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The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWitcher 3 - Minimum CPU requirements may be a bit more flexible(27 posts)(27 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 20, 2015
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Jamie.monro: I've got an older machine with a lower cpu (Intel penryn based architecture) which works reasonably well with the game.

I am now wondering why it is that the AMD Phenom II X4 3.0GHz is ok for this game, but an earlier intel quad-core (1st generation i7 quad-core or the older generation penryn quad-core) isn't.

From what I can see the AMD Phenom II X4 brings SSE4a instruction set to the table, however intel never utilizes this in their CPU designs, opting to go with SSE4.1 & SSE4.2 extensions.

One of the important differences between the first and second generation i7/i5 quad-cores is the addition of AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions), but otherwise they both support SSE4.1 & SSE4.2 extensions. If the game required the AVX instructions to justify an i5-2500k vs i7-860 then it wouldn't run on the AMD Phenom II X4 3.0GHz.

So if the game doesn't require AVX and it doesn't appear to require SSE4 (since AMD's SSE4a differs from Intel's SSE4.1 & SSE4.2; although they introduced these in later processors). It would seem that the intel minimum cpu requirements can ben dropped further.

This game will run on my cpu and graphics card:
-Xeon E5450 (Identical to a Q9650)
-Nvidia GTX 750 1GB RAM

My RAM is only 4GB however, and it is obvious that a lot of paging is going on, so 6GB RAM being a minimum requirement appears to be true, but I can still get some pretty good information from this.

At the first inn that you visit (outside in the small village), I get around 28-32 FPS with this setup with the following settings:
-Resolution: 1920x1080
-AA: ON
-Sharpening: ON
-Ambient occlusion: OFF
-Vignetting: ON
-Light Shafts: ON

Nvdia Hairworks: OFF
Background characters: ULTRA (Haven't hit a town yet, so this will probably change)
Shadow Quality: LOW
Terrain Quality: ULTRA
Water Quality: HIGH
Grass: ULTRA
Texture: ULTRA
Foilage Visibility: LOW
Detail Level: ULTRA

However, reducing the resolution to 1024x768 increases the framerate to about 48fps-53fps, which mean i'm more GPU limited than CPU limited in this particular case.

I have a feeling that even older CPU's may work on this game. Having 4 cores corresponded to about a 30% peformance increase over a dual-core (I disabled the additional cores within task-manager), so having 4 cores does help, but I don't see any reason why if the Phenom II X4 940 is ok for the Witcher 3, then the Q9650 isn't.

Check out this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2702/19

An old article comparing the Phenom II x4 940 to 1st generation i7's and the core 2 duo's/quad's of the previous generation. The intel processors perform better.

I think the minimum requirements are a bit too agressive. While I like the fact the minimum requirements actually do give decent performance at that level, I think they can drop the intel cpu requirements quite a bit.
Can confirm it witchwer 3 is running on an oldd 2st gen i7 920 @ 2.6ghz with a 560ti, ok not getting high mixed between low and med but running fine so far @1080p
Posted May 20, 2015
Test PC -

Q6600 OC 3Ghz
GTX 580 OC 900Mhz
4GB DDR2 800Mhz
TW3 installed on SSD

Results -

900p
'High' Preset
HairWorks - Off
PostFx - Most on, DoF, light shafts and cinematic aberrations[??] off
AA - On

Locked 30fps, some dips to 27-28. With more of an OC, I'm thinking 3.4Ghz and 2GB more ram it would hold a steady 30fps and some settings could be turned up. The bottleneck was on the CPU and RAM, GPU had a little more head room, but not much. I'd probably keep the settings and keep the frame rate locked @ 30, maybe try upping the resolution.

Conclusion -

Quite impressed how well a 7 year old CPU, 5 year GPU and 4GB of DDR2 800 handle TW3, I'd say the minimal CPU should call for an i3 with HT. 6GB ram is correct, I've seen 5.5 being used on my main PC. GTX 660 is probably a good call for a minimal GPU.

