The Witcher 3 Notebook Benchmarks

For the original German article, see here.

Engine

Alleged graphics downgrades aside: With maximum details, the PC version of “The Witcher 3” looks great. The draw-distance and textures look great, but the greatest strength lies in the amazing details in this 3rd person RPG. Compared to other RPGs, the objects in “The Witcher 3” come alive with intricate details. The thick vegetation is impressive, but the quality of trees and bushes fluctuates heavily due to the (slightly) exaggerated representation of the weather.

The atmospheric day and night cycle dips the environment in a dynamic light. The Polish studio, CD Project RED, has chosen a suboptimal color scheme (subjective) and we would have preferred lower saturation. However, the engine leaves little room for complaint and runs well, apart from the occasional object popping in and out of vision. According to modern standards, the game is medium-sized (~25 GB) and offers an extensive options menu. CD Project splits the graphics settings into two menus.

While the Post Processing menu contains all the options for effects and graphics improvements, like Motion Blur, Bloom and Anti-Aliasing (apparently only FXAA is used), the Graphics Menu offers options for the resolution, the picture and more detail and quality settings. The vertical synchronization and FPS limit were turned off for the test. The engine deserves praise for its presets. A single click allows the user to adjust the overall game quality in 3 or 4 steps. With the exception of the environment coverage (SSAO instead of HBAO+), all settings are turned on with the maximum preset.

Although the Nvidia HairWorks feature (hair simulation) is available on the AMD and Intel systems, we recommend only Nvidia users to enable this. In the Radeon R9 290X test, the frames dropped at maximum settings by about 40%, from 50 to a poor 29 fps. The Nvidia competitor, GeForce GTX 980, ran just 20% slower with active HairWorks (44 instead 55 fps). In general, AMD GPUs suffer a lot more (Project Cars says hello). As can be witnessed from desktop GPU, the Radeon R9 280X, is positioned below the technically slower GeForce GTX 970M.

The results make it clear that “The Witcher 3” has very high requirements. Even at low settings, the graphics of the game are quite good, which means that the user will require at least a powerful middle-class GPU. In fact, the GeForce GT 750M, which performs well in most games at normal to high settings, could offer a mere 27 fps at a resolution of 1024x768 pixels and the Low preset.

Cheaper models, like the GeForce GT 740M, are overburdened by “The Witcher 3”. The same is true for the Intel IGPs (Integrated Graphics Processors). Neither the HD Graphics 4600 nor the Iris Pro 5200 can run the game fluidly. Stronger GPUs, like the GeForce GTX 850M or the GTX 860M, can manage a resolution of 1366x768 pixels and the Medium preset.