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Witcher 2

GrantMeThePower I downloaded the AMD Catalyst driver hotfix 11.b I believe. It increases fps for witcher 2. Make sure you turn off AA and all other features in catalyst and set them to program default. The update to witcher 2 1.1 patch helped emensely with fps. Before I was getting about 15- 20 and now it's smooth as silk. The settings for the 6970m 2gb to make witcher 2 look best (trust me I tried alot of setting and resolutions) seems to be 2550 x 1440 with textures set to very high, lighting set to ultra, shadows ultra, AA off, ubersampling off, dangle objects disabled, SSAO off. Bloom and lighting shafts (haha shafts) set to on. I personally hate blur effects so turned those off but the performance was the same with them on. It's a matter of personal preference I suppose. You should get 30-40 fps. One battle it did dip down to 20-25 but it was a busy one and smoothed out once I passed it.

Its quite the looker this game! Enjoy!
 
hipnotizer said:
GrantMeThePower I downloaded the AMD Catalyst driver hotfix 11.b I believe. It increases fps for witcher 2. Make sure you turn off AA and all other features in catalyst and set them to program default. The update to witcher 2 1.1 patch helped emensely with fps. Before I was getting about 15- 20 and now it's smooth as silk. The settings for the 6970m 2gb to make witcher 2 look best (trust me I tried alot of setting and resolutions) seems to be 2550 x 1440 with textures set to very high, lighting set to ultra, shadows ultra, AA off, ubersampling off, dangle objects disabled, SSAO off. Bloom and lighting shafts (haha shafts) set to on. I personally hate blur effects so turned those off but the performance was the same with them on. It's a matter of personal preference I suppose. You should get 30-40 fps. One battle it did dip down to 20-25 but it was a busy one and smoothed out once I passed it.

Its quite the looker this game! Enjoy!
Click to expand...


please, where to download AMD Catalyst driver hotfix 11.b?

Did you innstall too the oficial drivers from Ati?

What windows are u using?

Thx
 
hipnotizer said:
GrantMeThePower I downloaded the AMD Catalyst driver hotfix 11.b I believe. It increases fps for witcher 2. Make sure you turn off AA and all other features in catalyst and set them to program default. The update to witcher 2 1.1 patch helped emensely with fps. Before I was getting about 15- 20 and now it's smooth as silk. The settings for the 6970m 2gb to make witcher 2 look best (trust me I tried alot of setting and resolutions) seems to be 2550 x 1440 with textures set to very high, lighting set to ultra, shadows ultra, AA off, ubersampling off, dangle objects disabled, SSAO off. Bloom and lighting shafts (haha shafts) set to on. I personally hate blur effects so turned those off but the performance was the same with them on. It's a matter of personal preference I suppose. You should get 30-40 fps. One battle it did dip down to 20-25 but it was a busy one and smoothed out once I passed it.

Its quite the looker this game! Enjoy!
Click to expand...

Awesome! Thank you for your help. I'm really amped about playing.

I'll try to find the catalyst hotfix this evening. is there any trick to installing the driver for bootcamp, or do i just update the driver from the device manager?
 
Virplay you can get the hotfix drivers 11.b from the amd radeon website. Not sure the exact address. Witcher 2 will automatically patch with 1.1 which also fixes fps.
 
Oh and I am using windows 7 ultimate 64 bit in bootcamp.

I accidentally installed 32 bit and only had 2 gb available in windows. The performance was stuttery. Once I reinstalled with 64 bit things drastically improved.
 
