wintermute.: So I guess it's the power-supply. Only guessing and trying to help you.

wintermute.: The Witcher 3 put quite some workload on the GPU, more than some other games. Thats absolutely OK, because I doubt the GPU is crunching numbers for nothing when I look at the graphics. ;)
Therefore the GPU gets very hot and needs quite some power from the power-supply. If you have such issues again after the replacement you may have a look into those two things. Maybe you know someone with a stronger power-supply to lend it to you or maybe a local shop is willing to lend you one (sometimes local shopkeepers surprise you, it is a hard market and some of them learned service is the key). The temperature issue is a bit harder to check, as it depends on your computercase and how the fans are mounted, it's really not that hard to break a good airflow and tips are hard to give. You can try to run the game while the case is open, this would help if your heat problem is related to blocked airflow. On the other hand if the computer is some OEM device from a manufacturer like Dell or something like that, they could have used airducts and a predesigned airflow, which would worsen the situation if you open the case. Well, but as both, CPU and GPU, will throttle themselves when overheating you could at least try. The throttling because of overheating leads to "the display driver was reset" errors which would most likely "only" crash the game, but not BSOD or blackscreen the PC. So I guess it's the power-supply. Only guessing and trying to help you.

cornbredx: Hey peeps,
I posted on a few threads about crashes; how I was experiencing BSOD crashes with this game. I was very upset, but I remained civil... I was just aggravated. I had lost a little faith with GOG and CDPR because I thought the Witcher 3 was a broken mess.

See, I bought a new video card (a 4GB 970) just for this game. In fact this game (and another one) was an amazon freebie with the card. I had intended to make this upgrade following this game. I literally had the card for maybe 2 days when I finally started to play and had played two other games to completion on the card with no issues on their highest settings.

So, maybe you can see how I felt this issue was in no way the video card. Of course after multiple patches by CDPR and NVIDIA drivers, the crashes didn't stop. What happened is after a certain length of time(~ between 5 and 30 minutes) the game would crash my whole computer (specifically the Graphics Driver was crashing and not recovering so I had to cold boot to get my computer monitor back up). Even on suggested settings by various threads I found (which only helped it to not crash within 5 minutes, but rather 30 minutes).

I began to play other open world games to pass the time, and suddenly those too were crashing. Even fairly old ones like Red Faction Guerrilla which you wouldn't think would be any problem for this card, and I don't recall crashes being a major point of contention for that game so much as other issues with lower end gpus.

I began to see a pattern, and after various benchmark tests crashing my computer, and other open world games also doing this I decided to roll back the driver. It clearly wasn't The Witcher 3 in issue anymore.

The rollback didn't help either. The issue remained so I put in my previous card (a 2GB 760) and reupdated my graphics drivers. I haven't had a problem since. I can run the game medium-high (not as high as the 970 but it's not a big deal until I get that replaced), and the game is fantastic. Even with Hairworks on It's been fine, and I'm not even experiencing terrible framerate.

I placed a replacement request with Amazon to have the card sent back and replaced. I don't know if that will fix it. I have read up on the 970 and it seems like there are a lot of complaints about it and people getting new ones and the problem persisting. I hope I don't have that problem- it's a nice card when it does work.

Anyway I want to apologize to CDPR. I doubted you guys because my card was brand new. I assumed the game was shipped completely broken when, while it is buggy, it's not quite the mess I had originally perceived. The game is actually pretty good and the problems that are there aren't as major as crashing the whole computer. At least not as far as I can tell by my tests.

I know this won't help everyone, but I suspect a lot of people bought a 970 for this game (or other games, who knows) and may not know their card, even though brand spanking new, is bad. I don't know what the cause is, or what breaks it, but if Witcher 3 is crashing the computer (Black Screen of Death or Blue Screen) you should test not just other games, but specifically open world games (MMOs, GTA, Red Faction G, Sleeping Dogs, Witcher 3 etc.). You may find a pattern and discover the issue is with the card and not the game. You shouldn't have to make crazy changes to graphical settings just to keep your computer from crashing. So If that is happening to you test other open world games. If you find a pattern there you may have the same problem I did and it's not CDPR fault. You may need to replace your hardware.

Hopefully this helps somebody else. I know it sucks having to return new hardware, but it is what it is.
Thanks for reading =)

cornbredx: I appreciate your input, and while I do know what a PSU issue is like (I've had one many times in the past) in this case it's not the PSU (I actually have a newer PSU right now that's more than adequate because I always shoot too high on PSU's on purpose).
Temps are fine with the card. I know it's not a temp issue, and even on this 760 with the same settings temps are fine. So it's not a temp issue either (never goes over 80c- it's actually usually around 75c or so).
If you look around the internet (just google "gtx 970 crashing") you'll see this issue is actually fairly common with 970s.
I'm certain the card is the problem and nothing more. Especially because my research shows this issue is not just me, but also because the issue doesn't exist on my other card on the same settings.

But again I do appreciate you trying to help. No worries, though, I'm getting a replacement. If that don't work I'll try again and if that don't work I'll just get a refund. It's no big deal to me at this point =)