Please note that this might not work for you so dont blame me if has no results but when I first installed the game I had incredible high stutters in villages/city mostly and here is what I did (if u really wish to give it a try do as I did) , oh and if you dont know where is the location of the files I talk bellow than just stick with basic in game setting , this is not a tutorial , I am talking to players who already tryed everything on fixing the lag/stutter/freeze etc

Some tweaks I posted are optional but ones marked as IMPORTANT must be applied because will work on any system .

I removed all nvidia drivers from PC ( I use always use DDU to avoid issues )

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(IMPORTANT)

> I removed all nvidia driver from PC ( I use always use DDU to avoid issues but its optional you can just do the old way tested it and worked fine but in the end I stick with DDU bec cleans registry and whole stuff left behind on PC by the other driver ) next step is important

> I installed the nvidia display driver , audio , physics > VERY IMPORTANT >> version 359.06 << tested many versions including new ones , 359.06 has the less stutters of all versions you can find at the moment .

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(IMPORTANT) nsall Msi afterburner + riva tuner statistics and set ur fps to 60 for witcher3.exe , yes u will use vsync in game option but I tested and saw that limiting fps to 60 with riva tuner makes game smoother even if u use vsync , and dont set it to 59 like other guides that will make less mouse lag indeed but also introduce a small mouse stutter ) this appli only to witcher3 for some reason attleast in my case .

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Important in game settings , tested alot and found how to get maximum of visual without going under 60 FPS on 95% of most spots in all game , 5% are just dead spots/unoptimized nothing you can do about it all games have that .

Post Process : all off , except this ones which are a must for good visuals :
HBAO
AA (has temporal in game one use it)
Bloom
Light Shafts

Graphics :
Vsync on ( in my case I played with vsync off like 50% of the game when I turned it on I wos stunned to see that in my case it made things much better the game wos much more smooth with less fps drops on bad weather idk how just works for me so vsync on and this+60 fps limit with riva tuner works great actually ) this will cause a small mouse lag but it worth it in my case it worth it ALOT .

Unlimited FPS , Full screen (if u think that using 60 fps block is same as riva tuner u very much wrong mate , in game 60 fps lock is broken and many ppl confirmed the fps will go sometimes to 61 causing issues , riva tuner is only tool that will block ur fps to 60 and not higher or lower )

Nvidia hairworks all off

Number of Background Characters low (u wont need more not possible to find more npc in game than low option has to offer)

Shadows Medium , you can go low to without a big difference , high and ultra is a waste of fps no difference .

Terrain > Ultra . tested it with comparison screens on more spots didnt see a difference , still bugged ultra dosnt hurt anyway

Water High (no difference on ultra besides lower fps when it rains on areas with many NPCs)

Grass Ultra ( you can go high to save a few fps but I dont recommend . ultra makes game more lush + if u want more just change grass density on user settings 2400 is ultra )

Texture Quality Ultra for best quality

Foliage High (Ultra to much fps lose , High best spot but u can go medium if u are a focused more on short distance details when playing games will save u some nice fps to )

Detail Level (Medium higher you wont notice , on low blood decals etc will be removed from like 1 meter away dosnt worth the visual lose)

Hardware Curos ON its a must also

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(IMPORTANT) Nvidia Control panel settings :

For witcher3 maximum frames +1 reduce stutter or not depends but u can try if dosnt make a diff than dont use it , but there is one VERY IMPORTANT setting that must be turned on >> SHADER CACHE << this one helped with freezing and stutters and make a big difference for me . Also optional you can change AF to x16 for better image quality in game but dont forget to change the AF from user setting to 0 so u wont have any issues just to be sure .

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Change this on User settings after u done configuring in game settings :

TextureMemoryBudget in rendering file set this to 2000 most stable number for 4gb vram or half ur vram should work fine , if this setting dosnt help you use default 800 , please note this setting will take effect only after a long in game session without fast traveling , fast travel reset ur vram but if u play alot exploring vram will reach maximum limit even with ULTRA in game setting , this will work only in that case .

Setting as read only after you done is not required , the setting will disappear but the ones from rendering bellow will be aplied instead , if u dont use the rendering tweak bellow than the user setting one will stay there without marking the file as read only

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f you can change mouse DPI do it will reduce stutters just a bit but worth the try , set ur mouse to attleast 1600-2000 DPI higher will cause a to big delay , and after that configure ur sensivity to what u like .