GrantMeThePower I had no issue with installing the latest catalyst drivers in bootcamp. It installed just like any other computer I have had. Easy peasy.
 
hipnotizer said:
GrantMeThePower I downloaded the AMD Catalyst driver hotfix 11.b I believe. It increases fps for witcher 2. Make sure you turn off AA and all other features in catalyst and set them to program default. The update to witcher 2 1.1 patch helped emensely with fps. Before I was getting about 15- 20 and now it's smooth as silk. The settings for the 6970m 2gb to make witcher 2 look best (trust me I tried alot of setting and resolutions) seems to be 2550 x 1440 with textures set to very high, lighting set to ultra, shadows ultra, AA off, ubersampling off, dangle objects disabled, SSAO off. Bloom and lighting shafts (haha shafts) set to on. I personally hate blur effects so turned those off but the performance was the same with them on. It's a matter of personal preference I suppose. You should get 30-40 fps. One battle it did dip down to 20-25 but it was a busy one and smoothed out once I passed it.

Its quite the looker this game! Enjoy!
Click to expand...
I have been playing witcher 2 since release on my 2011 iMac, and i tried various tweaks. I do have patch 1.1 installed, as well as 11.5b drivers.
However I can not support your claim about the 2560x1440.
From my experience, selecting these graphics settings with max. resolution the iMac can't handle witcher 2.
With 1080p it works like charm though.
 
My experiencie with the witcher 2 on a macpro 2009 Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2,26 GHz (8 cores) ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 VRAM and 14GB RAM. Playing at 1900x1200. I get 25fps. :eek:

Planing to buy an Ati 5870 1Gb... hope I get better playing experiencie :eek:
 
the video ram should help at that resolution. I've read the witcher 2 eats up video ram, try turning down that setting and see if you get any better results.
 
Thought I'd share my experiences last night (thanks again for all the help guys!)

First-install of game. Went smoothly. The install automatically put the 1.1 patch on there for me. No prob.

Second- Install of hotfix. I did this before hipnotizer responded with how he did it. I did some reading on the net and everyone seemed to have problems installing the hotfix if they did it like they usually do on a windows pc, where you remove all traces of the old driver and then install the newest version. Instead of that i just ran the .exe without removing the old drivers. The install went fine and had no problems. I would recommend for bootcamp people to do it this way, and do NOT remove your old drivers.

Third- playing the game.

i first tried running it after just having it autoselect settings for me. It chose "high spec" and the resolution at 1920x1080 (i'm playing on a super base 2011 iMac). The game ran, but it did not run smoothly. I looked at the settings it selected and it had everything on except for ubersampling and all the settings at high. I started messing around with a setting here and a setting there. Its a pain in the ass because you have to fully leave the game to change a setting.

I wanted to see what the difference would be if i ran it in 720p. So i did. i put everything to medium and went 1280x720, running full screen. It actually looks pretty darn good.

That all being said, i haven't settled on what i'm going to finally do. i think i need to install FRAPS so i can see numerically what the differences are. I'd really like to find the sweet spot so i can focus on the game and not the settings.

The bottom line is, it runs, and if you can make some sacrifices and not have everything on ultra, even the base imac can run the game just fine.
 
GrantMeThePower said:
Thought I'd share my experiences last night (thanks again for all the help guys!)

First-install of game. Went smoothly. The install automatically put the 1.1 patch on there for me. No prob.

Second- Install of hotfix. I did this before hipnotizer responded with how he did it. I did some reading on the net and everyone seemed to have problems installing the hotfix if they did it like they usually do on a windows pc, where you remove all traces of the old driver and then install the newest version. Instead of that i just ran the .exe without removing the old drivers. The install went fine and had no problems. I would recommend for bootcamp people to do it this way, and do NOT remove your old drivers.

Third- playing the game.

i first tried running it after just having it autoselect settings for me. It chose "high spec" and the resolution at 1920x1080 (i'm playing on a super base 2011 iMac). The game ran, but it did not run smoothly. I looked at the settings it selected and it had everything on except for ubersampling and all the settings at high. I started messing around with a setting here and a setting there. Its a pain in the ass because you have to fully leave the game to change a setting.

I wanted to see what the difference would be if i ran it in 720p. So i did. i put everything to medium and went 1280x720, running full screen. It actually looks pretty darn good.

