neverwinter nights 2, the video card killer

The Computer:
Dell E1705
T2400 core duo
2Gb OCZ ram
7900GS vid card

The Game:
Neverwinter Nights 2:
1280X800 Resolution
Default Medium Graphics Settings W/ 4X antialiasing

The Result:
Not Pretty
10-15 FPS

if I drop the settings much, especially the antialiasing, I get crappy graphics and not much of a bump in framerate. I am beginning to think I will hold off on this game till my 8800 gtx's get in and I can finish my rig.

 

Yeah, from what I heard this game engine is not very optimized.

 

Wow I have very similar specs and my laptop runs it fine. What apps do you have running in the background? I usually turn off most background apps before running most games

 

Mine is Asus A8jm with same specs as Andrew except mine GPU is Go7600 512mb
Mine impression is the game dont look so good, not responsive, laggy
Maybe that why I cant say the game is good, like the 1st Neverwinter night though
I cant only play the game at 1024x768 and most of setting as low, this game is the new hardware killer after FEAR, FEAR dont require that much so as Oblivion.

 

I ran it enough to benchmark it but i must have missed the system straining part becuase i got over 80 fps

I didnt leave the first room though.

The game looked just like the old game to me very blocky and old school. The old game was way out of date when it was new too btw reminded me of super nintendo era graphics

 

The 7900GS should pwn for awhile yet, it is a very beefy card, there shouldn't be any reason why NWN2 shouldn't run smoothly on it. Check your nVidia drivers, better yet update them.

 

Yeah the NWN2 engine isn't so good; a few things slow it down way more than the should, it seems to have to do with the lighting/shadows. Disabling pin light shadows, and putting shadows on medium did wonders for me; then again I only have a 7600; a 7900 should run it way smoother than that.

 

the antialiasing is the guilty...

 

ok, after playing with it some more I got it to 30 fps after I cut antialiasing and all shadow options off, even after I bumped it up to 1440x900. I think the game has vsync automatically set to on and you cannot turn it off because it stays a constant 30 fps too

 

dam that sux...it better be a good game...

 

I have a very similar rig as yours, and I get CRAPPY frame rates. Two things I have found that REALLY help is using the Nvidia control panel to manage AA and AF that SERIOUSLY helps, and for some reason keeping my laptop plugged in helped and made sure my frame rate was above 20fps (I assume this is a speed step thing with my processor?)

 

Yes, it could be the speed step thing with you CPU, you can always disable it while gaming and see if it makes a difference. I have mine controlled with Notebook Hardware Control, I let the speed change while gaming to keep temps down. If you turn off throttling, expect your CPU to get much hotter. Also, just out of curiosity, I know on ATI notebook people have a problem like your when they don't turn Power Play off, which downclocks the GPU to conserve battery, does Nvidia have something like this that is on on you notebook?

For any game, keeping AA and AF down will help your frame rates a lot. My experience with gaming is that it is easier to bump us the resolution a bit to take care of choppiness than it is to use AA.

 

I found that out. I cut off the AA and raised the resolution to 1440x900. worked out quite well as my frame rate doubled. now if I can just figure out how to disable vsync. maybe I can do it in the nvidia control panel.

yes nvidia also has a feature that lowers the core and memory speed to save battery life when its unpluged.