The Witcher 3 is finally here and will soon be working hand-in-hand with Mr Sunshine, to melt our PC’s from the inside out! But it isn’t just hardware bottlenecks that could hold your PC back!
Here are our top tips to boosting your PC’s performance with The Witcher 3. These tips are designed to squeeze every last ounce from your PC, with little or no wallet damage (in comparison to hefty GPU or CPU upgrades).
Boost Witcher 3 performance with no hardware upgrades:
1) Task Manage – Make sure you know what programs are running and starting up with your PC. If you see any you don’t recognise, look-up their file names in your favourite search engine and uninstall if necessary. You’ll have no hope at running The Witcher 3 well, if you have several pointless programmes running in the background, sucking-up system resources!
Remember, even the legit programmes can limit your systems gaming ability. Also be on the look-out for multiple Apple and other media player apps. Oh, and if you’re not using Geforce Experience (if you don’t need its optimisation or recording features), shut it down! Your card drivers do not need Experience to run in-game.
2) Geralt is the lone, white wolf. Disconnect! – Faster, cheaper broadband and easier connectivity, mean many of us never disconnect from the web. This forces us to constantly depend on anti-virus protection and if you’re running Steam as well, that’s a lot that’s holding The Witcher 3 back, even before you’ve hit the games front-end!
GOG.com doesn’t need to connect to the internet or run in the background, freeing-up even more precious system resources for The Witcher 3!
Simply playing offline (enabling you to temporarily close your anti-virus program while you game) will free-up valuable CPU and memory resources for The Witcher 3. Better still, sites like GOG (Good Old Gaming) don’t even require a client to run during gameplay. No client, internet connection or anti-virus software, mean more added oomph for Geralt’s quest.
Cheaper hardware upgrades that will help boost performance in the Witcher 3
3) Geralt has enough memory issues – One of the quickest and easiest solutions to enhancing your PC, is to upgrade your RAM. Just £30-40 can give your PC the extra boost it needs. Use software such as Belarc Advisor to determine your current RAM’s speed (never mix), then add to it. You want at least 8GB but 12GB will really help your system on Geralt’s adventure.
4) Go SSD. Solid State Drives are much faster than regular hard drives because they’re simply circuit boards. Your older hard drive relies on bulky, moving parts (why it makes those churning sounds) and this takes it longer to kick-in and access files.
The Witcher 3 is open-world. Allow your PC to tell Geralt’s tale more smoothly by switching to SSD. You’ll wonder how on earth you booted-up without one!
Access The Witcher 3 faster by upgrading – but don’t go mad! Our SSD vs HD game loading time tests show, you don’t need the fastest and most expensive SSD’s. A little trick (if your budget is tight) is to buy a smaller SSD, just for your operating system and games. Anything above 120GB (go slightly higher if you can) will give you enough space for your OS, updates and the couple of games you’re currently playing.
Found any other cost-effective tips or wish to add to our tips above? Let us know via the comments.
We wish everyone a smooth experience with The Witcher 3.
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