All in all, great job by CDPR, the game scales well and takes advantage of higher end hardware where applicable.
Posted May 21, 2015
I wish they had a demo of the game we could download to see how the game runs with our rigs.
Posted May 21, 2015
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ChristopherRobin: I wish they had a demo of the game we could download to see how the game runs with our rigs.
What is your rig?
Posted May 21, 2015
E8400 CPU
550 Ti
6 GB RAM
Posted May 21, 2015
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ChristopherRobin: E8400 CPU
550 Ti
6 GB RAM
Sorry, but I think your GPU is too weak for the game.
Maybe if you play on a very low resolution with every setting on low. Maybe...
Posted May 21, 2015
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light487: I am below minimum spec on my GPU but still play the game at respectable resolution (1920x1200, though I've now changed to 1680x1050 to see if any improvement) with mostly medium settings and few on high and there is really no noticeable issues. Really like how well the game has been optimised.. the greatest thing is that playing off an SSD is so fast, there's almost no load times at all even at the game launch! Really awesome stuff.
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Ham08: May I ask what GPU you are using? You say that you are below minimum spec on GPU but still play at respectable resolution with medium settings and no noticeable issues. This gives me hope! Hope that I don't have to spend $200-$300 for a new video card so I can finally enjoy playing this masterpiece RPG.

I am only below minimum specs on the GPU with a Geforce 9800GT 1GB video card. It was a great card back in the day and I have never had a reason to upgrade it until now. I bought the game a long time ago, but I don't want to download this huge game unless I feel confident that my rig could run it.

Thanks for posting and thank you again for taking the time to reply to my query.

Cheers!

Ham08
My total specs are:

Win 7 64bit
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2GHz (Overclocked to 3.7GHz)
Sapphire Radeon HD7850 2GB OC (11% below minimum according to game-debate)
12GB RAM
Samsung 840 Pro SSD

While I am not a long way below min. specs, I am definitely below the absolute min. specs that CDPR have declared for this game. I didn't do any tweaking to the game settings when I first launched the game but instead allowed the game to choose the settings for me. I have since then increase my water quality to High and foliage distance to High as well as a couple of other settings that I bumped up. Didn't see any noticeable decrease in performance.

I am not sure on my FPS because I don't care about specifics like that.. just as long as the game plays smoothly without stuttering or screen tearing, I am fine.. and that's the experience I am having. I can see there is definitely room for improvement with a better setup, for example, the mid to long distance looks quite blurred/pixelated by comparison to the immediate area (about 30 to 60ft radius), which is really high quality looking.

Oh yeah, and cutscenes are as smooth as the rest of the game.. no stuttering etc

Since you only have a 9800GT, which I agree was an awesome card in its time, you probably won't be able to run it on that in my opinion. You're going to need to upgrade at least the card. You're going to need at least a 2GB card and one with a bit more punch in terms of all of its specs. If your budget is $200-$300, then you will have no trouble at all upgrading to a very respectable card. If you're on a tight budget (around $150 or less), you could get something like a GTX 750 Ti and still run this game at similar settings to me.. but definitely spend more if you have it to get a decent card that will keep you going for another few years.

If I had the cash to spare, I'd be upgrading but between paying 2 mortgages and feeding/clothing my family buying the game itself was more than a luxury in itself! :)
Post edited May 21, 2015 by light487
Posted May 21, 2015
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ChristopherRobin: E8400 CPU
550 Ti
6 GB RAM
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Paddyy: Sorry, but I think your GPU is too weak for the game.
Maybe if you play on a very low resolution with every setting on low. Maybe...
It's not my GPU that I'm worried about. Plenty of people have reported that the 550 Ti handles the game just fine.
I just can't believe that a E8400 can run it.
Post edited May 21, 2015 by ChristopherRobin
Posted May 21, 2015
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Paddyy: Sorry, but I think your GPU is too weak for the game.
Maybe if you play on a very low resolution with every setting on low. Maybe...
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ChristopherRobin: It's not my GPU that I'm worried about. Plenty of people have reported that the 550 Ti handles the game just fine.
I just can't believe that a E8400 can run it.
I'm playing this game on a GTX 650Ti / AMDFx8320. Play is at "MEDIUM" graphics settings and my FPS is on the 20-30FPS range. it kinda sucks really but still playable. Tried the "LOW" graphics settings, a slight 25-35FPS improvement but it sucks hairy balls on the details. I aborted this mode, its simply not ok. So I have bBeen, ambitious, tried the "HIGH" graphics details but was met with 16-20FPS so its sucks balls again. "MEDIUM" is tolerably best. Gonna overclock my CPU and GPU but i doubt if i can gain an additional +1 FPS. LOL
Posted May 21, 2015
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Bleed: I agree, the game seems to be fairly optimized. I tested it on an old 2.4 core 2 quad (Q6600), AMD HD 7770 1 GB vram, 8 GB system ram and it runs smooth at constant 30-45 fps, medium settings though. Playable and no lags or crashes.

