The Witcher 2 Performance Review
Performance with GTX 570 and GTX 580 Page 1 /4 05/17/11
Introduction and Test System
The original Witcher was released in 2007 by a polish developer CD Projekt Red. The game was a huge success, and in my book is one of the greatest RPGs of all time. I have no hesitation in saying that it is right up their in my top five favorite gaming titles.
The sequel to The Witcher was released today. The game features a gorgeous DX9 3D engine with a wide array of graphical options to choose from. This is quite a treat these days when most developers are abandoning the PC and gearing all their resources towards console gaming. Even high profile titles like Crysis 2 often end up being disappointing console ports with minimal graphical options to choose from.
We used the following set up for our analysis:
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (4.2 GHZ, 2.95 GHZ NB)
2 X 4GB DDR3 Team Extreme @ 1680 MHZ 9-9-9-24
Asus Crosshair iv formula
Galaxy GTX 570 1.2 GB(Forceware 275.27, 266.58)
Asus DirectCUIIU GTX 580(Forceware 275.27)
150 GB 10,000 RPM Velociraptor
Dell 3008 wfp 30" LCD
Antec 1200 Watt PSU
Windows 7 64 bit
We would mention here that this particular version of The Witcher 2 is a copy that was preordered from GOG.com. I was rather disappointed to see that the game launcher is buggy. I couldn't run the game in full screen mode at 2560 X 1600, unless I changed my monitor resolution to 1920 X 1440. This minor issue aside, everything else went smoothly in the installation and running of the game. So before we get into the benchmarks, I would like to show some gorgeous screenshots at 2560 X 1600 and the highest image quality setting.
Some Screenshots
It is hard to believe that the above are all DX9 images. Titles such The Witcher 2, Mafia 2 and The Total War series remind us that there is still a lot that the DX9 can offer. Unfortunately not all developers take full advantage of DX9 capabilities.
Graphics Options
Ad mentioned earlier, this game features a number of options that can be tweaked. If you do not want to tweak individual settings, then you can choose one of four different quality presets. The antialiasing setting is limited to "enabled" or "disabled" but there is no option to change the level of AA.
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