Although Nvidia Hairworks is something that should, theoretically, be limited only to Nvidia owners and users, there is in fact a trick to getting it to run even for your AMD GPU, and without taking a huge performance hit at that. So if you are a high end PC owner who demands the best possible graphics, and want to see the extent to which you can push The Witcher 3, all with an AMD GPU, you’re in luck- this new trick will let you do exactly that.

This information comes to us courtesy of reddit user FriedBongWater. “So thanks to a wonderful user over at Guru3D, it’s been discovered that hairworks can in fact run relatively smoothly on AMD cards. I’m talking 60fps smooth guys, and the trade-off is barely noticeable.

“All you need to do is create a profile for witcher3.exe in your Catalyst Control Center, then set Tessellation Mode to “Override application settings”, and finally set the Maximum Tessellation Level to either 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x.”

If you have a lower end GPU, setting tessellation to 2x or 4x at most is recommended (you can start at 16x, and then keep lowering the setting until the framerate drops stop). If you’re still getting low frames during gameplay, however, all you have to do is to lower the anti aliasing for Hairworks:

• Go to the Witcher 3 install directory on PC.
• Go to The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\base → rendering.ini
• Search for “HairWorksAALevel” and change it to 2 or 4

This should theoretically be able to give you Hairworks on an AMD card, without taking a performance hit to show for it.

So, there you have it, folks- is this something you think you will do, AMD owners?

While AMD might have TressFX, Nvidia has developed its own middleware solution to accurately model, simulate and render hair and fur. Hairworks is showcased in the above video and it’s even revealed how the technology has been put into use for CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The video reveals that one wolf in The Witcher 3 has approximately 200,000 strands of fur and how the artists have control over different aspects such as waviness, density and even clumps in the fur. The technology won’t be hitting next year – in fact, it’s already been in use for some time now, with Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Riley. The overall texture and flow of Riley’s fur is also espoused on in the video.

It’ll be interesting to see which games take advantage of Hairworks, especially since AMD’s TressFX is yet to beyond its implementation in Tomb Raider. What are your thoughts on its use? Let us know below.