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Now we are going for more advanced tweaking, I recommend using this if u got enough memory to handle such settings , and YES I know it got posted on other sites but I will just help you to change exactly whats important for extra performance and more smooth game .

Make a backup just in case and find the lines and change them , if some are already like I posted bellow than skip the line .

\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base\resources.ini ( this changes will help you alot with loading time )

FileQueueSizeGame = 250
FileQueueSizeLoading = 700
MaxRequests = 45
MaxCompressedBudget = 30
MaxUncmpressedBudget = 240
MaxUncompressedBlocks = 4096

\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base\rendering.ini ( based on how good ur system is this will make the game more smooth for you)

TextureMemoryBudget=2000 (depends on ur vram , most stable setting is half of ur total vram)
TextureMemoryGUIBudget=180
TextureInFlightBudget=256

If there is no difference for you or you'r system is not powerful enough please revert back to default settings .

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EXTRA tip : having 2 driver on PC helps a bit when gaming , 1 Big driver for windows files etc and another one must be 20% of ur total memory , example 1TB total > 800GB for windows and 200 GB driver only for the game you have installed . This will make a very small difference and its up to you but worth a try next time u reinstall ur windows .

~DONE , good luck hope this maked for you a difference and got rid of a large ammount of stutters from ur game , because 100% smooth game dosnt really exist and specially not on this game , dont forget even titan x and gtx 1080 have a hard time to have a constant 60 fps on witcher 3 , but this tweaks will have a good difference on all medium/high gaming systems .

System I tested this on : i5 3470 3.4 GHz , gtx 970 4g gaming edition , 8gb ram

PS : If this helped you alot and woul like to compesate me :) my wish is a gog code for Hearts of stone or blood and wine dlc since I spend all my money on the base game , if u have a extra one I would gladly accept it :D





EXTRA tips and tweaks ( I will update this section bellow if I find more useful tips in future ) :

Have bad weather bug or rains all the time ? DL debug console from nexus and use stoprain command in game , some ppl have issues with beard u can use commands to set geralt any type of beard or clean shave , u can find this commands easy , just google them .

Wielkie dzięki za ten post, pomogło i to bardzo, GREAT THANKS !!!

ok did more experimenting , looks like if u play a long session without fast travel ur vram will go at its maximum limit put by the game default setting , this would result in a small stutter have to remake the guide

After alot of time spend testing every single tweak I could possible google on last couple of days I managed to combine them all in 1 topic , my game is butter smooth in 95% of situations I find myself in game , only fps drop I encounter wos during bad weather (rain/storm) , but with all tweaks applied I finally say that small fps drop in witcher 3 actually feels smooth . I am done testing and finding more tweaks since my game plays the way my system should play this game .

Call me crazy or blind but the AO is the first thing i am tuirning off because I just barely can see any difference - even ins creenshot comparisions. It also is very demanding so in case you don't need it you should probably turn his off.

depends on system I can see a big difference on AO and I like it , plus HBAO hits like 3fps max on my gtx 970 , it depends on system , on my old gtx 760 AO hit me 10+ FPS on witcher 3 , not anymore if u got a good GPU

Do you mean AO in general or HBAO+ vs. SSAO?

HBAO is one the best visual improvements to me:

Before: http://i.imgur.com/Q9UuQUr.jpg
After: http://i.imgur.com/dBOi6Cs.jpg

real difference is when u test it by urself , I am sure most ppl didnt turn HBAO on ever , after I played some time with SSAO on I decide to try HBAO and never reverted the setting , without HBAO game looks to dull , SSAO is another variant so save arround 2 fps .

Its like playing games one 30 FPS and u think its fine , when u switch to 60 u just cant go back to 30 , even if u enjoyed 30 in the past .

Funny, I find the difference very noticeable. But good for you ;-)

I can see the difference here but those two screenshoots does not seem to be identical (other plants and different pov).

guys the AO is not noticed on all weathers , example on a bad weather or at night specially when is raining you cant make a difference between SSAO and HBAO true .

If you'r skils/pot require you to play mostly on bad weather than best option is AO off or SSAO .

You will notice HBAO on clear weather mostly on vegetation , I am more of a clear weather nature type explorer so thats why HBAO makes the difference for me . SSAO might be best choice however for quality and performance .

This topic is about getting rid of stutters and fps issues in game , HBAO and SSAO are not considered important settings as I clearly said on my topic above because the impact on gtx 970 cards of this setting is between 0 and 4 fps , I marked the changes with important mark , thos important tweaks appli to all type of nvidia cards