Witcher 2

[Tigranes]

Laptop. Intel Core2Duo P7350 2Ghz. 3GB RAM. Nvidia 9600M GT 512mb. Win7. Going to fiddle with settings to see if it's a CPU or GPU bottleneck, unfortunately I suspect the former, which means there's really no improving that fps.

 

I'd be perfectly happy with non-castrated textures and 15fps...

[Pidesco]

If you can, upgrade your GPU. It should make some difference in performance with games in general.

[Humanoid]

Upgrading GPU in a laptop would be quite the feat.

[Tigranes]

Can you even do that with laptops, or has it changed these days? Thinking of buildilng a new PC when I move stateside in September though.

 

Seems that Texture Downscaling really makes the game look like a puddle of mud - now I have all settings low but no Tex down & "Small" Texture Memory size, and getting 7-10fps running around in the opening area. Heck, I just tried medium settings with antialisaing, bloom, blur, SSAO, etc, and it runs at a steady 7-8fps - doesn't that mean it's a CPU handicap?

 

But on whatever setting this game looks amazing - the tentflaps are waving, trebuchet firing overhead, huge war camp you can see in the horizon in every direction, bright sun shining, literallyd ozens of characters walking around laughing and talking, banners waving, grass waving, even at low settings it's beautiful. And even on my crap PC loading times are fast and inventory / etc menus are responsive (though dialogue options have mouse lag).

[HoonDing]

TW2 on low settings probably still looks better than DA2. I'll be happy to run it on medium, with most unnecessary bells & whistles like motion blur, depth of field, bloom, etc. turned off.

[Humanoid]

Apparently the performance hit from each setting is mostly incremental and can be toggled on and off for relatively small performance changes. Except Depth of Field and Ubersampling - each alone is capable of halving your frame rate.

[Pidesco]

Upgrading GPU in a laptop would be quite the feat.

 

 

Isn't Tigs' graphics card a discrete GPU?

[WDeranged]

I'm unboxing and fondling the various bits of tat in the box, the coin is actually rather nice, if a little on the small side I didn't expect the game guide to be a literal guide to the entire game either.

[Tigranes]

My GPU definitely isn't integrated. Don't know if that means I can replace it, though.

 

I've found that turning off all unnecessary processes and disabling the second monitor's helped - I'm running low settings but with OK textures at 12-13fps now. Will see if defragging helps later - good to know a laptop which technically fails min. reqs can still run it. Which woudl be fine with me if the combat wasn't so twitchy to require more FPS. Just died to about four random soldier mooks.

[Labadal]

Had trouble even launching the game because my antivirus program seemed to dislike The Witcher 2. A reinstall solved the problem.

 

I'm still not done with the prologue, but here are my thoughts so far:

The graphics are great, and the design is good. Great texture work and lighting. Animations are very well done. The writing is good so far and I have no complaints about voice acting yet. The soundtrack does its job. Didn't think about it much.

 

The only bad thing so far is the way they introduce you to the battle system. Not from a story perspective, but from a gameplay perspective. Died about 5 times in a certain area. Once you learn how to actually fight it gets better. Mixing signs with strong and quick attacks. Evading(blocking) is fairly easy, but I never used dodging so far. I am not completely comfortable with the mouse and keyboard, so I might play with a gamepad. It feels like that's how the game was designed.

 

Overall a very positive first impression.

 

Also; playing on medium.

[Pidesco]

My GPU definitely isn't integrated. Don't know if that means I can replace it, though.

 

I've found that turning off all unnecessary processes and disabling the second monitor's helped - I'm running low settings but with OK textures at 12-13fps now. Will see if defragging helps later - good to know a laptop which technically fails min. reqs can still run it. Which woudl be fine with me if the combat wasn't so twitchy to require more FPS. Just died to about four random soldier mooks.

 

you need more screwdrivers than with a desktop PC, but yes it should be possible.

 

[Nightshape]

It is truly a stunning game, they've sure pushed the boat out.

 

I started playing it at work... Then I realised it's really NSFW.

[WDeranged]

Gah, stuck here for another three hours with a feeble laptop

[Humanoid]

Preliminary performance report from cutscenes and just moving around a bit without combat yet as I don't have time to play tonight. It's borderline playable but with a fair bit of slowing down on high settings. I'll probably bump down to medium then slowly add detail while trying to keep a flowing framerate.

 

i5-750 at 3.33GHz, 1GB HD5850, 8GB RAM. Bugger all loading time on my shiny new second SSD, no idea how a spindle drive would do.

[Humanoid]

My GPU definitely isn't integrated. Don't know if that means I can replace it, though.

 

I've found that turning off all unnecessary processes and disabling the second monitor's helped - I'm running low settings but with OK textures at 12-13fps now. Will see if defragging helps later - good to know a laptop which technically fails min. reqs can still run it. Which woudl be fine with me if the combat wasn't so twitchy to require more FPS. Just died to about four random soldier mooks.

 

you need more screwdrivers than with a desktop PC, but yes it should be possible.

 

 

Depends on the specific model of notebook, but it may well be soldered in. More likely than not I'd imagine.

 

 

Bit of a guess but the percentage of notebooks out there with upgradable graphics is probably sub-5%. It would need to be not soldered in obviously, have a pin-compatible replacement, and have sufficient cooling as to not melt your system if you do make the upgrade.

Edited May 17, 2011 by Humanoid

[Tigranes]

That's my impression as well. I'm fairly happy with lowish settings at 10-15fps now, I'll stick with it until I get a new desktop.

 

Done about half of the prologue and it instantly shows you that it's going to be great. Pretty linear and maybe too cutsceny at the moment, but that should change after the prologue.

 

Playing on Hard and dying a lot, getting to grips with the combat and also with the low fps. It is definitely harder and definitely requires more tactics than TW1.

[Nepenthe]

Compulsory Securom scare has also taken place already: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-...r-2-drm-concern

 

Now they just need to cut somebody off from the game for mouthing off on their forums and they've caught up to Bio in the bad, as well

[HoonDing]

Now they just need to cut somebody off from the game for mouthing off on their forums and they've caught up to Bio in the bad, as well

CD Projekt prefers to take their entire forums down.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Compulsory Securom scare has also taken place already: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-...r-2-drm-concern

 

Now they just need to cut somebody off from the game for mouthing off on their forums and they've caught up to Bio in the bad, as well

 

The game DOES have Securom, it's just that Steam version uses Steam DRM. I don't see what's so weird about people being concerned about the Steam version using Securom too, it wouldn't be the first title doing it.

[Nightshape]

GoG version doesn't have DRM!

[WorstUsernameEver]

GoG version doesn't have DRM!

 

Yeah, but that's the only version without DRM.

[Malcador]

Ahh, and 5 more days before I can play.

[Hell Kitty]

Mostly low settings but with high res textures and aa. FPS in the low 20s, which is good enough for me while looking great.

 

 

 

 

 

Now I need to get back to finishing the first one.

Edited May 17, 2011 by Hell Kitty

[Kaftan Barlast]

Me and my hipster friends will be playing this... ironically "

[Tale]

GoG version doesn't have DRM!

 

Yeah, but that's the only version without DRM.

Atari has a DD version without DRM.