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?
