Just as the title says. Since so many people are having technical woes with this game, I thought it might be helpful if the people who have the game could post their system specs and describe their overall game performance (and issues) so that people who don't yet have the game will know what to expect when they do. This could also serve as a "will my machine run this game?" thread.

Bits and pieces of the above have been posted in various threads thus far, but it felt to me like it needed its own home here.

Thanks.

Okay, so here is my system config:

AMD 64 3700+
ATI Radeon x1600 Pro - 512 Mb
2 Gb RAM

The game runs just fine in my machine. I just use the graphics setup the game chose for me.
It looks good enough in my opinion and I had no performance's issues.

Core 2 Duo E6600
2 GB RAM
NVidia 7900GT

I run the game at 1024x768 with everything on max and it is sweet! :)

AMD64 3800+
Radeon X800 Pro (AGP)
1GB RAM

All settings except water reflections and a checkbox about lighting are on full, and it runs perfectly.

This would make more sense if you post your framerates.

Pentium D 3.6G
GeForce 7950GT 512mb
1gb of DDR2

Settings on high, number of lights per object at 2, shadows off, water effects off, resolution 1280x1024

Getting a nice 30 fps, CPU main core use at about 60%, second core at 0%. The game uses about 1.2gb of RAM for the process at any time.

I noticed that AMD64 processors have more issues running this contraption than Intels. Mind you, a lot of people probably forget that the game has a separate executable for those CPUs.

Uh then I think I also can run it - better write it on my wishlist then.

AMD 64 3800+
ATI Radeon x800 XL (256MB)
1GB Ram

Ran everything at max with shadows on low. Everything ran fine as long as I didn't run 10+ programs in the background at the same time. (ie: power guzzlers like STEAM).

Core 2 Duo E6600
2 GB RAM
NVidia 7900GT No wonder this game runs so well for you! You're only about two chips off having the fastest possible personal computer available! That's like having R2D2 behind your PC, increasing the power and locking down stabilisers. I want BTA's PC, please.

EDIT: Just checked TradeMe and people are on there selling computers with BTA's build for $NZ2,399 (without a monitor).

[ November 22, 2006, 19:42: Message edited by: Harbourboy ]

Heh :) Well, I have always admitted I had a powerful computer and that I didn't think anyone should spend a pile of money just to play NWN2. But if you were going to anyway, NWN2 was lots of fun.

AMD 64 3500
asus m2n-e am2 motherboard
2 gig ddr2 800
ati x1600xt

The game is stable, and runs smooth. Not all settings are at full but most are. Shadows not.

Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz
4 GB RAM
ATI x1600 Pro (512MB video)

It slows down a little in the outside areas, but indoors and dungeosn it seems to run fine.

Pentium D 3.0GHz
1 GB RAM
GeForce 7600 GS w/256MB

Wide-screen monitor forces me to play in 1440x900 resolution, the only wide-screen res offered. I could get more FPS at a lower res but everything's stretched out horizontally and looks awful. No shadows, no reflective/refractive water, highest textures and anti-stropic textures turned on. I'm getting 15-20 FPS which is playable but far from great.

The amount of stuff in a given area has a huge affect on FPS. If I'm in a bare room with no lights I'm getting 45 FPS. In Neverwinter itself, outdoors, with lots of people wandering around and my party buffed up with lots of spell effects I'm getting about 12 FPS.

I've tried many of the suggestions for improving FPS: set the game's affinity to single-core (no improvement at all), latest Nvidia drivers (no improvement), shut off every other application on the PC (no improvement).

The game only seems to be using about 500MB of RAM, so having anti-virus running in the background doesn't really cause any problems.

The biggest FPS killer with this game, by all accounts (even Obsidian's), are the shadows. They absolutely devastate FPS, which is a shame because they look great.

One thing to note, and hopefully look forward to is that patch 1.03 claims to improve performance in several aspects of the game. It's currently in beta, so fingers crossed.

I have a P4 3.2Ghz, 2GB RAM, GeForce Go 6800 256MHB (It's an alienware mobile desktop, for anyone wondering how I have a p4 and geforce go in the same machine).

I've resigned to stay in 1024 x 768, shadows on low, water settings off, point light shadows are on, and texture resolution set to medium.

I'm getting between 25 - 35 fps at these settings. I'm considering turning point light shadows off and trying to bring texture resolution back to high-- as medium resolutions are just really disapointing to look at for me.

The game only seems to be using about 500MB of RAM, so having anti-virus running in the background doesn't really cause any problems.Not quite. Consider your swap file which goes in the 700s once you start NWN2... The game likes RAM, 2gb tends to help. Ideally, it would use up a gigabyte of ram - the convenience it doesn't have when it's sharing it with WinXP - so it takes the slower route and swaps its operations...

so I went ahead and installed the 1.03 beta patch. I set my texture resolutions back to high. Loaded an old save. Went to the dock districts and let a bunch of thugs attack me.

