Performance with 4890 & C2D 3ghz? And Ati Crossfire question.

[seb_witcher]

Performance with 4890 & C2D 3ghz? And Ati Crossfire question.

Hi,
with the patch 2.0 closing in I'm getting more and more excited to play The witcher 2, still haven't even tested it.
Being a graphics enthusiast I made the decision to wait for the game until I could play it with highest settings. However I'm starting to think that I have waited enough and with the new patch closing in I think I might buy the game one of these days. So if possible I would like to know how others have experienced the graphics and the framerate with a similar computer setup as mine (listed below). My monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050 however I'm fine playing games at 1440x900 if it means I can play with higher graphics settings.

C2D E8400 3.0ghz
Ati 4890 1gb
4gb RAM
Vista 64-bit

I also own a 4870 512 mb however I have little knowledge about crossfire setups. Is it possible to use both the 4890 1gb and 4870 512 mb in crossfire and is it recommended for The Withcer 2 or might it cause problems?
Edit: I have a Corsair 750w TX power supply.

Thanks for your help and I apologise if this is the wrong section.

And a big thanks to CD Projekt RED for both Witcher games and all the game support, truly great developers.

 

[drunknmunkey666]

I don't think you can combine those two cards - they got different amounts of memory, and in dual setups cards need to have the same amount of memory, because they both need to get the same textures uploaded to be able to render the same data...
If I'm totally off on my assumptions here, people are free to correct me though

Don't know much about AMD cards, so can't say anything about performance..

 

[GuyNwah]

You CAN crossfire a 4890 with a 4870. Others who have done so say it works better than expected: it doesn't downclock the faster card to the slower.

You'd better have adequate juice from your power supply, and no hindrance in the cooling air path, to stuff both a 4890 and a 4870 into one box. That's 320W TDP just for the graphics cards.

 

[drunknmunkey666]

@Guy:
Oh, that's weird!
How does the driver handle two different memory limits? does it only use 512mb then, or..?

 

[seb_witcher]

Thanks for all the answers, I really appreciate it.

Sounds great, perhaps I might be able to run crossfire then.
I have a Corsair 750w TX power supply and the computer case is a midi, not that big but I have some extra fans installed and a non-stock CPU cooler.

Is 750w enough for a Crossfire setup?

 

[Inikah]

yes it is. I have 2x HD4890 Vapor-X in Crossfire, with an Enermax Infiniti 650W PSU. Can play the game at max settings (1680x1050), with Ubersampling disabled. With this setting enabled, game is still quite playable, although a tick slower. Also, as you can see on the ATI site, the video driver is the same for all HD4xxx cards (same goes for 5xxx or 6xxx).

 

[GuyNwah]

@Guy:
Oh, that's weird!
How does the driver handle two different memory limits? does it only use 512mb then, or..?

I expect it uses only the 512MB. Sort of unfortunate, because this game runs the video memory and the path to it hard.

 

[seb_witcher]

yes it is. I have 2x HD4890 Vapor-X in Crossfire, with an Enermax Infiniti 650W PSU. Can play the game at max settings (1680x1050), with Ubersampling disabled. With this setting enabled, game is still quite playable, although a tick slower. Also, as you can see on the ATI site, the video driver is the same for all HD4xxx cards (same goes for 5xxx or 6xxx).

That sounds great, thanks.

I expect it uses only the 512MB. Sort of unfortunate, because this game runs the video memory and the path to it hard.

Do you think playing it at 1440x900 will reduce the graphics memory by much as oppose to playing it at 1680x1050?

 

[GuyNwah]

Do you think playing it at 1440x900 will reduce the graphics memory by much as oppose to playing it at 1680x1050?

I haven't had problems on 512MB cards; video RAM goes against my rule for system RAM (that it's more important to have enough than to have the fastest). With video RAM, you want just enough, and as fast as possible.

I have more problem with lag and stutter on 1GB GDDR5 cards that have a cheap 128-bit memory path than on older 512MB GDDR3 or 4 cards with fast 256-bit memory paths.

1920x1080 is a big step up from lesser resolutions: it's almost 18% more pixels than 1680x1050 and 60% more than 1440x900. My experience is that 1920x1080 is much more demanding, and 1440x900 correspondingly less.

 

[seb_witcher]

Thanks a lot.
I bought the game today, when I have time I can post performance results with and without Crossfire.

Thanks again.

Update: So far running the game with the ati 4890 alone (I should mention that the 4890 is overclocked by the manufacturers) I get about 25-30 frames per second outside the tent at the begining of the game. Around 20-25 frames per seconds in the big battle attacking the castle, and around 25fps inside the castle (when you get to explore). These are just estimations it could be lower or higher, to me those are playable framerates and I'm really surprised by the performance considering the settings I'm playing the game with.

Settings: 1440x900, Decals on "High spec",
Texture Downscaling on "none",
Texture memory size on "very large",
Shadow quality on "medium",
Number of Shadowed Lights on "medium",
LOD Distance on "normal",
and all the other graphics options are enabled except "Dangling Objects Limit" and "UberSampling".

The only problem that I encounter at times is stuttering. It only happens at times and not always on the same part of the game. It isn't game breaking, just a little anoying at times, but considering it doesn't happen always it isn't a big problem.

I haven't got past the castle part, perhaps the forest part is more demanding. Still got to try out Crossfire.

As for how the game looks, it looks really good, I'm very happy with the results so far.

Second update: After having finished the first part of the game, I can say that there were much stuttering in outside areas but less inside. However in Floatsam the stuttering seem to be gone and on top of that the performance seem to be better in Flotsam. I have a nearly solid 30fps all the time. I think I might wait with the Crossfire, the game runs so good and looks so good I'm surprised. Both the graphics and the artwork are spectacular as well as the voice acting and the music. I'm really enjoying it, thanks CD Projekt RED.

Third update: There's still some stutering at times in Floatsam, mostly in the forest, but it's much less than in the previous chapter (the castle). Might try out Crossfire later today or tomorrow.

Fourth update: I've now tested with Crossfire. Even though the Ati Catalyst Control Center shows no activity on the second GPU the framerate is much better in some places and about the same in others.
My computer also sounds a lot more now, about twice as much and since the GPU fan was set to auto before Crossfire and still are on both GPUs, I guess the sound is higher because two GPU fans are spinning fast which would indicate that both GPUs are rendering.
The stuttering is sometimes almost completly gone and the game runs so smooth when it's like that. However it sometimes stutters and when it does, it stutters about as often as before but every stutter is longer than before.
The three last times I started the game I may have been lucky as the stuttering has been almost completly gone. Without the stuttering it plays fantastic.
I made a thread about some changes I did in the Ati Catalyst Control Center that may have helped fix the stuttering problem. I've had minimal stuttering since that. Link to the thread: http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/24407-possible-solution-to-stutteringlag/

Here are some screenshots before and after Crossfire with FRAPS counting the frames per second.
The graphics settings are the same as before.

Without Crossfire:
1. http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/5775/75837652.png
2. http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/253/14374937.png
3. http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/4772/31470923.png
4. http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7062/80324810.png
5. http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/1807/84756658.png
6. http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/6950/94023741.png
7. http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/4984/79852448.png

With Crossfire:
1. http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8641/1cf.png
2. http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1546/2cf.png
3. http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/8261/3cf.png
4. http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3908/4cf.png
5. http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/592/5cf.png
6. http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/9619/6cf.png
7. http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1141/7cf.png
In Floatsams forest: http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8072/cfforest.png