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The Witcher 2 Has A New Beta For Linux, The Improvements Are Staggering

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We know how some of you feel about wrappers, but that's an old argument now. The game is here, and the developers are still working on improving it. The Witcher 2 had a new beta a few days ago, and we took a look at just how much of an improvement it is.

I have to say this, but I am shocked at this new beta. The improvement is actually quite staggering! Testing around the same area on 1080p with high settings gives me ~20FPS more and it's astonishing how far Virtual Programming's eON has come.

The announcement (scroll down a bit) is copied below:
Quote24 Jan 2015 20:50 GMT

Latest Beta - BuildID 503099

A bit of a refresh here. We've worked more on our Direct3D 9 engine since the last beta, so everything we've done there has gone into this patch. Hopefully, that means better performance too!

We've also resolved the constant crashing on exit, removed our dependancy on libcurl, and we now ship a new CrashReporter which, while still using libcurl, should work with a variety of different versions as shipped by the many distro's out there.

We've also added a fix for the crashing caused on kernel 3.17.7 and later, even though the kernel maintainers have already agreed to amend the patch that caused the problem - it is better if our behaviour avoids the issue in the first place :)

Test and let us know how things are...


You can get into the new beta by selecting it from right click on the game -> properties, beta tab, and selecting it from the drop-down.

One issue to note is that there is a bit of micro-stutter at times, but unless you're trying hard to notice is, you probably won't. It doesn't happen often it seems either in my testing.

This has quite literally changed my views on it, and has made me actually think about properly playing it for the first time ever. Honestly, I would now be surprised if I got much more FPS on Windows now.

You can see screens below of the new beta first, and the old stable last with the FPS counter in the corner showing the improvement at the same place, and it will shock you too:
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Once they fix up any remaining issues with the new beta and pop it to the stable branch, we may even recommend people try it out, and we certainly recommend you try the beta if you already own it, wow.

It will be very interesting to see how their next port is received now. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Steam
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
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46 comments
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hiryu Feb 6, 2015
Just to follow up, using an older kernel (3.13) didn't fix the issue.
leillo1975 Feb 6, 2015
I started Steam one hour ago and it downloaded a new beta update. I feel like the game runs better than one week ago since the last beta update
wojtek88 Feb 8, 2015
Thanks Eike,
it seems I have the newest version. In my case nothing improves, on ubuntu 14.10, i5 2410m, gt540m, 10GB RAM I still have 18-24 fps on the lowest settings. But anyway, I was able to finish game having this frame rate before reported update and still I think this game is great. Virtual Programming did great job since the Witcher 2 was released in may 2014 and I hope they learned a lot during this time and they will provide us some new good ports.
Lordpkappa Mar 11, 2015
With a core I3 3240 and a GTX 750 1gb i get 40 fps outside, medium setting, 1920x1080. It's a lot better experience now.
shishimaru Apr 19, 2015
I wonder how it is possible that the Linux version is better than the Windows one. Bugs are solved, but performances are still horrible :( Very bad fps on Linux with an i7 Intel and Nvidia 540m 2GB.
14 Oct 21, 2015
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I played through the Witcher 2 from start to finish on Mint. This was several months ago. I run Arch now. I have a GTX 760 and I believe I played it on Medium so it would be smooth. I'm happy to hear about the improvements. My experience wasn't too bad. I think it crashed maybe three times in my entire playthrough. I'm looking forward to the Witcher 3 port at this point! That's when I will buy it.
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