Docks district + the web spell were previously dropping my frames down to 1 to 5 per second!! Obviously unplayable. This time I stayed at a steady 20 - 25 FPS during the fight!! Wow!!

Now I'm just hoping that the patch didn't break anything that was previously working for me :)

Sounds good, Marceror.

I cut mine down to the lowest settings straight off. I'm enjoying the game too much to try and work out what setting I can get it at and still have it running smoothly. Something I might play around with once I've finished the game.

Rotku - I value your opinion. Why are you enjoying the game so much, given all the bad press about graphics, performance, useless camera, idiotic AI, linear story, lack of any roleplaying choice, forced companions, and immortal NPCs?

Pentium D 820 Dual Core (I'm still wonder what's the difference between Dual core and Core Duo)
1Gb Ram
nVidia 7600GT

I run the game at 1028x, shadows at minimum, the rest, high. Smooth play, I don't have any slow downs, even in the big fight at the begining where everybody seems to be casting spells and all of that.

About the inmortal NPCs.
I just fought against Mephistopeles (sp?) at the end of HotU, he killed Deekin and I used the resurrection rod to bring him back, it took me 3 or 4 rounds, so, isn't the same as having 'inmortal' NPCs?

By the way, how can you see the FPS in game without having to use Fraps or any other external tool?

hit the "`" key ingame. Then type "showfps".

hit ` again to resume the game (but keep performance info visible, or type showfps again to hide the fps, and then hit ` again to resume game.

If any of that was confusing, it should make more sense once you actually try it.

The patch has finally added anti-aliasing. It's like a whole new game now. Looks great.

AMD 64 3500+
RADEON X550
1 Gb RAM

I have to play with 800x600 resolution, meh... it works.

AMD 64 X2 4600+ AM2
2GB's PC6400 DDR2 800 Memory
2 80GB SATA 3GB/sec HDs in RAID 0
eVGA 7900GT KO 512MB Video Card
Sound Blaster Audigy 2

and everything I play plays awesome with the graphics cranked... NWN2, Oblivion, FEAR, WoW etc etc.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA 7900 GTX

---

Runs decently in 1280x1024 resolution with high quality settings (no AA).

Intel Core 2 E6600
EVGA 7900 GTO
1GB of 667 RAM

Game runs smooth at 1280 resolution and all settings on high. No problems here, but load times are a little long. The game is a lot of fun...

Rotku - I value your opinion. Why are you enjoying the game so much, given all the bad press about graphics, performance, useless camera, idiotic AI, linear story, lack of any roleplaying choice, forced companions, and immortal NPCs? Been meaning to post my thoughts on the game up (in the right topic) for a while now, but been to busy with work and playing, of course. Will try get around to it tomorrow, just for you, Harbourboy ;)

AMD 64 FX-55 2.6ghz
nVidia 7900GS 256mb DDR3
1GB PC3200 ram

Only the village so far, but I have full settings at 1024x768, with shadows at the minimum (but not turned off). I get what looks like about 20-25 fps. Certainly doable.

Question: Anti-aliasing doesn't seem to be an option. If it is, how do you turn it on? Or is it in the graphics options under a funky new name? Thanks

Apparently that is added in the upcoming patch (you can get the beta if you want).

What is anti-aliasing?

Helps get rid of the "jaggies".

:rolleyes: *sigh* What is a "jaggie?"

Oh, you know when you look at the edge of a door, or an iron fence or something like that, the straight lines look jagged or blocky? Anti-aliasing helps smooth those out by shading the edges so it looks smoother, but a little smeared.

EDIT: Ah! Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

@ Sir Belly,

Anti-aliasing smooths out the jagged pixelated edges in screen graphics. Hence, "jaggies."

Edit: Wikipedia linky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing)

LMAO DR! :wave:

Jinx! :p Now you can't talk till I say your name. :lol:

Excellent - Now I know...And knowing is half the battle! ;D

JEE-EYE-JOOOOO!

/end dorkfest.

:lol: Personally, I think getting older with internet access is pretty cool!

Anti-aliasing doesn't seem to be an option. If it is, how do you turn it on?I thought that it could be set from the nVidia control panel in Windows advanced display options. Or is that only for certain Windows apps?

You can set it there, but it doesn't mean the game will recognize/use those settings to any benefit. From what I understand, patch 1.03 is the first patch the will enable NWN2 to leverage the anti-aliasing capabilities of your graphics cards.

