Performance

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 4:09 am

It may be sound related. I had similiar problems with my integrated music card. Or the problem is the mobo chipset. I've read that there are some problems with Witcher on some for AMD CPUs. I have AMD and NVidia chipset and everything is fine.

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 5:38 am

I've looked in official forum for some clues
In-game Tech.
and it would seem that constant crashing is caused by Tages protection system. There are some links to download tages drivers, but I also read there that the protection has problems with sata dvds and the only way is to buy ide one.

Ulfang · Post by **Ulfang** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:16 am

Lady Dragonfly wrote:OK, I started a new gaming life with GeForce 8800. However, the game crashed again (with res 1024x768).

Very wierd! I have a 8800 and have never had a single crash? Have you updated your drivers online? Forget the drivers you get with the card as they'll be out of date. You need to update drivers regularly. Sorry if you've already done this but it's the only thing I can think of in relation to crashes when the majority of people aren't having problems. I had the same problem when running Stalker. Continous crashes but after updating my drivers there were not problems.

As said before there's probably a lot more helpful info at the tech forums on the official website.

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 7:00 am

cielaqu wrote: and it would seem that constant crashing is caused by Tages protection system. There are some links to download tages drivers, but I also read there that the protection has problems with sata dvds and the only way is to buy ide one.

DVD ROMs use SATA now?

I didn't know that. I thought they're still on the IDE side.

Lady Dragonfly · Post by **Lady Dragonfly** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:38 pm

Guys, I have a professional at home -- my husband is an engineer and a software developer (for over 30 years). I suppose he knows how to install drivers and such (at least he claims he does). I think 8800 solved a lot of problems. A few crashes would not scare me anyway, but I had a lot of distortions and artifacts on top of that. It's all gone now. Go 8800, if you can.

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 7:49 pm

Then, I suspect that it could be the game itself that is problematic. I don't like to jump to conclusions here but I'm starting to wonder if Russian games are not very stable. I remember that in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a game made by Ukrainian (or Russian?) developer, GSC Games, there is a lot of stuttering in the Pripriyat (sp?) level, even though my RAM is in between the minimum and recommended requirements (1GB, by the way).

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:56 am

All software developers claim that, specially after they done real mayhem to system. Never give sudo to developers I say :mischief:.
Yes, sata dvds are quite popular and I think most newer systems have one. Brought one home and Witcher was constantly crashing every other minute without apparent reason. Haven’t try scsi yet, but I think the result would be the same. I hope there will soon be newer version of Tages that will resolve this issue.
Witcher is quite stable. I only had three crashes so far and none since 1.1a patch. Several other friends who bought that game do not complain either and their hardware platforms are different (and software developers are among them). Some graphical glitches were resolved by installing older drivers, some tweaking. Nothing any other game requires. It’s definitely not Daggerfall, and I even had bsod on P:T once.
Russian programmers and coders are one of the best in the world. They put their heart and passion to the work, something you won’t find very often. I may not like the vision they had when they were creating game, but one doesn’t have to like everything. And to my knowledge Russian programmers didn’t have anything to do with the Witcher.

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:53 am

cielaqu wrote:And to my knowledge Russian programmers didn’t have anything to do with the Witcher.

Oops. My apologies. Mistook the Witcher for being made in Russia. Just remembered that it's made in Poland.

As for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it's made in Ukraine.

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 5:08 am

If the game is good does it matter who made it? All I can say, thumbs up, good work and keep it up. The only sad thing is that many good games were never published worldwide or missed their opportunity because they were released too late (or too early as some game shows). I only hope that I will not be too old to play Fallout 3 when it finally comes out

.
As for Polish developers, I am watching three projects, crpgs in post cataclysmic world.
New Dawn - cRPG game
Afterfall
Forlorn World
They look very promising and the first one is about to release demo, but as always time will tell.

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 6:09 am

Please try to keep this on topic - the thread is about the performance of the Witcher, not about where it was made or other games that people are looking forward to being released.

