The Witcher (2007) APU Performance Test

Name:  The Witcher / The Witcher
Year of release : 2007
Genre:  Action / RPG
Developer : CD Projekt  

The original world created by the fantasy of the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski comes to life in an epic role-playing game. There is not a single positive hero here: the governors are corrupt, the princesses are lascivious, and the knights are cruel. The plot of the game was developed with the participation of Andrzej Sapkowski himself. In this amazing fantasy world, there is no clear line between good and evil. All decisions of the player and his reputation form a unique storyline with three possible endings.

In this subsection of our review, the main graphical aspects of this game are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphics settings and the quality of the development of the main visual aspects.

The Witcher is supported by major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and MAC. Other operating systems are currently not supported by developers and will not receive support. 

 

The priority and primary graphics API for The Witcher is  DirectX 9 .

The game is based on the Aurora Engine technology, a game engine developed by the Canadian company BioWare and first used in the computer role-playing game Neverwinter Nights, which was released on June 18, 2002. Aurora is a game engine that provides fully 3D graphics. Like other middleware engines, Aurora is made up of a chain of various components, such as a graphics engine (responsible for processing graphics), a sound engine (processes sound, voice and music), artificial intelligence (behavior of allies and enemies), etc. Each of these components can be modified or replaced.

Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems are supported. The image is displayed using the OpenGL cross-platform API, potentially making it easier for developers to port the engine to non-Windows operating systems. The "Aurora Engine" implements work with dynamic shadows that are cast by objects and objects and react to light sources. Using the particle system in the game "Neverwinter Nights" weather effects (for example, snow or rain) are implemented, as well as effects that illustrate the operation of various magic spells.

 

The game editor "Aurora Toolset" that comes with the game "Neverwinter Nights" allows users to create and edit locations, import their own textures and models, write scripts and dialogues, create tasks using a special scripting language. Ready-made modifications, called modules, are saved in a separate file, which allows you to then upload them to the Internet for exchange with other players. The player is free to choose before the start of the game which module to connect to him.

 

The standard character control implementation and interface are typical of most RPG games. In Neverwinter Nights, the character moves after the player indicates a target for him by clicking the left mouse button on a point on the location. By pressing the right key, a special menu is called up, which contains a number of valid actions (“attack”, “talk”, etc.). At the bottom of the screen is a quick command bar with 12 slots. Using this panel, the player selects actions, calls spells, etc. Also, a message box for various game information, a map and a game menu with additional buttons are displayed on the screen. A similar control scheme is used in the game The Witcher.  

 

 

Intel solutions are not supported by the game (we don’t have further menus to launch the game), so we only provided screenshots for AMD...

Our APUs were tested at 1280x720 and  1920x1080 resolutions with the highest  graphics quality settings allowed by The Witcher. 

 

Testing at  high  quality settings 1280x720 

 

Testing at  high  quality settings 1920x1080 

 

At these AMD settings, it's only playable at 720P.

Testing of the video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the  MSI Afterburner program. The results were taken on  Core i 7 5775C and AMD A10-7870K systems at 1920x1080  resolutions   with high quality settings.

Testing at high  memory GPU quality settings

 

At a resolution of 1920x1080, the APU video memory consumption is 512  MB of video memory. 

Loading of processor cores  at high quality settings 1920x1080  %  

 

When using integrated graphics solutions, the game is capable of supporting up to 4 computational threads. 

 

The test was conducted on the base configurations Core i 7 5775C and AMD A10-7870K with 8 GB DDR3/4 2666 MGz pre-installed memory. The test of RAM on the entire system was carried out without running extraneous applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

In the presence of a system based on AMD A10-7870K,  the RAM consumption of all RAM also amounted to 2.9 gigabytes.