Get Witcher 3’s silky smooth HairWorks working on AMD cards

Following the Witcher 3’s HairWorks debacle, AMD users have taken it upon themselves to try and get HairWorks to perform well with AMD cards. One AMD user, among the Witcher 3 subreddit, has made some promising discoveries.

The user named FireBongWater, following a Guru3D forum member’s lead, revealed that HairWorks can run relatively smooth on AMD cards. Specifically, he argues, that you can run Witcher 3 at 60fps without any major performance drops. What black magic is this?

Firstly, you create a profile for witcher3.exe in your Catalyst Control Center. You set Tessellation Mode to “Override application settings”. Finally, you set the Maximum Tessellation Level to either 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x. The screenshot below should give you some guidance:

What needs to be stressed is that depending on what tessellation level you set, the hair quality and performance will vary. FireBongWater recommendations 4x or 8x tessellation for most users. He used a R9 290 and reported having little impact on performance.

In an update which followed, he said HairWorks performance can be further improved by reducing, or removing, the Anti-Aliasing of the hairs.

Several users, in the Witcher 3 subreddit, have come to the conclusion that the “AMD-Optimized” setting may actually work better while providing the same or  better quality. Experiment with the settings may be the best choice of action to find the sweet spot for you own rig.

According to WCCFTech, AMD have also addressed the performance issues and HairWorks in particular by providing a similar solution, as detailed above.

But don’t fret, AMD will be releasing a new driver version 15.5 to address Witcher 3 issues including HairWorks. In no time at all, AMD users will be able to enjoy Geralt’s glorious hair in all its platinum glory.

Source: Witcher 3 subreddit, WCCFTech