That all being said, i haven't settled on what i'm going to finally do. i think i need to install FRAPS so i can see numerically what the differences are. I'd really like to find the sweet spot so i can focus on the game and not the settings.

The bottom line is, it runs, and if you can make some sacrifices and not have everything on ultra, even the base imac can run the game just fine.
Click to expand...
They key is to update the drivers to 11.5b, also set things like Anisotropic FIltering and Tessellation in the Catalyst CC to AMD Optimized. Activate AMD Overdrive and set it to max clock.
 
GrantMeThePower said:
Whoa...I don't know what any of that means. haha. I'm sorry. I never saw those options. Where do I find that?
Click to expand...

Well you do know how to enter the Catalyst Control Center right?
Right click on desktop and Catalys CC should be right on top of the context menu box.
When opened you should see "Options" in the upper right corner. Click that and select "Advanced View"

Now on the right side chose the menu point "Games" Where you will find all kinds of things. Make sure Tessellation and Anisotropic filtering is set to AMD Optimized, and Texture Filtering is set to the lowest (most left on the bar).
Then, below "Games" is the menu point called "Performance" (or something, not sure, I don't have the english version of the CCC), there you can select AMD Overdrive that lets you overclock 680GHz to 710, and 900GHz to 1000.
Do that and don't forget to save everything.

Now to Witcher 2 User.ini tweaking:

In your "My Cocuments" > "Witcher 2" > "Config"-folder you open the file User.ini, change the following values to something like this:

[Rendering]
AllowAntialias=0
AllowBloom=0
AllowBlur=0
AllowCutsceneDOF=0
AllowDOF=0
AllowDecals=1.0
AllowMotionBlur=1
AllowRain=1
AllowSSAO=1
AllowScatterDOF=0
AllowShafts=1
AllowSharpen=1
AllowVignette=1
AtlasTextureDownscale=0
DanglesLimiter=0
DetailTextureDownscale=0
Fullscreen=1
MaxAtlasTextureSize=4096
MaxCubeShadowCount=1
MaxCubeShadowSize=256
MaxSpotShadowCount=3
MaxSpotShadowSize=512
MaxTextureSize=2048
MeshDistanceScale=1.5
ShadowQuality=3
ShadowedLights=3
TextureDownscale=0
TextureMemoryBudget=1750
TextureTimeBudget=10
UberSampling=1
VSync=1

If something is missing in your file, then add it.
Notice that i set Uber to 1, however when UberSampling is enabled it is set to 2. I found out that when setting Uber to 1 the game runs somewhat smoother...at least for me.
TextureMemoryBudget can be set to something between 1000 and 1750 when you have the HD6970m with 2GB VRAM.
I keep SSAO on because it looks better, you may want to turn it off for additional FPS though.

After saving set the files options to "read only" to prevent Witcher2.exe from overwriting it.

My Game runs at lowest 30 FPS mostly, very rarely i get some drops to lowest 25FPS for a second. In towns I get up to 50+ FPS.
Running at 1920x1080 btw.

Hope this helps!
 
Last edited:
That totally helps! Thank you. I'll make those changes to the catalyst control.

I can mess with the user.ini but I'm on the base 21.5". that is no HD6970, 2GB, so I don't think the same settings will work.
 
I did as Lord Appleseed and set UberSampling=1, and i get 35 fps, before was 25

thx
 
patch 1.2 was just come out today. download it manually or when you run launcher, it will be automatically downloading. it's 67MB. I talk about retail version. steam version? I have no idea. I have steam too. but I deleted it since it hassle so much. why did I need to download 9.4GB for small 16MB patch 1.1? if it will happen again for patch 1.2, I won't ever install steam version. done. you only need freaking 67MB for 1.2.

however I didn't test what's been changed, or improved. I will see it soon.:)
 
GrantMeThePower said:
That totally helps! Thank you. I'll make those changes to the catalyst control.

