This fixes the framerate problems with hairworks, well done!

If you want decent hairworks performance do as this chap says, change your tessellation settings manually to 8x; this reduced the performance hit of hairworks on my R9 280X from 50%->10%

I highly recommend RadeonPro for you red supporters, it is the best settings/profile utility for my AMD graphics card that I have used, though unfortunately there have been no updates for a while (John Mautari the guy behind the program was hired by raptr, so no updates for a long time).

What makes this utility rather nice is that it actually supports applying SMAA anti-aliasing in 64-bit programs (like The Witcher 3), something Mr Haandi's tool wont work with. I noticed that the AA provided by RadeonPro's SMAA was superior to that of the post-processing version provided by the Witcher 3 with a very minimal overhead (maybe 1fps less when around 40fps).

http://www.radeonpro.info/download/

EDIT: An additional note about changing Tessellation; unfortunately it isn't really for free as the water quality suffers (which also relies on tessellation on Ultra/high settings). If you don't use water on Ultra/High than this tweak is for you if you want hairworks, but if you use a manual tessellation settings (even 64x I have tried), the water wont look as good.

Well, perhaps he might return to that project in future; a kickstater perhaps, I'd be willing to pay $20 for such a useful tool, especially if he can get negative LOD bias working (It allows you to adjust it in Radeon Pro, but it does nothing, only postive (blurring) LOD bias changes apply).

Currently that is one of the more important advantages my Nvidia system has over my AMD system; nice crisp textures by using Nvidia Inspector to tweak the LOD Bias into the negatives (It's a crispness vs shimmering balance, but usually I find an overall improvement by enabling some level of negative LOD bias).

So I tried this, turned hairworks on and loaded a save using Geralt's "long hair" style. He ends up look like the following with Hairworks on...

http://i.imgur.com/RHawQ4u.png

It was pretty funny, but not what I wanted to happen....it was like it cut down the amount of hair he had by like 50%, and he was balding in a perfectly mathematical way.

I'll have to try it again later and get a actual game screenshot.

I'm not far enough in the game to tell, but how does it look at 64x?

The reason I mention this, is despite 64x being the maximum for AMD, it seems to still run much better than "application defaults", perhaps about a 15-20% hit in performance at 64x vs 50% when set to applications default.

Maybe they're using 1024x tessellation in the game :D

It looks fine with 64x Tessellation, except I still get a pretty massive performance hit. When it's set to 8x I barely notice, but I don't wanna look like Doc Brown.

I've attached screenshots to illustrate.

Looks like I need to recant on my previous posts.

I was using Radeon Pro to force the tessellation and it appears to not apply x64 properly; there is a difference moving from 2x to 64x, but it is not as much as if I select 64x in the main catalyst program.

Also, this doesn't only just affect hairworks and water; it affects the terrain. It sounded good on paper, but if you check out these screenshots, the terrain suffers considerably with lower tessellation.

Oh well, it was worth a try, I can see hairworks being fairly nice on enemy creatures, but it looks like you need an R9 290 series to enjoy those settings.

Hi guys i just meet you and i looooooove you

For me, Geralts hair with 8x Hairworks on looks the same as 64x but when his hair get's wet from the rain...It looks a bit like your screenshots

So, anyone thought of a solution yet? Remember, I'm running 1080p Hairworks are now off (Because someone pointed out Water and Terrain suffer from the fix so thank you) and I can't get 60 even on Medium - hell, I don't even get 60 on LOW settings, whilst others are getting 60 on Ultra with my setup. Could it be my fans? I doubt it, but my computer is just under a year old, I've never cleaned the fans, I clean the dust tray frequently, but I've never opened it up and cleaned the fans. Just a thought.

And yes, I have the 15.4 beta drivers or whatever they're called. This is as bad as Ubersampling for The Witcher 2. Good thing that's not in this.

I don't know how MSI afterburner compares to [url=http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/ ]GPU-Z [/url], but this little program isn't just great for temperatures, it also can monitor GPU/memory loading, VDDC current/voltage and clockrates.

You can leave it running in the background and it will record information like min/max/avg values for all of those categories. From this you can determine whether you might be hitting a point at which the game is throttling.

AMD cards like mine and your more advanced one seem to have problems with throttling at higher temperatures. For example if I use OCCT to stress it, it starts off at full speed but then loses about 30% of it's performance after a minute (probably in an effort to keep it from overheating).

My experience with this throttling has been pretty miserable. They are so frustratingly sensitive to temperatures and not just the GPU, but the VRM chips that supply the current. I have slightly undervolted my GPU in order to reduce this, but looking at how much the witcher 3 demands, I think there may be some level of throttling happening.

In any case, this is easy to demonstrate. After a cold-boot load up the game look at the FPS while stationary and wait say 10 minutes (the fans should spool up quite a bit when under full load). Recheck the FPS, if there isn't any change, then it looks like it is something else that may be the problem.

This seems to be a pretty interesting read:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/05/amd-says-nvidias-gameworks-completely-sabotaged-witcher-3-performance/

It sounds like hairworks was a result of Nvidia investing resources in the game during development:

"We are not asking game developers do anything unethical," said Nvidia's GameWorks' Brian Burke. "GameWorks improves the visual quality of games running on GeForce for our customers. It does not impair performance on competing hardware. GameWorks source code is provided to developers that request it under license, but they can’t redistribute our source code to anyone who does not have a license. Most of the time we optimize games based on binary builds, not source code... I believe it is a resource issue. Nvidia spent a lot of artist and engineering resources to help make Witcher 3 better. I would assume that AMD could have done the same thing because our agreements with developers don’t prevent them from working with other IHVs [independent hardware vendors]"

CD Projekt Red doesn't have access to the source code, just as AMD doesn't so they can't really do much to optimize it. It is unlikely performance will get any better.

The best outcome I can see here is that this might encourage AMD to be more invested in the future of the game and to perhaps work with CD Projekt Red to release their equivalent technology (perhaps in one of the paid-for expansions).

Hi, I wanted to know what is the best way to get terrain and water to look the best, through RadeonPro or CCC???

Don't care about hair but you guys sure know more than me about this stuff.

Terrain uses x16 at maximum. So if you force x16 in the driver, it doesn't change the terrain at all.

I don`t care about Nvidia`s problems at all, i use different Radeon videocards about 11 years. All i see - in practically every game Nvidia logo and their technologies. AMD, IMHO, no more in 10 games.
I say not only about The Witcher 3, there is many other games, where close in price and "virtual performance" card by AMD slower than GF.
Why R290 512 bit bus is, in general, equal or even slower than GF970 256 bit? That`s is the question (almost to be or not to be)! Fire programmers hire new, better? Or engineers? I don`t know, but "reds" must do something.