The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings version 1.2 GPU test

Year: 17 May 2011 city
Genre: RPG / 3D / 3rd Person
developer: CD Projekt RED
Publisher: Atari
Publisher in Russia: 1C-SoftClub/Snowball Studios

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a computer role-playing game developed by the Polish company CD Projekt RED based on the series of novels “The Witcher” by the famous Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, a sequel to the 2007 computer game “The Witcher”. Development of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings began in 2007 by the CD Projekt RED team, immediately after the Witcher game was completed.

The game was released on May 16, 2011 in Russia. The target platform of the game is Windows, and the release on consoles will take place a little later. You can read more about playability in the previous review.

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Review: Graphics

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings made a very pleasant impression at the time of its release. However, in this “barrel of honey” there was also a “fly in the ointment”. The game had some bugs and glitches that prevented a more comfortable gaming experience. Now they have been fixed and we are starting a new test, expanded with Cross Fire and SLI configurations!

“RED Engine” currently only supports DirectX 9, but this does not prevent it from recreating an impressive combination of textures and polygons, even including examples of the use of tasseling in the notorious Heaven Benchmark. In our opinion, the Poles should make their own benchmark for this game to test the performance of video cards. Moreover, there are plenty of game developments for various locations in the game.

A distinctive feature of the graphics of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is the control of graphics settings outside the game, using a special configurator. In the game itself, even if you want to, you cannot even change the resolution. There are simply a huge number of graphic settings and we can adjust them to any graphic configuration. At any quality settings, the picture in the game is very pleasant, and with its visual perception the game smashes all its competitors to smithereens.

The “exorbitant quality” function is causing great controversy. According to many players, activating this setting does not cause any significant graphical improvements. However, this is only at first glance. When activated, the number of particles increases significantly and the texture grid becomes less noticeable, which really hurts the eyes, especially when viewed closely.

The physics in the game lags a little behind the main visual component and looks a little poor. Just look at the hair of the main character Geralt! But the Poles were not at a loss and quickly released a jacket with a hood for thirsty users, which completely hides this nuance. We really hope for a speedy continuation of The Witcher series, and on our part we wish the developers to diversify the gameplay, further improve the game graphics and optimize it for maximum quality settings for a larger number of system configurations!

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Review: Resource-intensive game

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The minimum and average frame size is taken as the performance indicator. Below is the configuration of our test systems.

Less productive video cards up to the level of GeForce GTS 450 and Radeon HD 4870 are tested on the basis of Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Phenom II X4 940 BE processors, depending on the resource intensity of the game, and more productive ones are based on more powerful solutions. Overclocked versions of video cards presented by sponsors were equal to conventional analogues by reducing their clock speeds. Our video cards were tested in 1920×1080 resolution at high, ultra-high and maximum quality settings. NVIDIA 3D Vision technology was tested at high quality settings at a resolution of 1920 x1080, since testing at higher settings makes no sense. AMD Eyefinity is not currently supported for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

At the moment, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings does not have official optimization for Cross Fire and SLI technologies, so video cards operating in this mode and their single-chip analogues will not work correctly. For AMD video cards, multiprocessing mode is enabled by updating the drivers with the latest hotfix, but owners of NVIDIA video cards will have to take the advice given in our earlier article. Video card performance tests were carried out in one of the most graphically resource-intensive places in the 2nd chapter of the quest “Where is Triss?” CPU dependence testing was carried out in the prologue “In the Name of the King” during the assault on the castle walls by a siege engine. The test locations are shown on the screenshots.

Testing at high quality settings 1920×1080

When you set the graphics to a high quality level in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, almost all graphics settings in the game are set to a high quality level. Among the inactive effects, depth of field in videos, boundaries of hanging objects, and extreme quality remain disabled.

At high quality settings, acceptable performance will be provided by graphics solutions such as Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 280. The most optimal solution for high quality settings should be considered video cards of the Radeon HD 5830 or GeForce GTX 470 level and higher.

Testing at ultra high quality settings 1920×1080

With the best settings, all options are set to almost the maximum quality level. With this installation, such a dangerous option as “exorbitant quality” is enabled, which reduces the performance of all modern video cards many times over…

If they tell you that I have a Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce GTX 580 video card and the game runs at ultra-high settings with a resolution of 1920×1080, then this is just a simple boast. At ultra-high quality settings at this resolution, there are currently no single-chip solutions for comfortable playing The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings! And if they do, then you need to wait for good driver optimization, or, more likely, a new generation of video cards.

Acceptable performance will be provided by such graphic solutions as a tandem of two Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 590. The optimal solutions should be considered CF Radeon HD 6970 or SLI GeForce GTX 580.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080

And finally, with maximum graphics quality settings, all settings are manually adjusted to the very limit, allowing you to squeeze all the juice out of the RED Engine.

Maximum settings show almost identical results to ultra-high settings. Acceptable performance will be provided by CF Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 590 solutions. CF Radeon HD 6970 or SLI GeForce GTX 580 should be considered more or less optimal solutions.

Testing using NVIDIA 3D Vision technology

NVIDIA 3D Vision is rated Excellent in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, allowing you to enjoy simply unsurpassed 3D image quality. The depth of immersion into the world of 3D is simply colossal. The only unpleasant factor is the blatantly low performance of video cards in the game, so this test was carried out only at high quality settings.

Testing at maximum quality settings using NVIDIA 3D Vision technology 1920×1080

 

 

With the use of 3D Vision technology, card performance is reduced by 60-70% of the standard mode, depending on the video cards model. The minimum that is needed for comfortable gaming in 3D, with a resolution of 1920×1080 at high settings, is a video card of the GeForce GTX 590 level or higher.

CPU dependency testing

We tested processor dependence on 10 models of basic configurations, which are the most relevant today. The test was carried out in the prologue “In the Name of the King”, in the place shown in the screenshot above, this time at a resolution of 1920×1080 with minimal graphics quality settings.

Testing processor dependence at minimum quality settings 1920×1080

All of our tested processor models were able to successfully handle The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. For comfortable gaming, the most recent multiprocessor solutions from both manufacturers look most preferable.

 

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	The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is the most successful project not only in the RPG genre, but in the entire game industry. Already at this moment the game can claim the title of game of the year!
	The graphics in the game are simply gorgeous. The Poles did their best, spending a long time refining and enriching their graphics engine.
	Optimization of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is very good. The only downside is that at ultra-high settings only a few can play…

 

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Rating 95%