible in terms of displaying some objects, in particular the main character’s chain mail.

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of a test segment for video cards:    

Our video cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at high maximum graphics quality settings, acceptable The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. SLI is currently supported by the game but scalability is 50-75%. AMD CrossFireX was added to the game, but when anti-aliasing is activated, the load on the two chips only reaches half, giving no improvement in performance. Test AMD CrossFireX was carried out separately for the corresponding solutions, since without anti-aliasing the game does not look so “comfortable” for the user’s eye. Various test segments were selected for processors and video cards, aimed at maximizing the load on the tested PC subsystems. Physics acceleration for NVIDIA video cards in the case of testing processors and video cards was installed on the CPU.

Testing at 1920x1200 resolution

 

Testing at high quality settings 1920x1080   

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon K9 270 or GeForce GTX 670 level. The optimal solutions will be the Radeon R9 280X or GeForce GTX 770.

   

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

  

With these settings acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the level Radeon R9 280X or GeForce GTX 770. The optimal solutions would be Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX 970.

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

  

Testing at high quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the level Radeon R9 280X or GeForce GTX 770. The optimal solutions will be  Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

   

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600 

 

With these settings acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the level Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX 780 SLI. The optimal solutions will be  Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 780 SLI.

Testing at resolution 3840x2160

   

Testing at high quality settings 3840x2160 

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the GeForce GTX 980 level. The optimal solutions will be GeForce GTX 970 SLI and higher.

   

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160 

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the GeForce GTX TITAN X level.

The test is AMD CrossFireX

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 

AMD CrossFireX was tested separately without FSAA enabled. The increase in productivity when activated reaches 60-80%.

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings 

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1200 will be 2048 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1600 - 3076 MB of video memory, and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 3076 MB of video memory. 

CPU test

 

We tested the processor dependence on 16 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was conducted in places where the video card is of minimal importance for the game and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum graphics quality settings, with post-processing effects and hair simulation disabled. Below is a video of the test section for the processors:

 Testing at high quality settings 1920x1080

 

The CPU performance in the game is quite sufficient.

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel% 

 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD% 

 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is capable of supporting up to 8 computing threads, but fully utilizes 6 computing cores.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 5960X@4.6 GHz with 16GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire used operational memory was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, with different quality settings, the amount of consumed RAM is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is at the 3000 megabyte level.

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

If you have a system with 6 gigabytes The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt consumes about 4.7 gigabytes of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 5.2 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 5.4 GB. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 6.1 gigabytes of RAM.