Thanks

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:06 am

Performance is such a wide topic. Are we talking about speed performance, voice acting performance, writers performance, developers performance, most bugs in one script competition performance? All I can say is that The Witcher outperformed my expectations (which sunk after I heard who the main character was) and that without doubt the overall performance of a very popular game had its toll on players and developers and I hope that performance of productions inspired by that popular game not to mention performance of the long in production sequel will be nothing less than the performance of The Witcher.
And I hope that anyone having problems with Witcher’s performance find REDCD’s Tech Forum useful.
Has anyone who has > 2GB RAM tried creating ram drive for swap? Or anyone who has 4GB on 32 bit OS tried disabling swap? What impact does that have on performance?

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:15 am

Well - I went through the game with only 1 crash. That's by far better then most other RPGs I've played in a long while.

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 3:51 am

I do not have stability issues but I’m thinking about reducing loading times and I can’t check that myself until my new ram arrives. If 32bit OS can map maximum 4GB of memory at a time does having swap decrease performance because of memory paging or system is “intelligent” and do not use swap? In DOS times I often used ram disk to store frequently used date, is the same possible with swap? And lastly do workstation Windows has to be switched to use 1GB for system and 3GB for programs like server versions or is it set by default? And of course the question remains is The Witcher compiled to use extended address ranges? But I will have to ask developers about that.
//
Had time for some digging. Non server versions of Windows do not have memory paging, so everything I was thinking on is pointless.

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Fri Nov 09, 2007 7:03 am

I just got the game today and patched it to 1.1a. Did run into some random crashes and after browsing around the net, I come across a [url="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/thewitcher/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-39268082&pid=915112"]post[/url] in the Gamespot forums where a poster mentioned that crash problem disappeared after removing the autosaves, if you're using Windows XP, that is.

Bartima3us · Post by **Bartima3us** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 3:27 am

I started downloading the patch before i went to buy the game, cause it said that it is better to start a new game with the patch, rather that continue from saves.

I have had one crash through the game and im in Act III, my PC is quite old and i was amazed i could even run it. I run at 1280x1024 and with everything on high except for the grass, which is completely turned off, made a huge performance boost for me

The loading times are a bit of an annoyance, especially the big areas but overall the performance is decent.

AMD 64 3000+
1.5gb DDR 3200
GeForce 8600GT
Asus A8N-Sli

Kipi · Post by **Kipi** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 2:30 pm

Just doublechecking if I understood correctly:
The minimum requirements should be rather correct, in other words I should be able to run the game if my computer is better than minimum reqs?

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:41 pm

Kipi wrote:Just doublechecking if I understood correctly:
The minimum requirements should be rather correct, in other words I should be able to run the game if my computer is better than minimum reqs?

Yeah, but just expect to turn down a lot of the settings to get it play smoothly.

I'm figuring at the moment that the game is poorly optimised as I encountered random performance drops in the indoor areas of Kaer Mohen (no fancy effects and stuff going on, which is weird).

cielaqu · Post by **cielaqu** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:31 am

The game doesn’t have unreasonable requirements but it relies heavily on ram. Especially if you are running it with higher graphical settings. The minimum 1gb of ram is just that – minimum and the game tends to stutter in some places (Kaer Morhen, Trade Wizima being worst). Some said that even adding 256mb helps a lot. With 2gb on win xp it runs really smoothly (only minor performance drops). With 4gb (3gb) only travelling from one major location to another takes more than 5-10 seconds. Most of the times there’s no loading while you enter house and performance on streets of Trade Wizima is great (with 2gb there’s a few seconds “lag” after entering).
Got server for maintenance in weekend and I couldn’t resist the urge, of course everything to check if system backed up correctly

. Installed Witcher on 9gb ram drive and with 7gb free memory almost hadn’t seen loading bar.
Eh … well, hope that upcoming 1.2 patch will improve a lot including in game protection checking.

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:40 am

cielaqu wrote: Eh … well, hope that upcoming 1.2 patch will improve a lot including in game protection checking.

I remember that while I was browsing the Witcher official forums, one of the devs mentioned that the team is working on reducing the load times when it comes to entering different areas in patch 1.2. Hopefully, that will help reduce the RAM usage.

Ulfang · Post by **Ulfang** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 6:05 am

Well crashes are going to be dependant on your system and what is causing the crash on your system. There's certainly nothing wrong with the game in relation to crashes. I myself have not had a single crash yet and know there are many players having no such problems so anyone experiencing crashes it must be in relation to something on your system.

If they can reduce the load times in a future patch the game will almost be perfect