I've been at this for days now and I am now at a complete loss as to what's causing this issue. I'll start off with my specs

16/32 Threadripper 1950X stock clocks
32 GB CL14 RAM @ 3200Mhz
MSI 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio

That should be enough to show I more than meet the specs. But it's not as simple as that, because one of my results simply doesn't make sense. I am being plagued by a constant stuttering in game. Whether running around or turning the camera. I'm running this at 4K max settings. Now I know what you're thinking, lower the settings. Did that. Like I said, it's weirder than that. I've also disabled the GOG overlay (which helped, but didn't eliminate). I've disabled Ansel (which helped, but didn't eliminate as well). But still it continues to stutter.

However, if I enable the Afterburner overlay (via afterburners settings) to show my FPS, the stutter goes away. Completely. Just gone. And I mean silky smooth. If I leave the afterburner overlay enabled in it's settings but then use a hotkey to make the FPS counter disappear, the game keeps playing flawlessly. Max settings with constant 60 FPS. Runs perfectly. But as soon as I disable the OSD via Afterburners settings, the constant stuttering returns.

I'm at a complete loss here as to what's causing my stuttering problems. Why would the game work perfectly maxed out using a third party overlay application, but stutter like crazy without it. I've seen games run worse with overlays plenty of times, but I've never seen a game run better with one. Using rivatuner to tweak your settings is one thing, but I'm not doing that. I'm just running the rivatuner statistics software. I'm not even changing graphical settings using it. And as you can imagine, if it plays perfectly maxed out with constant 60 FPS, lowering settings while watching FPS is hardly going to help me, because the issue is obviously not caused by having too high of a graphical setting.

Now I'm just left confused and hoping someone can help identify what's actually causing the stuttering issues in this game. I know I could just play the game with overlay enabled, but I'm at that point where I want to know what's causing the issue behind it and how to fix it. Anyone got any ideas?

More weirdness. If I uninstall Afterburner and the Rivatuner statistics server the issue persists even after reboot. If I install Afterburner and the Rivatuner server, the issue persists. If I just enable the gpu temp in OSD, the issue goes away. If I turn off GPU Temp on OSD, the issue returns. However, if I enable the tick next to framerate but do not enable it for OSD (in other words, just put the tick next to framerate but have nothing set to show up for OSD) the issue goes away again. But as soon as I close the Afterburner application, the issue returns. Start Afterburner again, but just leave it running on screen and start the game, the issue goes away again.

I'm at a complete loss. Either Afterburner or the Rivatuner Statistics Server is doing "something" to fix the issue, but I have no idea what. It has something to do with the OSD, but only while Afterburner is running. I've never seen anything like this. I've seen issues where Afterburner caused stuttering in some cases, but not actively fix it without knowing why nor how. I'm at a loss.

Try disabling GOG overlay either globally in GOG Galaxy settings (if you want it gone forever) or just in Witcher 3 settings in GOG Galaxy.

It's probably a driver or OS issue. Is this your first playthrough? If not, did you have the same issue before? You can experiment with other drivers and check if it makes any change. If it's an OS issue it'll be hard to do anything though. Maybe an update messed some things. It can happen unfortunately. In this case reinstalling your system might help, but it's time consuming. Also another update can fix the issue. I presume you're using Windows 10, so you might consider waiting until Microsoft publishes the suspended October Update. Major updates basically reinstall your system while keeping all the data.

Already did that as mentioned in my first post. This will be my first time playing it. I had tested it before on my old GFX card (R9 290X), but it ran like crap on that card too, which was why I decided to wait until I got my new GFX card to play it.

Unfortunately, due to this being a 2080 Ti, I'm very limited as to how many drivers I can actually try. There's only been 3 driver releases since launch.

As for the October update. I'm already on it. I was one of the people that got updated before it got pulled. But because of the way I configure my system, I was not affected by the big file deletion fiasco.

As for reformatting and reinstalling. No chance. That would be a weeks job on my system. I have a lot of data and programs. I won't be doing that until I get my new HDD. It would be torture to have to do that twice in one year.

This is the only game that is having this issue and I've never seen this kind of thing before. It just defies everything I've come to expect from typical issues like this.

Witcher 3 should run like a dream on your card even in 4K. However I've heard about some issues with this game on 400 series drivers. RTX cards are still new, so not everything can work flawlessly. You'll have to wait for the next releases. Hopefully the situation will improve in the future. No point in doing that, if you have problems with only one game, especially when you've found a workaround. Strange things can happen with computers. I've seen many wacky issues, so I'm not surprised with the one you've posted. Anyway, check if it's any better after they release new system and drivers updates.

lol, don't I know it. I've been building computers for over 15 years and I still get surprised occasionally.

