Witcher 2

[Jawed]

I have on my W2 enhanced edition on steam.

Aha, I found that dialog but I had to use the Properties menu item to get there.

I went through similar performance issues with Witcher 2 and my 5700 XT last year. I found the recommendation to add the DXVK d3d-dlls to the bin directory and this made a world of difference for me in this game. DXVK is "A Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine." but it works fine in Windows as well. Just download the latest release from GitHub and copy the dlls to the Witcher 2 bin directory and make sure Steam doesn't auto update and you should notice a significant performance improvement even with Ubersampling enabled.

Wow that sounds super easy and cool.

Tomorrow I'll have a play with both of these things as I'm exhausted right now.

 

[Jawed]

So I tried the DXVK D3D9.DLL, but I lost performance: in the tutorial on the quay, 51 versus 54 right at the start or 49 versus 51 fps having moved to the body and looking up towards the moon. I might try again if I have more severe performance problems later.

Perhaps it depends on the combination of graphics settings: another combination used with DXVK might be substantially faster?

Clearly it works for plenty of other people:

DXVK yields significant performance improvements in The Witcher 1 and 2 on Windows : pcgaming (reddit.com)

As I understand it, the DXVK code can provide improved CPU threading of graphics commands along with the variety of advanced API techniques in Vulkan to better utilise modern GPUs. It's amazing stuff conceptually, had never heard of it.

You'd think that graphics drivers would be able to do this themselves. Perhaps 21.6.2 on RDNA 2 represents a good example of this being true?

I feel a bit miffed that it doesn't bring improved performance because it's just such a cool idea.

Still haven't decided what graphics settings to use and feeling too tired right now to have another go at affinity settings via the Steam launch options.

 

[alpe]

I have done some tests on my system both with and without DXVK and the tutorial area after starting a new game performs the same in both cases. I get between 50 and 120 fps when running around in the starting area a bit. Game running at 1440p with everything enabled except Depth of Field and Motion Blur, but with Ubersampling.

It's been about a year now since I applied this fix, so it would seem drivers have matured enough now that this workaround is no longer needed. I do remember performance being absolutely horrible before using the DXVK though, especially in the first area after the tutorial.

 

[Witchling]

Too bad the video's unavailable. Anyone got a reupload?

 

[Jawed]

So tonight I finally started playing for real.

I got bored looking for an alternative technique for setting affinity, so I've stuck with starting Steam with the required cpu affinity.

I turned off bloom and SSAO as I find them insanely ugly (they don't seem to make much difference in performance). I turned off Depth of Field - Gameplay as that normally annoys me.

So part way into this evening's 4 hours play, the ESC menu, where you can do important things like saving, stopped working. Sigh, so I had to play until unlocking the gate to the courtyard/monastery did an automatic game save, and then I could use Task Manager "End Task".

I also had terrible trouble keeping my Raven armour equipped, carried over from The Witcher. Had to equip it 3 times before it would stay. Had similar trouble with my carried-over swords.

 

[Davros]

How about this
may be worth posting your problem in the forum or emailing the devs see if this will fix it

edit:

If you have a CPU with more than 8 threads (such as AMD Ryzen), set MaxSimultaneousThreads to 16 in config.ini in game directory.

Alternatively, you can limit the number of threads the game uses by adding taskset -c 0-7 %command% to the launch options:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Game-specific_troubleshooting

 

[Jawed]

I have a working solution, so I'm not going to buy extra software.

"taskset" is a linux command.

Setting launch options like this:

cmd.exe /c start /affinity 255 %command%

doesn't work. This also doesn't work:

cmd.exe /c start /affinity 255 launcher.exe

It starts the launcher (which %command%) doesn't do, but then hangs in the same way when the launcher is used to launch the game.

So, I'll carry on just launching Steam with affinity.

 

[Davros]

did you try the config.ini thing ?
ps: my registry entries have the following 2 lines
"AFFINITY"="false"
"AFFINITYCORE"="3"

 

[Jawed]

did you try the config.ini thing ?

No.

The page you linked showed the use of config.ini for Civilisation V. The Witcher 2 may well have a config.ini (actually it doesn't) and it may well have a setting that's named "MaxSimultaneousThreads" (where?) but I decided that was all a waste of time.

 

[Jawed]

Ah, you edited your post while I was writing mine:

ps: my registry entries have the following 2 lines
"AFFINITY"="false"
"AFFINITYCORE"="3"

Those settings are for GoG:

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition registry - RegFiles.net

It appears GoG has a concept of affinity, though "false" appears to mean that it's turned off by default (that website shows a dump of default registry settings) and also on your system.

 

[Davros]

ps: regfiles net is a great resource it can save you having to reinstall a game if you format your windows drive, If you can please contribute to it - thanks
https://www.regfiles.net/requests

 

[Jawed]

So, the Crysis affinity hack adapts to The Witcher 2, here I'm activating "cores" 0 to 7:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity FF "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\the witcher 2\bin\witcher2.exe" %command%

Here I've set Steam to launch the game directly, instead of going in to the launcher (which you'd use to set options etc.). So you'll want to run the launcher directly (e.g. find it in explorer) if there are options you want to set.

I don't know why there's empty quote marks between start and /affinity and I don't know what %command% is for, but I don't care. It just works.

Three weeks later... PC gaming for the...