EDIT : Oh and Full HD (1920x1080) if anyone cares.
Well if the game works on a Q6600, that means generation one core 2 duo's should work as well, if fairly slow.

Impressive framerates!, you seem to be getting better performance than my supposedly faster GTX750 with Q9650(well Xeon E5450) @ 3.2GHz
Posted May 21, 2015
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Paddyy: Sorry, but I think your GPU is too weak for the game.
Maybe if you play on a very low resolution with every setting on low. Maybe...
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ChristopherRobin: It's not my GPU that I'm worried about. Plenty of people have reported that the 550 Ti handles the game just fine.
I just can't believe that a E8400 can run it.
I'm sorry for sounding like a broken record but I really think a graphics card upgrade will give you the most improvement in performance. I won't bother you again about it, but my first post was pointing out how my CPU was limited by my GTX750 and that I could nearly double the frame rate by changing the resolution with the same graphics settings.

This isn't a perfect way of checking whether a game is CPU or GPU bound, but reducing the resolution at the same graphics settings and seeing such a large improvement in performance very strongly indicates to me that my graphics card is the weak point in my system; and my GTX 750 is quite a bit faster than the GTX 550 TI:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1131?vs=1133

I'm getting around 27-32 FPS at 1920x1080.

Regardless, upgrading your PC is going to improve performance even with the same graphics card; I just can't help offering recommendations whether people want them or not :)

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ChristopherRobin: It's not my GPU that I'm worried about. Plenty of people have reported that the 550 Ti handles the game just fine.
I just can't believe that a E8400 can run it.
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xcom25msl: I'm playing this game on a GTX 650Ti / AMDFx8320. Play is at "MEDIUM" graphics settings and my FPS is on the 20-30FPS range. it kinda sucks really but still playable. Tried the "LOW" graphics settings, a slight 25-35FPS improvement but it sucks hairy balls on the details. I aborted this mode, its simply not ok. So I have bBeen, ambitious, tried the "HIGH" graphics details but was met with 16-20FPS so its sucks balls again. "MEDIUM" is tolerably best. Gonna overclock my CPU and GPU but i doubt if i can gain an additional +1 FPS. LOL
The GTX 550TI and GTX650 peform very similarly:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1133?vs=1125

As a rule of thumb, the one setting on any game that I will never ever lower is texture detail. This setting usually doesn't have too much of an impact on performance (unless you don't have enough video memory in which case you will notice stuttering when your video memory becomes full).

I would put all settings on low and go through each option, increasing each to maximum and then observe the impact to your framerate.

You should find that most settings wont do much to the overall framerate with exception to these:

-Nvidia Hairworks: Very heavy performance impact, set to the lowest setting possible

-Foilage Visibility: Heavy performance impact, though mostly noticed between ULTRA/HIGH settings

-Shadows: Medium peformance impact, I have this set to the lowest even on my R9 280x as the shadows still look decent

-Ambient Occlusion: Low\Medium performance impact (HBAO+ works efficiently on Nvidia hardware however), can help squeeze enough some extra frames out on a low end system. HBAO+ costs around 10-12% of the framerate on my R9-280X GPU vs SSAO, but it does look noticable better.

I highly recommend looking at the graphics tweak guides that geforce does; Nvidia only, but a good reference:
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
Post edited May 21, 2015 by Jamie.monro
Posted December 29, 2016
<message removed by poster>
Post edited December 31, 2016 by birkhoff
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The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWitcher 3 - Minimum CPU requirements may be a bit more flexible(27 posts)(27 posts)
(27 posts)