Hangs or otherwise decreases system performance greatly during opening cut scene

[ohnoitsavram]

Hangs or otherwise decreases system performance greatly during opening cut scene

Good day.After installing The Witcher and running it for the first time I encountered a rather annoying problem. During the first in game cut scene, after the introductory backstory and we've been taken to Gearalt falling over only to be found by his companions, the game will completely hang and freeze on the frame of a chariot or wagon wheel - I cannot tell. However if I skip this cutscene altogether the game will start up with me attacking bandits and work fine, I imagine, till the next cutscene where I expect a similar problem (although I have not yet tested this). Furthermore if I am patient and wait a minute or two after the game has hung, my system reverts me to desktop then back to the game around another 20 or 30 seconds into the cut scene I would imagine only now with a terrible frame rate. After this occurs my whole system seems to permanently slow down as all other games will now suffer from the same poor frame rates till reboot.I have searched threads for similar problems and I apologize if the issue has been covered already. I have also provided a .txt of my system specs, its a brand new system and by all means more than enough to run The Witcher, however the program PCWizard I was instructed to use does not seem to be able to detect any drivers of mine and crashes when exporting. So you're only getting about 1/3 of the information you need I guess, but hopefully it'll suffice.Here is the gist of it> > Mainboard : Asus P5E > Chipset : Intel X38 > Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2400 MHz > Physical Memory : 6144 MB (3 x 2048 DDR2-SDRAM ) > Video Card : ATI Radeon HD 4850 x2 Crossfire Enabled > Hard Disk : SAMSUNG (750 GB) > Hard Disk : SAMSUNG (750 GB) > DVD-Rom Drive : TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223F > DVD-Rom Drive : BM1339U PIA031F SCSI CdRom Device (This is just Daemon Tools) > Monitor Type : Acer P241W - 24 inches > Network Card : Marvell Semiconductor (Was: Galileo Technology Ltd) Yukon 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller > Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.02.3790 Service Pack 2 (64-Bit) > DirectX : Version 9.0c (May 2008)Any assistance with this matter would be greatly appreciated-A

 

[dyrestraits]

You might try turning off Depth of Field. Several others posting problems with cutscenes found this to be the remedy.

 

[ohnoitsavram]

Done, lol, now it just crashes earlier into the cut scene and the last frame I see is geralt's back.And then I start hearing the echo of his friend's voice and then that cuts too and my system hangs.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

try with Crossfire disabled

 

[dyrestraits]

Since the problem you're having is strictly related to the cutscenes, it got me thinking.....After viewing the txt file you uploaded, I noticed you're using a very large screen resolution for playing the game. (What was it? 1980?) And, since the cutscenes are made using BINKS Video Codecs, according to the official BINKS support site, the maximum resolution BINKS supports is 1280. _______________________Bink videos look amazing! Bink can scale its data rate from 1200 kps for 1280x720p videos down to 75 kps for Nintendo DS videos. Bink always looks amazing. _______________________As that is the case, I would suggest that you try playing the game at 1280 resolution to see if the problem develops when the cutscenes try to REDUCE the resolution from your selected resolution.It's a shot in the dark, but, I've seen other problems reported with many other games due to very similar circumstances.Good luck!EDIT: Also, try downloading the RAD Video Tools, install it, and see how your system plays the .bik files from within the game directory...http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm

 

[ohnoitsavram]

Getting rid of Crossfire seemed to work, which is odd seeing as the latest catalyst driver is said to support the witcher but whatever, I'm not complaining. Runs very smoothly as it is even though It still crashes every now and then but from what I read here that doesn't seem to be too bad. Well now I feel all silly seeing as the solution was so simple as to just turning crossfire off just neve occurred to me. Oh well. Thanks for everyone's help!

 

[Licaon_Kter]

EDIT: Also, try downloading the RAD Video Tools, install it, and see how your system plays the .bik files from within the game directory...

his system is beyond any RADTools requeirment SLI and CrossFire are not sureshot solutions, the techniques used are mostly game related