So I've just begun my blissful foray into the Witcher 2 now that I've built a new pc, and after having a crap pc for years the game blows my mind. Thing is, my new pc just wont crank out the fps, and I'm actually a little bit surprised that after all this time since release the settings don't recommend I set it to ultra. Something's up and I can't figure out what. FPS never exceeds 30 (seems to dip a little below). Furthermore, I don't think it's an issue of overlocking since my gpu never exceeds 70 C. Often it hangs around 60 or so whether I OC it or not, and I don't seem to benefit at all from the boost. For now I'm rolling with the "High" settings.

Intel 4970k 4.0 ghz
16g ddr3 RAM
msi 970 gtx (drivers up to date)
Samsung SSD EVO 850
Monitor: 27" IPS 2560x1440 60 hz


I'm wondering if my monitor is the issue but it's been perfectly fine for all the other games I play and I don't seem to see an improvement when I turn the resolution down to good ol 1080. The mouse seems to lag behind a bit as well, but I don't have that problem in any other games. Anyone with similar specs get better results?

My computer is less powerful than that and could run it at 1080p without much trouble, usually 45-60 FPS. Have you played with graphics options at all? The "ubersampling" option is a framerate killer, so I recommend turning that off if you haven't tried that yet.

Thanks for the reply. I messed around with the settings a bunch (having the game on an SSD made this SO much easier ^^), and it looked like nothing really gave me more framerates. A few per second at most, even when dropping down to 1080p. And then I turned off ubersampling. 60 silky smooth fps even with all the other settings set to ultra. I've been catching up on all the games I missed and I've been able to crank the settings up for all of them without needing to overclock. I was just surprised that for a game that came out 4 years ago when gpu tech was significantly more limited, ubersampling remains absurdly taxing. Like 30 fps loss taxing. Unchecking it also improved my mouse performance significantly. Weird.

I admit, I can see the difference, and the ubersampling makes the game look amazing, but it still looks great without it. Ah well. Wait, do you play with ubersampling on or off?

What settings are you trying to run it at? On the main start menu there is an option for the game to auto-select the video settings. have you done that?

I have the same system except an i5 CPU. I can run mine on high settings and get 60+ FPS. But Ultra will kill my system.

I play with it off. If I turn it on, my framerate drops significantly, just like you observed.

it's a strange graphics option to include. As far as I can tell, it was intended solely for those with truly top-end systems packing multuple, extremely powerful graphics cards. Fortunately, the game still looks great with it off, since my hardware can handle every other setting at max.

@Goodmongo, you can probably get 60 FPS with everything maxed as long as you turn ubersampling off. You should try manually setting that. I'm not sure whether the "high" setting actually turns on everything except ubersampling, but if it doesn't, you can probably turn a few more things on (or turn them up) without much framerate drop, as long as you leave ubersampling off.