I am a little confused. I feel like I should be able to run the Witcher 2 (with the newest patch) smoothly at medium settings at 1920x1080 res

This is my rig:
radeon hd 6850 (most recent patch)
i5 2600 3.3 quadcore
corsair 600w psu
120GB ssd

I am getting a LOT of dropped frames when I run the game in windowed mode at 1920 x 1080 even with everything at its lowest, least taxing setting. if i run it full screen it runs even worse and looks blurrier

if i run the game windowed (again fullscreen makes everything look blurry)
at 1650 x 900 (the next resolution down from 1920 x 1080)
at medium-high settings the game easily plays twice as smoothly.

is the resolution really that much of a drag on my fps?
or maybe i'm missing something... grr

oh and I've tried overclocking my card using the catalyst control center and can see no difference in frame rates at stock speeds or at higher speeds (say 900 mhz gpu clock and 1190 memory clock) except if i push the sliders too high the game crashes.

am i doing something wrong?

Theoretically you should be able to play it on medium easily.

I got similar specs (i5 2400 and radeon 6950) and I can run it at around 45-60 FPS at 1080p on high.

The added pixel count definitely is taxing on your GPU though. I first started playing at 1280x1024 and at that resolution one GPU was enough to keep it at 60 FPS (settings maxed out, except Ubersampling). Now using the same settings but in 1080p even in Crossfire it can't keep a constant 60 FPS.

Try installing FRAPS to check out your FPS and compare/experiment with different options. I assume you have the latest drivers, but if not get them and turn OFF Ubersampling in the settings.

I had a the same problem and could not get above 25fps regardless of settings, turns out there was a quick fix on the witcher 2 offical forums

http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22972-absolutly-massive-frame-skipping/page__st__60

just scroll to the mods post and follow the instructions worked like a charm for me.

Thanks for this, there was a marked improvement when i applied this.