Crossfire performance (particularly r9 290) not great in Witcher 2? Sanity check please.

[Saraya]

Crossfire performance (particularly r9 290) not great in Witcher 2? Sanity check please.

Is there a particular performance problem with the AMD r9 290 graphics cards, or any driver settings that may be inhibiting performance?

I had two GTX 680s before these R9 290s, and even with an ENB and some SweetFX injection, at 1600p resolution I could have everything at Ultra (except ubersampling). I would get hiccups from 50-60fps now and again, though by and large it was capped at 60 generally speaking.

When I moved to the r9 290s, some areas would be a bit weaker, like the plaza in Loc Muinne, where you speak to Roche and the brothel girl. It would dip to 45 or so and then back up when you passed through. That was the only real place I noticed any issue to begin with.

Then I finished the game and decided to take a different path. I had a friendly member here help me with a cutscene black screen issue and then after that resumed playing. Immediately I noticed in Vergen that I was down on performance, with regularly dips to 45-50. For instance in the Inn when following Zoltan upstairs, and you turn around, I was down to 38fps and holding steady, yet all there was in front of me was the hallway with a little bit of lighting and minimal shadows. Next example is outside Vergen, at the small shack/house that over looks the large pit (with the big harpy feathers quest). I am sitting on a consistent 35-40 fps here. If I turn around it's back to 60.

I have tried adjusting various things such as :

1. Render Frames Ahead between default and 5
2. Different Crossfire methods i.e. Alternate Frame Rendering
3. A mild overclock
4. Disabling my ENB and SweetFX
5. Running the game on SSD
6. Disabling some features such as Blur, Motion Blur, Bloom etc.

It makes some slight improvement by a few frames, but certainly does not solve the issue.

 

[eva02langley]

Yes there is something. I was playing at 3840X2160 and my system was crashing. Deactivate Depth of Field in cutscene and cinematics. It sux, but there is a huge bug there.

I have two 290x in crossfire. It is not normal that Depth of Field alone is taking my system from 60+ FPS to 3-4FPS at 4k.

 

[GuyNwah]

Not sure about cutscene DOF, but cinematic DOF is definitely troublesome in the Enhanced Edition. I had to disable it because it was crippling a GTX 285. Entirely different configuration from what you have, but a similar failure.

In Crossfire, make sure you're getting full value for your frames. Using a tool that can measure frame time (MSI Afterburner will do), measure it and make sure you aren't getting zero-time frames. This was a longstanding problem with Crossfire before recent versions of the AMD driver.

 

[Saraya]

Hmm, I know that the DoF(both cutscene and cinematic), will drop frames to 15-20, but for normal game play I'd find it odd that's related otherwise.
So not believing that was related, I disabled mods as well, of which included a 'infinite lod grass' feature and voila, performance was back.

Out of curiosity, I went back and loaded saves from Flotsam area and I have good performance even with the flora mod enabled. Other than the Roche path with Henselt's military camp, Flotsam has the most flora in the game!

Either way, it's AMD related it seems in this case.

Thanks

 

[eva02langley]

Hmm, I know that the DoF(both cutscene and cinematic), will drop frames to 15-20, but for normal game play I'd find it odd that's related otherwise.
So not believing that was related, I disabled mods as well, of which included a 'infinite lod grass' feature and voila, performance was back.

Out of curiosity, I went back and loaded saves from Flotsam area and I have good performance even with the flora mod enabled. Other than the Roche path with Henselt's military camp, Flotsam has the most flora in the game!

Either way, it's AMD related it seems in this case.

Thanks

Except from DoF, the game is running really well at 3840X2160 and have easily more than 60fps. II just found out that my cards BIOS were the culprit of many problem for my system. A huge relieve since I wanted to spare myself an enigmatic RMA.