I can mess with the user.ini but I'm on the base 21.5". that is no HD6970, 2GB, so I don't think the same settings will work.
Click to expand...
Then Ignore the part with the TextureMemoryBudget (or set it to 600), and set SSAO to 0.

virplay said:
I did as Lord Appleseed and set UberSampling=1, and i get 35 fps, before was 25

thx
Click to expand...
Great that it worked for you! :)
 
iMac 21.5 2010

I don't understand something. I have an iMac 2010 21.5 with 256 vram built in. I bought the retail version of the game, and believe it or not, I was running the game fine before the 1.1 patch. I made it to level 8 and that's when the patch was released and the amd hotfix. After upgrading both, I can't play the game at all. I had all the "talked about" requirements turn either turned to off or low, lowered the resolution to the lowest possible and still cannot play the game, even in windowed mode. reinstalled Parallels to Windows 7 64 bit, no change. I'm at a lost as to how I was even able to play the game but I did. Not now. I wish there was a way to bypass the patches and then I would go back to 11a amd catalyst. Now as it goes, I'll have to sell off this game and wait for the console version. :) Just wanted to share. I was really loving this game.

GrantMeThePower said:
Thought I'd share my experiences last night (thanks again for all the help guys!)

First-install of game. Went smoothly. The install automatically put the 1.1 patch on there for me. No prob.

Second- Install of hotfix. I did this before hipnotizer responded with how he did it. I did some reading on the net and everyone seemed to have problems installing the hotfix if they did it like they usually do on a windows pc, where you remove all traces of the old driver and then install the newest version. Instead of that i just ran the .exe without removing the old drivers. The install went fine and had no problems. I would recommend for bootcamp people to do it this way, and do NOT remove your old drivers.

Third- playing the game.

i first tried running it after just having it autoselect settings for me. It chose "high spec" and the resolution at 1920x1080 (i'm playing on a super base 2011 iMac). The game ran, but it did not run smoothly. I looked at the settings it selected and it had everything on except for ubersampling and all the settings at high. I started messing around with a setting here and a setting there. Its a pain in the ass because you have to fully leave the game to change a setting.

I wanted to see what the difference would be if i ran it in 720p. So i did. i put everything to medium and went 1280x720, running full screen. It actually looks pretty darn good.

That all being said, i haven't settled on what i'm going to finally do. i think i need to install FRAPS so i can see numerically what the differences are. I'd really like to find the sweet spot so i can focus on the game and not the settings.

The bottom line is, it runs, and if you can make some sacrifices and not have everything on ultra, even the base imac can run the game just fine.
Click to expand...
 
I've never seen such a stressful game in my life. it must be wrong during developing the game. I don't judge anything. but I assume that the game is not for everybody even though some of you like RPG because you think you will be ok with spec requirement. but it's not. the word 'optimization' is kind of embarrassing unlikely they claimed. so how do they make console version when PC version takes so much power? I just wonder. they should turn down little bit. whether it looks beautiful or not, it should be playable. it's not bench mark tool. game you have to enjoy.
 
I played just about all weekend. It was sort of disgusting. The gf had a girls weekend, so it meant i was left to my own devices...not a good thing when i have the witcher 2 around.


Overall Game thoughts
Let me get this out of the way. This is not only one of the best RPG's I've ever played, but one of my favorite games ever. Its up there with fallout 2, red dead redemption, and uncharted 2. I'm enjoying it much more than any of the elder scrolls games, and that's saying a lot because until i picked this up, skyrim is the game i'd been most excited about because i LOVED morrowind and oblivion.

I'm playing on normal because I'd heard about how hard the combat was. I really wish i would have started it on hard. I think the problem is that the combat plays more like a mash up of diablo and arkham asylum than it does most RPGs. The only ways you really die are if you are impatient with combat.

