I had read that the Catalyst 15.7 drivers were rumoured to have performance improvements for Witcher 3, and the release notes for the driver reflect that but in a rather vague way. I was sort of left under the impression that the new driver has performance improvements for the game - but only on Crossfire setups although it's hard to tell with certainty from the vague wording they give.

I fired up the game and tried a number of tests and I don't see any discernable performance change on my non-Crossfire Radeon HD7850. Has anyone else with AMD Radeon hardware upgraded to the new drivers and found a noticeable performance improvement in The Witcher 3 with a single discreet card? Any notable framerate differences?

I haven't tested witcher yet with the latest drivers I'm waiting for Patch 1.07 first.

I was using modded ATI windows 10 driver 1040 was the best until 15.7 whql showed up.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=399956

I am running windows 7 64bit. From what I've read on Guru3d 15.7 runs as good as 1040. ATI beta drivers 15.6 and below didn't perform as good.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=399217 for the Witcher best performance thread if your interested in reading a bit.

I have a R290 Tri-X and I use Hairworks.
With the other drivers, it was impossible to use Hariworks without having a big performance drop so I used the trick to force Tesselation level to 8 in the CCC.

But with the 15.7 drivers, I don't need to force the tesselation level anymore and the performance drop is bearable. I think this is the major point they have addressed.

I didn't notice any other improvement.

I have single R9 290x running at 1920x1080 and I suggest you don't use hairworks but make a custom profile for witcher.exe in your ccc. Change tessellation via override application settings and then maximum tess set to 16x. thats a good average without loosing performance and still getting some nice hair. Oops I see you already done this XD. But set it to 16x instead of 8x.

I found it more smooth and less laggy.. My fps stays strong 54 to 59fps. at novagrad is around 50fps worst 47. That was with driver 1040. With 15.7 dunno yet. I link others who have tested it.

Thanks for the link, I'll check that out now.

On a side note, I just wrote another forum post sharing my opinion on the visual quality comparison with all the hair rendering options available if anyone wants to comment/share their thoughts as well:

https://www.gog.com/forum/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt/geralts_hair_opinions_on_visual_quality_comparison_with_and_without_hairworks

The latest Windows 10 build + 15.7 drivers gave me 60fps+ on a 290. It seems like the 15.7 drivers did more for Win10 than any other OS. Novagrad dips more but over 50fps. I only have 8x hairworks though.

I'm guessing 1.07 will have more performance but the biggest improvement will probably be from Windows 10.

Sorry I was away and couldn't reply earlier, but yes, I see framerate increase, both Crossfire and non-crossfire set-ups. In Crossfire setup framerate growth is easily noticeable, because it... finally works:D. I can enable arsehairworks and still get around 50+ FPS without microstuttering for most part (but there are still some artifacts, like ripples on water left by Aard, that come and gone (one moment they are there, next they are gone, then back again)). In non-crossfire setup, FPS (without meter) is less noticeable, because it already was 40+, and smooth enough for me, now it closer to promised "almost constant 60 FPS", though certain drops still occur. Because I already completed game, I can't exactly compare long-term performance, as I don't have any motivation to replay, but those parts I re-ran, they seems to have higher FPS. Even in 4K, where single R9 290x was struggling at ~24FPS, now it's around 28-32, so it's "playable". Though assets are clearly not ready for that resolution.
On my old card performance is also better, I can either boost up some settings (from "low"), or enjoy higher FPS.

Good job, team Red. AMD red, not CDPR red.