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Here's how to easily fix MSI Afterburner RTSS issue on The Witcher 3 next gen update

The Witcher 3 next-gen update

Announced back in 2020, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt next gen update finally got a release date last month after a lot of delay. The update promised ray-tracing, updated 4K assets (textures), and other improvements in various aspects. To showcase the improvements, a gameplay trailer was also released showing the 2015 GOTY in its next gen glory. Dubbed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, the game is now available on PC.

While many people like to fire up a game and get lost in the visuals, the gameplay and (sometimes) the story, some others who are more into the hardware side of things like to monitor the general usage statistics of their systems. A popular software utility MSI Afterburner is often used by users to track the usage data of their systems when gaming. However, in the case of The Witcher 3: Wid Hunt next gen update, it looks like there are issues with the Rivatuner Statistics Server (RTSS) overlay which means the usage statistics can not be displayed.

Guru3D members, upon further digging, found that a "d3d11on12.dll" file is causing the problem, preventing the RTSS overlay from working properly. Hence, deleting this file works as the RTSS overlay, or any other overlay on your system will now use the D3D12 (DirectX 12) as the default for the On-Screen Display (OSD) purposes. This DLL is not mandatory to run the game on PC at the moment so it can be deleted. However, do make sure to keep a backup of it in case the file becomes necessary. This is by far the easier solution.

Another workaround is to "Add" a separate application profile setting for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition in RTSS. By default, RTSS uses the "Global" setting for all games which means for the new Witcher update, OSD reverts to using D3D11on12 by default instead of D3D12.

Guru3D's Unwinder explains:

Got Witcher 3 Next Gen installed and peeked into the problem source. Game indeed ships with local copy of DirectX runtime (d3d11on12.dll located in .\bin\x64_dx12.dll), which is different from system one and which breaks all overlays dependent on it (which includes RTSS, Steam overlay and other third party products) due to version mismatch. Two solutions are available:

The first solution in unified and can be used to fix compatibility with any overlay, which is currently broken in this game. As @bobnewels correctly mentioned before, you may simply rename/remove d3d11on12.dll located in .\bin\x64_dx12.dll. This way you will force the game to use system version of this library instead of their local one and it will fix Steam, RTSS overlay and many other affected products. I guess the game developers will do the same in the nearest patches and remove d3d11on12.dll from distributive too.

Second solution way is RTSS architecture specific. RTSS contains two optional OSD renderers for D3D12 applications: D3D11on12 (used by default) and native D3D12 based. You may simply create a profile for Witcher 3 Next Gen and make RTSS using native D3D12 OSD rendered for it instead. So it won't depend on D3D11on12 and won't be affected by Witcher's d3d11on12.dll versions conflict. To do it add the following profile template for it:

witcher3.exe.cfg

Code:

[RendererDirect3D12] D3D11on12 = 0
Witcher 3 no delete necessary RTSS overlay fix

Hence, it should resolve the overlay issue on MSI Afterburner's RTSS as well as any other overlays you may have on your system. In the case of the second solution, you won't have to delete the d3d11on12.dll file, but as we mentioned above, deleting it is certainly the easier approach by far.

Source: Guru3D forum (1) , (2)

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