If I had to guess, it's the hairworks in Witcher 3 not playing nicely with the driver build for your 2080 ti. Might try turning it off and seeing if the issue goes away.

I've also been reading a lot of reports of the 2080 ti's dying very prematurely, so it's possible that Witcher 3 is making your card do something it doesn't want to do. I just fired the game up and there was no major slowdown to speak of, other than the initial load in. I am running an FX 8320 at stock paired with w 1060 6gb GTX and 16gb of DDR3 1866 speed RAM.

Your system should absolutely smoke mine, even with 4k vs my 1080p, so I would think it's a matter of Nvidia not fine tuning the 2080 ti enough to work with past heavy hitters right away. Typically, from what I see with them, they tune their new gen to play nice with the newer games first, and games that are 3 years old in this case, the Witcher 3, don't necessarily get optimized within the first few driver releases.

You'd think the instruction set would be the same across the 2080 and the previous gen, but apparently everything's different. I'm guessing Afterburner gets the 2080 to behave in a specific way for a specific set of instructions (Witcher 3) and that is why you found the workaround.

Good luck with everything, and I really feel this is something that will go away within the next couple driver releases.

EDIT: We're all overthinking everything and it might be something as simple as the new Win 10 build, in which case you just need to wait for MS to release a new build.

That's a laugh. My system is stuck on Windows version 1703 because it cannot install anything newer. It always fails and I've had to hide them via admin tools.

I've been seeing a lot of people having random issues with the latest build. I personally haven't run into anything major, but some people have had issues with The Witcher 3, and other games. :) Anyway salutations to you this evening, hope you're well.

I cannot find something answering your question;

I've been in the same place than you, thinking my 2080 was hot, stuff like that.

In fact, it's a known issue, from Nvidia Driver. You have to install the last beta driver from Nvidia to fix it.
The 416.64

Take care.


EDIT : Here :
https://www.neowin.net/news/nvidia-releases-41664-hotfix-drivers-fixing-issues-with-witcher-3-far-cry-5-and-more/

"The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: Flicker during gameplay"

Thanks for posting the solution. Glad it's not his/her card itself.

I did test the hairworks setting (I literally went through every setting one by one) and it seemed to not have any effect on the issue. At 1440p and 1080p the stuttering doesn't exist, but as mentioned before, if it runs perfectly at 4K with afterburner on (but with no overclock applied and no OSD enabled), then lowering the settings would do nothing to improve performance other than possibly showing the card overpower the game with tons of extra performance spare to overcome any stuttering present at lower resolutions. Which proved to be true when I tested it.

As for 2080 Ti's dying. So far my card has been pretty rock solid. No issues on that front. It also seems that my card "may" not be one of the cards affected by this issue as most of the cards that are affected, seem to be either the Founders Edition sold directly by Nvidia, or AIB cards based on the Nvidia reference design board. I have the MSI Gaming X Trio, which is an AIB card, but this card uses a entirely custom board designed by MSI. And the cooler design on my card "might" also allow my card to duck the "possible" GDDR6 overheat issue that's also being looked at as a possible cause. Time will tell, but I am watching this issue closely. Both on my end and in the tech news.

Thanks for posting this. It's more of a persistent stutter rather than a flicker. I think of a stutter as jumpiness, choppiness etc. When I think of a flicker, I think of a strobe light or quick persistent brightening and dimming. But that's more of a discussion in semantics. But this is definitely interesting and I'll keep an eye on it.

Sorry for the delay in responding guys. GOG's site didn't notify me of the replies this time. Thanks again for the feedback guys and hopefully we can find a permanent fix for this issue soon.

Try it. For myself I saw a flicker too, not a stutter.
It was really anoying during the dialogue and cutscene, I was wondering if it was an open windows or stuff like that, spend a weekend on this.

But still, Witcher 3 has known issue with the RTX card, fixed with this driver. If you use a driver before this one, you will have some graphical issue.

Since I put this one last week, I can play it without any graphical problem and it's awesome :)

I've tested it just now (416.81). The new drivers have made a significant improvement. The stutter is drastically reduced. It's still there, but only just now. The game still runs better with the Afterburner and accompanying rivatuner statistics server running. The new drivers are a lot better though. So much so, that if it hadn't been so bad before, I probably wouldn't have noticed the issue now. But now that I can compare it not only to how bad it was before, but also how it is now compared to how it is with afterburner on (even with no overclock applied), there is still a very clear difference in afterburner's favor.