The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings (2011): PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

   

Release Date : 2011
Genre : RPG, 3D, 3rd Person
Developer : CD Projekt RED
Publisher : Namco Bandai Games

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a computer role-playing game developed by the Polish company CD Projekt RED based on the Witcher series of novels by the famous Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, a sequel to the 2007 The Witcher computer game.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings takes place shortly after the events of The Witcher and also takes place in the world of Andrzej Sapkowski's books. The main character is still the witcher Geralt of Rivia. According to Andrzej Sapkowski, he did not take part in the development of the game's plot and did not even know about its creation.

THE GRAFICAL PART

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.

Supported OS and graphics API

The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings is supported on major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP/Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported by the developers and will not be supported. 

 

The priority and primary graphics API for The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings is  DirectX 9 .  

Game engine

The first part of The Witcher was 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. Of course, even by the standards of 2007, the Aurora Engine was an outdated graphics technology and it is clear that the new part of the The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings series needed an updated graphics engine. And they became RED Engine.

 This engine focuses not only on graphics and physics, but also on building a non-linear quest system, allowing you to make the gameplay even closer to real life. RED Engine supports dynamic shadows, normal mapping and parallax. The version of the RED Engine in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings only supports DirectX 9, which somewhat hampered the game in terms of manufacturability.

The first gameplay of The Witcher 2 appeared long before the release, namely back in 2009. And in the video below, you can see what  the RED Engine looked like two years before the game was released:

 

Advanced game settings

 

Graphic settings in The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings are changed in the game launcher, just before the game starts. Both basic and advanced graphic settings are available to us.

  

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium and maximum graphics quality settings. 

Various quality modes

Well, in general terms, the change in image quality is observed in sharper textures and lighting. We can also see a small bug - in the first case, at medium settings, "blurring" of textures can be traced.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

At 4K, The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings looks very attractive, but as we will see below, this game comes at an exorbitant price.

 

Comparison of anti-aliasing modes

 

The game doesn't really need smoothing, but there are still some "surface irregularities" that are eliminated.

We also presented a comparative video review of the graphics settings we did earlier.

General visual design and game physics

Well, The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings was the king of RPG graphics in 2011, and, in principle, even now it is very difficult to find worthy competitors. The game came out very colorful, visually incomparable and impressive. One of its shortcomings was the lack of an open world, which we will finally see in The Witcher 3. 

 

    

Next, we will go directly to the gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.  

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality by MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as the performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment:    

Our video cards were tested at resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings. AMD CrossFireX and SLI currently have excellent implementation in this game.

 

Testing at 1920x1080 resolution

 

        

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

  

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 760 level showed an acceptable FPS.   Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 960 would be the best solutions  .

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings,  an acceptable FPS was shown by video cards like Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX TITAN. The best solutions would be   the Radeon R9 290X or the GeForce GTX 980.

Testing at 3840x2160 resolution

        

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon R9 295X2 or GeForce GTX 970 SLI level showed an acceptable FPS. The best solutions would be Radeon R9 295X2 or GeForce GTX 780 Ti SLI .

Testing of the video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the  MSI Afterburner program. The results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA were taken as an indicator at resolutions of  1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with various anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 768 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1600 - 1024 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 1536 MB of video memory. 

CPU test

  

We tested processor dependence on 16 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of the video card for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum graphics quality settings.  

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

The performance of the CPU in the game, to be honest and at the moment, can easily bring down from heaven any modern solutions.

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel % 

 

Loading of processor cores  at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD % 

 

The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings is capable of supporting up to 6 processing threads, but fully utilizes 4 processing cores.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the base configuration Core i 7 5960X @ 4.6 GHz with 16GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. All used RAM was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without running extraneous applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, at various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings is at the level of 800 megabytes.

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

With a system with 6 gigabytes, The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings consumes about 3.3 gigabytes of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 3.4 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, total memory consumption was almost 3.5 GB. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 3.8  gigabytes of RAM.