The one complaint I have about the game, though, is that it has picked up the old school "take anything from anywhere at any time" RPG convention. It wasn't good 10 years ago and its especially jarring now. You can be in a poor peasants house with his kids and his wife standing there and just take all of their gold, cloth, and books and they dont say a word. Strange.

Finally, I have found that it is much, MUCH better to play this game with a gamepad. The game really feels designed for a game pad. In fact, they should have put it under "Recommended Hardware". As much as I love K&M, there is no comparison here.

iMac Performance
As I mentioned before I have a new, 2011 base iMac. I spent about 3 hours with FRAPS going through all of the combinations of settings between 1080P, 900P, and 720P trying to find the best balance between appearance and performance. I would change on thing at a time, perform the same actions, note the FPS, and keep repeating.

NOTE-i did not even bother trying ubersampling. The one time I accidentally changed it, I couldn't even get the game to load. I should also note, however, that it was a 1920x1080 resolution at the time, but still. Don't ever touch it if you are on a base iMac. I also tried playing with setting ubersampling to 1 in the user file. I couldnt' get teh game to run well with that setting at any resolution. I have a feeling that whatever kind of filtering they are doing with that setting is very VRAM intensive and i think it needs to be reserved for the 2gb options (though the 1gb may work)

Rather than run down what each option looked like and performed like I will sum it up by saying that after all of that I came to the conclusion that the best performance:appearance ratio came setting the resolution to 1600x900, textures medium, shadows med, shadow lights med, light shafts on, vsync on, dangling object limit on, rain effects or whatever its called on, cinematic dof on, decals medium and everything else off.

This keeps it playable outdoors during fights at around 25 fps. Inside its more like 40-50. Turning off light shafts gave me a whopping 1 fps difference, and i like the way it looks.

1920x1080 was never playable unless i turned the textures down low and teh downsampling up high and its looked awful.

720p let me run AA and SSAO, but it never looked as good as the 1600x900, especially during dialogue sections where the increased resolution really shows itself on the characters clothing.

Long winded, but hopefully someone gets some use out of the post. Thanks to all.
 
I am using witcher 2 at 2550 x 1440. I am using the catalyst overclock and getting 30-50 fps constantly. I have ssao, aa, uber and blur off, everything else on.
 
GrantMeThePower said:
I'm playing on normal because I'd heard about how hard the combat was. I really wish i would have started it on hard. I think the problem is that the combat plays more like a mash up of diablo and arkham asylum than it does most RPGs. The only ways you really die are if you are impatient with combat.
Click to expand...

You can change the difficulty level on the fly, anytime you want.
 
Some of the changes they've made to accommodate a gamepad have made this game for the worse.

The UI is an obvious one, but it's not my complaint as it's just simpler than the first Witcher. My biggest gripe is how the game now interacts with objects on the screen.

If you've played games like Dragon Age:Origins or the first Witcher, or pretty much any PC RPG for that matter, item pickup is very easy and fluent. It's just a matter of pointing at it, then clicking on it to interact with it. This made easy work when there were multiple items on the screen and it's something I miss.

NOW with the W2, I have to wiggle up to each item to interact with it, which in comparison to the mouse method is is a CHORE. I've done this method on console games for decades, and it works, but when I have a mouse in my hand, it's stupid that I can't use it to do what it does best, pointing and interacting! Especially when the first Witcher did it right.

Never the less, the Witcher 2 is still a REALLY good game so far, definitely up there with the first from what I've played. This is even with cheeseball quicktime events. Speaking of which, I think CD Project was playing games like Resident Evil 4 -- one of my favorites -- and other popular console games while working on this one. It would explain the downgrade in object handling and the mentioned quicktime events.

I'm playing the game on hard and once I figured out the game's attack rhythm, it became rather easy. It's now really easy to get Geralt into a blender spin and keep is attack flowing between on-screen foes. I've died way more times early on in the first Witcher than in this game -- some of which was do to the first's buggy camera though. :S

Oh, and $500+ tax later, this game now runs at 60fp the majority of the time... :O
 
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