Before you ask, I think I have the problem in mind. But I'll just ask for the sake of confirmation. This isn't micro stuttering since I'm only using a single GPU. I see upwards of 34-50fps in normal (medium-high) settings @ 1680x1050 and 60+ with everything dropped to the barebone-minimum (still at 1680x1050).

First off, my spec:
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1
E8400 (OC'd to 3.6Ghz, I'm not upping the voltage until I clean the dust out of my heatsink. And my case is f*ing heavy to have to carry out to my air compressor. And no it's not overheating as it doesn't break 55c under full load anywhere xD)
2Gb DDR800 (5-5-5-15) <-- Culprit... possibly. Other stick died not too long ago.
1Tb Seagate Barracuda (with 200+ Gb left)
GTX 275 (896Mb)
Asus P5Q
Corsair VX550W (stable volt readings across the board)

I've already installed the 275.33 WHQL certified drivers, uninstalled the 3D nVidia vision drivers (controller and driver itself), patched to 1.2, killed all Win7 services that don't need to run (Idle Win7 usage just hovering around 500Mb, leaving me with 1.5Gb RAM), set my RAM timings accordingly, OC'd my CPU, defragged my HDD, set all my ini variables minimally (lows mat tex sizes, max downscaling, disabling all shader options) and yet... I'm left with this odd f*in stuttering from time to time.


I'm only left to believe it's my ram. That somehow even with Witcher 2 set at its possibly lowest setting (lower than you could ever set with the Configurator (DAMN YOU *shakes fist*)) yet still meeting MINIMAL requirements (mostly the ram since that's the least of everything else I have).


Now, I've done a lot of reading into modifying the ini files stored in My Documents. Plus I've done a lot of homebrew testing. Involving the User, Rendering, and Community.ini. Only reason I've resorted to this, is because the Configurator DOES NOT store all the required variables for any given spec in to all the required ini files. It almost seems at random. So in my opinion, tweaking them myself has yeilded the best result. Yet not good enough... yet. I think. <.<


BUT, alas, I still experience stuttering. I'll assume it's the vast amounts of texture data that need to be read off the HDD, stored in ram(a very small crevasse, in my case), then processed through the GPU at blinding speeds. Just not blinding enough as there's still a choke on the data transfer somewhere. And I've no reliable way to judge this other than my GPU and CPU utilization (which never quite reach 100%, mostly hovering in the 80ish zone while not loading something) whilst the game is running (alt tab causes it to drop texture data and what have you to allow room for other tasks while minimized... I'm assuming).


But to re-state this. I do meet the minimum RAM requirement of 2Gb. It's clocked properly and that should be that. :(


Anyone with some tips? Think I've exhausted pretty much all my options.


Now, I AM jumping for 8Gb G. Skill... blah blah whatever.
i7-2600k, and a decent SLi motherboard (just going to mash another GTX 275 in there).

But that's for the future. I'm really hoping to tack this problem on the forehead so I don't go spending money too quickly and causing problems. xD

I suffer from it too, and this is by no means the first thread, I've seen this reported on various other forums too, and it seems to happen to both AMD and Nvidia users. Post 1.1, I get it in parts of the forest in chapter 1, and even more of it in the town in chapter 2, it wasn't there in the unpatched retail version. Normally, I'd have thought that the stuttering would be from accessing the hard drive, but when it happens to me the hard drive LED doesn't even flash, and it's a regular stutter, once every half a second or so.

These are my specs, the only thing in common is the CPU, but I've heard of other people running it just fine with the same model.
E8400 3ghz
3gb RAM
9800 GTX+ 512mb
Vista 32-bit

I've noticed some very odd behaviour in chapter 2. If I load a save in the outdoor areas of the town there the FPS is pretty bad (19-30), exacerbated by horrible stuttering when you run forward. Yet if I enter the pub and go back outside the performance is much better (25-45) and stutter-free. Loading a save outdoors brings back the stutter and poor performance, in the very same area that was running perfectly before.

The only thing that seems to work for anyone is using FPS Limiter or Dxtory to cap the frame rate to 30 or 35, though it doesn't help me.

The purpose of lots of RAM is to keep from having to use your disk so much. 2GB is very limiting. That minimum is a bare minimum (unlike, say, the requirement for an 8800 GT 512, which is well padded). If the game has to compete with not only everything else but also itself, it's going to thrash. You'll see hesitations and disk activity; if you monitor, you'll see heavy page faulting. I see this all the time in Flotsam especially.

I think you'll see better results with at least 4GB. The game is already coded "large address aware", so it can and will use more than 2GB on Windows 7 x64.

Medium-high settings might be the issue. Change 'Texture Memory Size' to 'Very Large' and see if that helps. Setting 'Ubersampling' in Docs>Witcher 2>config>user.ini to "1" may help, also. I'm not precisely sure what it does as it's not full on ubersampling -- that's 2 -- but it seems to help performance a little. Set the file to read only afterward or the configurator will overwrite it.

Stuttering does seem to have been an issue for many since 1.1 including myself, however these options may alleviate it at least somewhat.

