The Witcher...*rocks*

[Thanee]

I have a E6600, 2 gigs of ram and a 7950GX2. I have tried the game in both SLI and single GPU mode. Single GPU has turned out to be fine for me so I have not gone much at it in SLI mode. I run at 1600 x 1050, widescreen, all eye candy on.

That sounds promising... should have little trouble running it then with all switches on (Athlon X2 2.8 GHz DualCore, 2 GB RAM, GF 8800GTS 640 MB, 1600x1200).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Steel_Wind]

The big issue is hard drive speed and the video ram on your card (my VRAM is 1 gig, which helps a lot).

Those running on cards with smaller VRam and lower system RAM, or who have non-Serial ATA hard drives are getting hit with longer load times. This is as a result of the incredible environmental texture detail in the game. At full eye candy on - it's a lot of 1024 and 512 dds textures that are loading on a per area basis. Add in a fair numbr of autosaves when exiting after a main story quest flag is set, and it adds up to a lot of "loading....saving...' wait times between areas.

My load times are about 20 seconds. Some other people are experiencing much slower load times. It's the only real tech issue with the game at this stage.

If your hard drive is thrashing and paging on load to deal with texture loading, you will need to turn down the texture detail to improve area load times.

Mine has been fine and those with similar high end systems seem to be doing fine. Those with mid range or low range systems are not so fine. It's not about how many FPS your GPU can push (though that always helps of course) - but load times are hard drive and vid memory issues, primarily.

Turning down texture detail is the best way to deal with long loadtimes, currently.

 

[mmu1]

The big issue is hard drive speed and the video ram on your card (my VRAM is 1 gig, which helps a lot).

Those running on cards with smaller VRam and lower system RAM, or who have non-Serial ATA hard drives are getting hit with longer load times. This is as a result of the incredible environmental texture detail in the game. At full eye candy on - it's a lot of 1024 and 512 dds textures that are loading on a per area basis. Add in a fair numbr of autosaves when exiting after a main story quest flag is set, and it adds up.

If your hard drive is thrashing and paging on load to deal with texture loading, you will need to turn down the texture detail to improve area load times.

Mine has been fine and those with similar high end systems seem to be doing fine. Those with mid range or low range systems are not so fine. It's not about how many FPS your GPU can push (though that always helps of course) - but load times are hard drive and vid memory issues, primarily.

Load times are on the long side on my PC, but not so bad as to be a problem. (NWN2 has noticeably longer ones, for example, even if they're usually - though not always - a lot less frequent) I deal with it the way I deal with long-ish load times in all games I play - I keep a book or a magazine handy.

 

[Thanee]

My load times are about 20 seconds. Some other people are experiencing much slower load times.

I got S-ATA II drives, but can't say much about their performance, since I havn't really put the system on stress yet (the most demanding gfx application so far is Windows Vista DreamScene LOL).

Well, I'll see how it works out next week.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Banshee16]

I saw it at Best Buy Canada today, and the box said it was rated Mature....violence, strong language, partial nudity, and strong sexual themes, I think.

I wonder if that's the same as the one in the U.S.? In any case, the game looks cool...

Unfortunately, there are a few good games coming out right now....Hellgate: London, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4.....it's going to hurt the pocketbook..

Banshee

 

[GlassJaw]

I saw it at Best Buy Canada today, and the box said it was rated Mature....violence, strong language, partial nudity, and strong sexual themes, I think.

I wonder if that's the same as the one in the U.S.? In any case, the game looks cool...

I heard the US version is censored more than versions in other countries. Can anyone confirm that?

 

[Thanee]

I heard the US version is censored more than versions in other countries. Can anyone confirm that?

If you look at earlier posts in this thread it seems so, but not in a fashion that makes the game less fun to play.

The european version seems to be uncensored, while the US version has removed some of the nudity, supposedly.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Banshee16]

On the official website, some of the devs have indicated that they don't think the Canadian version is the same as the U.S. version.

http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=1388.120

Posted by "Daerdin" (#123) "OK. I talked to one of PR guys about the Canadian version, and as far as he knows, you'll get your own, not the US one."

Personally, I'm not sure how it matters to me. I do have an issue if the American ratings boards think they can dictate what a citizen of another sovereign nation can look at. I think that's what really burns me.

I'd suspect that that the Canadian version would have to be different anyways....it has to be localized for English/French content and instructions etc. whereas the American version is what...English only? Or English and Spanish?

Banshee

 

[Hammerhead]

Personally, I'm not sure how it matters to me. I do have an issue if the American ratings boards think they can dictate what a citizen of another sovereign nation can look at. I think that's what really burns me.

Banshee

It's not so much an issue of a ratings board imposing it's will on another country as it is the simple economic realities of the situation. If you make the same version for both countries, shipping and transactional costs decrease.

 

[Banshee16]

It's not so much an issue of a ratings board imposing it's will on another country as it is the simple economic realities of the situation. If you make the same version for both countries, shipping and transactional costs decrease.

To say nothing of the fact that American companies have bought so many of our retailers, including HBC, which is, I'm pretty sure, one of the oldest stores in the world.....300+ years. I'd suspect that since many are now owned by American companies, they're using American supply chains, which are getting product that meets U.S. ratings boards requirements.

Still doesn't mean we have to like it.

Of course, I'm still unsure whether we get the American version. The Witcher's devs have said that they believe Canada has its own version. Which is a certain amount of sense, since the U.S. release likely doesn't have French packaging and instructions, or French voiceovers (if those are included)....whereas those are required by law in Canada, from what I understand.

Banshee