The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings (2011) - Retro Test GPU

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

   

Release date: 2011
Genre: RPG, 3D, 3rd Person
developer: CD Projekt RED
Publishing house: 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 novel series by the famous Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, a continuation of the 2007 computer game The Witcher.

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

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

Supported OS and graphics API

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

 

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

Game engine

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 Of course, even by the standards of 2007, the Aurora Engine was an outdated graphics technology and it is clear that the new part of the series The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings needed an updated graphics engine.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

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 it looked like RED Engine two years before the game's release:

Advanced Game Settings

Graphics settings in The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings are changed in the game launcher, immediately before starting the game. We have access to both basic and advanced graphics settings.

  

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, a change in picture quality is observed in clearer textures and lighting. We can also see a small bug - in the first case, at medium settings, “blurring” of textures can be seen.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

The Witcher 4 Assassins of Kings looks very attractive in 2K, but as we'll see later, the game comes at an exorbitant price.

Comparison of anti-aliasing modes

The game practically does not need smoothing, but there are still some “surface irregularities” that are eliminated.

We also presented a comparative video review of the graphics settings we made 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 for it 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 move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.  

TEST PART

Test GPU

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 average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of the test segment:    

Our video cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at 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 resolution 1920x1080

        

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 

  

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 760 level. The optimal solutions will be  Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 960.

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX TITAN level. The optimal solutions will be  Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 980.

Testing at resolution 3840x2160

        

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2160

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the level of Radeon R9 295X2 or GeForce GTX 970 SLI. The optimal solutions will be Radeon R9 295X2 or GeForce GTX 780 Ti SLI.

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory quality settings GPU

 

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 video card value 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” any modern solutions.

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel% 

 

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

 

The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings can support up to 6 computing threads, but fully utilizes 4 processing cores.

RAM test

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

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, with 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  

 

On a 6GB system, The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings consumes about 3.3GB 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, the total memory consumption was almost 3.5 gigabytes. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 3.8 gigabytes of RAM.