Edit: oops, yeah...2GB on Win7 x64...not good. You should have 4 or more. And I hope it's DDR3... that's not necessarily causing the issue, but it could certainly be it.
Might want to remove your OC as well..that can cause all kinds of issues with games. Should be the first thing to try when experiencing issues.

At least in my case, the near-constant stutter in certain areas doesn't correlate with disk activity. Like I said, the hard drive can be more or less idle (no activity on the LED) and it'll still be stuttering.

I doubt RAM shortage is the problem. I get this stutter too, and have done since release, and I'm on XP Pro with 4GB (3.25 usable), with a C2Q 2.66 + 1GB vid card (HD4870).

You'd be better off buying a single more modern card, and keeping the 275 for a spare or for a dedicated PhysX card.

Or, selling it and geting some money back.

My specs are: Vista 32bit, Core2Duo E7200 at 2,53ghz, 2gb Ram at 800mhz, 512mb Radeon HD4850.

The game runs between 25-35 fps at 1920x1080. You might consider this a very low framerate, but it runs smooth and there are no stutters.

The first thing to do if your video card doesn't have a lot of memory (like 1,5gb or more): turn texture downsampling to low. Second: set video memory to medium. Also disable ubersampling and enable dangling objects limit. Blurs are annoying and useless so disable those too. Disable SSAO too, because it's not very obvious anyway and it's performance heavy.

Use a frame limiter then the stuttering should go away. There seems to be a problem with some sort of frame skipping since patch 1.1.

You should have no problem with a GTX 275. or an SLI'd pair of them. Suggesting it is obsolete is just silly. Ignore the quoted post unless you just plain have money to burn.

For Nvidia users (may be some sort of ATi equivalent), this helped a bit with my stuttering:

Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Maximum pre-rendered frames (8)

Where did I suggest it was obselete?

I merely suggested a better option.

He will have a faster system and DX11 support.

And none of the headaches with SLI.

Ok, first, as to removing the 3-D stuff, I forgot to do that and am running the 275.33 drivers. I am running the GTX 560ti 1 Gb card w/ Intel Core i7 960 Processor and 6 Gb of Ram in Tri Channel configuration. I am curious to know what you have on the rails on the PSU. With the Corsair you should be alright if it is 25a on the +12v rail(s). I think the minimum for that card is 18a, but I would go above that as 18a will run the card on a regular demand, but oonce the intensity and demand goes up. it won't be enough and you will have problems. I have a Corsair 850TX in here with 72a on the rails ( overkill, I know ). The Corsair 650TX has 52a on the Rail, which is more than enough and plenty of head room. The point is, with the minimum of 18a on the rail, you have enough to run the card under normal conditions but absolutely no headroom for the heavier apps. As I said, I have not removed the 3-D stuff and it is running great.

Well, I noticed after a little tweaking with NOD32 I'm able to run this game on ULTRA (albeit a little stuttering due to the fact I have only 2Gb ram, but nowhere near to the extent I had with my AV shennanigans -- and it's only when loading an area, after that it's smooth as semi-dirty silk). I don't think I've ever played a game before that looked quite so nice. Although it's really hard to discern whether I want to choose to put up with the stuttering for the sake of awesome graphics, or slink back down. Outside of Vergen fighting 8 or so harpies wasn't really a problem, as long as I'm not fighting anything within the first 20 seconds or so of entering an area I'm fine. xD

And I understand your reasoning for that comment about the video card, I just don't care much for DX11. If tesselation is all I'm losing out on (and maybe a couple others) I can live with that. I still have DX10.1 which supports most DX11 features. But no games I actually play-play support DX11 anyways. =\

I get a stuttering aswell, but only when running forward, I can spin the camera very fast and everything is fine, no stuttering.

This happens no matter what graphics settings I use, but only started with patch 1.1, I actually saved all my witcher 2 folders when I patched so I could go back and try different things (offline so no auto patching or registering) and it went like this.

Retail Witcher 2 Ver. 1.0 average FPS= 20 - 30 no stuttering (only patch applied was the launch activation thang)
Retail Witcher 2 Ver. 1.0 but with gog no DRM .exe, average FPS =20 - 30 but getting stuttering

Retail witcher 2 Ver. 1.1 average FPS = 25 - 35 still getting stuttering

Retail witcher 2 Ver.1.2 average FPS = 30 - 40 but stutttering slightly better

My PC is only just above minumum spec, but like the above suggests, the stuttering only started when I started to use the non-drm exe files.

But with an average FPS of 30-40 at 720p with most of the eye candy turned on and a PC just above minimum spec, I guess I can live with it (I have learnt to live with the black bars anyways at 720p).

Plus with Ver. 1.0 and 1.1, I used to get loads of disc thrashing and slow downs when I spun the camera really fast, especially in Vergen/Flotsam, so I suppose it's a trade off somewhere, because overall IMO, version 1.2 is the better one overall for perfmance for me.

I might try a frame limiter of some sort to try and limit the FPS to 30, to see if that helps.

Still an awesome game and I will play it again on the 360 when it arrives ;-)