Upgraded to GTX 460 (MSI OC 1gb edition) BOGGLED by performance

[idrisguitar]

Upgraded to GTX 460 (MSI OC 1gb edition) BOGGLED by performance

Got the MSI Cyclone 1GB OC GTX 460 card, very excited, ready for The Witcher 2 and hopefully Elder Scrolls V, Deus Ex in the future. Not only that but then I overclocked from 725mhz to 840mhz Clock, as well as 1700mhz memory speed to 1900mhz.So I boot up The Witcher (Steam Enhanced Edition DC, usually I use my DVD version but bought it a second time on steam.) I was hoping to complete it in the next month before the sequel. So I’m in the Trade Quarter........and I can’t break 20FPS!!!! This is without any AA, shadows and grass and decals on medium, the only things on high are lighting and view distance. @ 1400x900. My full specs are:--Q6660 quad core @2.4ghz (please don’t say I'm bottle-necked, Witcher is a multi-core game right? Also cant OC it, MOBO forces high voltage increase and its too hot )--4gb ram--MSI GTX 460 1gb OC @ 840/1900 as mentioned--Win 7 x64--500gb Hard DrivePlease tell me there is something simple to fix this? Because I bought this new graphics card for Witcher 2 and if I can’t even get the first game playable on this card I know I'm in trouble. (For the record I can play Shogun 2 Total War with high settings @ 30-60fps stable, same with AC: Brotherhood on full settings)And lowering the settings is also not a viable option, because right now I'm only a few small adjustments from when I first played the game rather successfully with a MUCH....MUCH worse card. So if I can’t fix this and enjoy the benefits of this upgrade the purchase will not have been worth it.This is not a rant, I love CD Projekt, just hoping if it’s my system there is something easy to fix this. If I can’t get Witcher 1 + 2 playable at good settings with this new upgrade then I'm returning it as it was honestly my main reason for upgrading. If I need a new CPU and basically new pc, ill wait to play both games for a year or so until I can afford it, but again if I can manage AC: brotherhood and shogun 2, why cant I manage a 4 year old game.Hope you guys can help me out here.

 

[GuyNwah]

The Witcher is not multi-core. TW2 takes advantage of multiple cores, but not TW1. The Trade Quarter is the ideal setting to reveal a CPU bottleneck, due to the great number of actors.But that is worse performance than both you and I see on much lesser hardware, so I agree with you that this is not a hardware bottleneck. nVidia has had a lot of problems, both general and game-specific, with recent versions of the Fermi drivers, so it may be a matter of finding a driver version that isn't subject to problems with this game.Other things that people have reported helped with GTX 460 performance issues:* Increasing pre-rendered frames from 3 (the default) to 8 (or maybe decreasing to 2) (in the nVidia control panel).* Turning off AA (skip this, you already tried it).* Turning off crapware: nVidia's "Driver Helper" (disable it in the Services control panel) or HD Sound drivers (find the HD Sound devices in Device Manager and disable them).Tommy has more experience in setting this game up to perform well on nVidia 4xx hardware, so I will defer to him.

 

[tommy5761]

From what i can tell OCing doesn`t do anything in particular when playing the witcher except for a few OCing was actually causing crashes so if you start to experience crashing you might want to turn back the clocks a little .Are you using any mods..the HD texturen mod is quite a heavy hitter for FPSIn the FAQ found at the top of this section you might try the IFO fix that`s mentioned there as that has helped some experiencig low frameratesAn exception in your antivirus may also helpDid you do a clean install of the video drivers or overwrite ? Clean install works bestDid the card software cd have any software that you also installed ?

 

[idrisguitar]

thanks guys,the driver was a clean instal, didn't install any new software apart from the nvidia latest driver from the website.dont have the texturen mod.dont have any bulky anti-virus (malware bytes is enough for me)Will try the IFO fix and the suggestions mentioned in the nVidia control panel, and im hopeful they will help. .Will also try putting in my old 9800gt and compare too. it could be an OS issue (maybe time for a reformat) although i have it totally virus free and defragged.

 

[idrisguitar]

Thought id update you guys.I tried all the setting adjustments and they didn't help. neither did overclocking my CPU to 3.0ghzso i tried putting in my old 9800gt green edition and guess what....it stayed a steady 30fps and up in the trade quarter on medium setting, something not managed by the gtx on the same settings.probably drivers or simply the age of the game and engine not able to take advantage of the technology.but im going to complete the witcher 1 on my old card, send the gtx back and wait around 3-4 months before upgrading again and by then hopefully any kinks in the sequel will have been patched out and i can enjoy it on top settings. also the choice of GPUs might allow my budget to stretch a bit farther.thanks for you help anyway!

 

[tommy5761]

Was just wondering...on your GTX did you try older drivers to see if maybe it was a driver issue .

 

[idrisguitar]

sorry for the late reply, yes i one older version, but guess i should have gone a lot further back and that would have fixed it.im fine with getting the refund, will complete witcher and save witcher 2 for later anyway, want a perfect rig for it anyway. might as well enjoy what will prob be my favourite rpg of all time on full settings (and it should be considering the witcher 1 is currently my all time fav )

 

[tommy5761]

might as well enjoy what will prob be my favourite rpg of all time on full settings (and it should be considering the witcher 1 is currently my all time fav )

I know the feeling...

 

[archaven.84]

I'm planning to get TW1 EE too.. Seems abit skeptical to get it when i see it didnt really work well with latest hardware?

 

[Licaon_Kter]

i'll re-quote myself:

TW1 uses the Aurora engine used back in 2001-2002 for Neverwinter Nights 1, so only one core is used and little video card resources too ( 60% on a GTS250/HD4850, 30% on a GTX460/HD5830 going up to 60% on 3D Stereo for GTX460)