The Witcher 2 horrific performance issues (Steam version)

Even on all lowest at resolution of 1366x768 I get only averaging ~30fps. It drops below and goes above, it is so inconsistent.

Now I am above the official minimum requirements (NVIDIA 8800) and have a very low native resolution. So what is going on here? I mean, I knew the game was meant to be demanding but com'on even Crysis 3 is more scalable while having higher minimum requirements (NVIDIA 450)!!! How does that even make sense?!!

The game looks so good, I am desperate to play. Why is performance so crippled?

Specs in sig!

Cheers!

P.S. Ubersampling is definitely disabled and latest NVIDIA beta drivers installed.

 

This is probably the most demanding game out there these days.

I can play every other game I've ever tried at 1920x1080, often with most settings maxed, but Witcher 2 only becomes playable if I drop down to 1280x720, and even then, it's still quite laggy at lowest possible settings. 30fps actually sounds pretty good for Witcher 2. And yes, I can even play Crysis 3 at 1080p, but Witcher 2 is not playable at 1600x900 or 1920x1080.

It's a DX9 game that is extremely GPU-bound, so you don't benefit from DX11 optimizations, and however this game was designed, it's certainly not very scalable. Apart from turning off anti aliasing and and disabling motion blur, most of the other settings didn't improve performance much. Some games you will see huge improvement from dialing down the settings but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

I hope it turns out to be some other issue in your case, however, as your 650m is a lot faster than my graphics card. I kind of regretted pre-ordering this game because it runs so poorly. Maybe I can play it in the future when I get a better laptop.

 

Yeah it's a killer on GPU's most settings won't affect FPS much i bought it ages ago but couldn't even get over 10fps on my 9600mGT. Only recently was able to play when i got my alienware

could try tweaking the ini file?

Optimize : The Witcher 2 Tweak Guide | GeForce

 

Darn those were the answers I was afraid of! I wish they had more options in the config tool, it gives the illusion of scalability, when actually most the options have no effect of performance at all.

Ah well, I can still play fine, just depresses me a little just how poor it runs! I'll have to resort to overclocking I guess! Might help a tiny bit. Will settle for how it is... or I could put it at the back of my humongous backlog of games I need to complete... maybe by then I will have a new laptop

All I can say is thank god I haven't got a 1080p screen, then I'd be really be in trouble!

Thanks guys for the advice (racthetnclank - yeah already saw that guide, was useful in knowing what settings didn't affect performance and could be left on). Cheers!

EDIT: Yeah overclocking does help quite a bit. Pretty smooth now and not on lowest settings either. I'm satisfied until I can get a new laptop (which isn't for a while yet).

 

FYI: Owning the Steam version means that you can grab a DRM free version of the game from GOG.com, there should be an option for this when you start the game on Steam and that options panel pops up.

I don't know why W2 is hard to run, it actually ran on my system better when it first launched. When the game was bumped up to the enhanced edition is when my performance dropped.

The Witcher 2 Tweaker at The Witcher Nexus - The Witcher 2 mods and community


...there are a few other such tools in the " Utilities" section of the site as well.

 

Was running pretty well in 1600 x 900 on my old 460M 1.5GB GDDR5 though.. Which version of the 650M did you get? If it is the DDR3 version then I can understand why it runs poorly.

 

...that probably explains a lot of it.

 

Eh... It wasn't really a good choice I'd say... 650M DDR3 version in 128 bit...

 

When I bought it I didn't have total freedom over what to choose. My old laptop had died and I needed a new one asap to continue my uni work. At the time, this laptop had just been released and was the only laptop with Ivy Bridge and Kepler together available in my country. It was the best I could possibly have got within my limited budget at the time. The other options i had within what I could afford had a 555M, or 540M, or 635M. Only after did the laptops with GDDR5 variants eventually show up

From now onwards, when I purchase a new laptop, whenever that may be, I will only look at the GDDR5 GPU and quad core CPU options!

 

...you can still try those utilities on Witcher 2.

...also, overclock.