Heh, I thought that it was applied by the driver set itself whenever the game accessed it. But I admit that I could be wrong here. Regardless, a quick check of the game showed very little in the way of jaggies. The contours looked pretty smooth.

I anti alliasing not only for ATI videocards?

I anti alliasing not only for ATI videocards? ??

I think "I" was supposed to be "Is," in which case the answer to his question is yes - both nVidia and ATI cards are capable of rendering anti-aliasing. Like shadows, anti-aliasing is a product of the game engine, not your GPU.

Hold on a minute, I thought it was a function of the driver and the GPU. I'm sure that certain types of anti-aliasing may be used by game engines, but I think it rests more within the GPU and its drivers, which is why I thought it could be controlled by the software supplied with the driver set by either nVidia or ATI:


In case you're sat scratching your head, trying to fathom what 'transparency anti-aliasing' is all about, let's take a second to explain before we go any further. I'm sure most of you reading this understand at least the basic principles of anti-aliasing, and indeed the form of AA used by modern GPUs in most cases, multi-sampling. To recap, anti-aliasing is used to remove the 'jaggies' from the rendered image, improving image quality. Multi-sampling does this by taking a number of samples of pixels, and using this information to 'soften' the otherwise hard, jagged edges seen in the image.

One of the major caveats of current multi-sample anti-aliasing implementations however, is that is cannot deal with alpha textures, which are often used for items such as chain-link fences, leaves and the like. This means that while the rest of the scene is nicely anti-aliased, any alpha textures remain in their usual, 'jaggy' state.

To combat this problem, both ATI and NVIDIA have recently introduced technology which can pick out alpha textures in a scene, and apply anti-aliasing to said items. In ATI's case, this is currently achieved only by performing super-sampling on alpha textures (although a multi-sampling based method will be added to ATI's drivers shortly), whereas NVIDIA's GeForce 7 series has the ability to perform either multi-sampling or super-sampling to alpha textures. It is this very ability (dubbed Transparency Anti-aliasing) that the GeForce 6 series have inherited circa ForceWare 91.47.Perhaps game engines can be written to take advantage of these features or maybe it is a function of the GPU and its software settings once applied to the API, whether it is open GL or Direct 3D.

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=175&Itemid=29&limit=1&limitstart=1

Core 2 Duo E6400, 2 GB of memory
GeForce 7600 GT
1024 * 1280 LCD screen
using default options for the game (I think most of them are at max, with exception of shadows)

I've been playing for about a week now, and I am quite satisfied with the experience. The starting village was a bit tougher on the framerate (I was also playing with the patch 1.02 at that time). Might have been the river flowing through the village, and the lot of trees. Anyhow, I would get between 15 and 30 framerates, depending were I was and how many trees were in the way (also, by day seemed to run smoother than at night, maybe lighting was simpler)

patch 1.03 seems to have improved the performance quite a bit. Now the framerate rarely seems to drop below 20, and it generally looks quite smooth. It is possible I could improve the performance a bit by fiddling with the graphic options, but I do not really feel the need.

As about gameplay, I did not get very far yet, but it is quite fun. Controlling your companions can be a pain in the a** some times (they are not even able to switch from ranged to melee weapons by themselves if they are engaged in close combat), but not so bad as I feared. I told them not to use items, or cast spell by themselves, and they mostly listen (they use healing potions from time to time, but only when they get below 50% health, and that's fine with me).

Camera does not bother me, it seems to jump around a bit more than in NWN1, but is basically the same. Trees are annoying, because I typically like to use a point of view from a distance above the party (a la BG), and trees tend to get in the way. The controls are also a bit different from NWN1, but after getting used to them, they are okay. You just have to make sure which is the target of your next action when casting a spell or using a potion, because the targeting mode is a bit confusing.

How do you find out your framerate?

Look on the first page of this thread: http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/28/75.html#000019

catbert explained it somewhere else too.

I have:

Pentium4 2gig
1gig of ram (sorry don't remember which kind...but it's by far not the fastest)
ATI radeon 9800 256mb

Do you think NWN2 would even run on my comp? Granted I will have to use the lowest settings, but I simply don't have enough cash to buy a new comp and to upgrade my cpu and RAM I would need to buy a new motherboard and power supply as well.

@TheShizzo

To be honest, if the game even ran, I'm not sure if it would even be playable. Although a great card for its time, the 9800 would face some deadly hurdles within the game. Your cpu seems like an older P4 (didn't they get up to 4ghz at the end) so you'll face problems there as well. Lastly, your 1gb of ram probably isn't enough either (it can run with 1gb, but with a lower end system i've a hunch that the ram will simply be drained away). Sorry for the bad news.

Although, you might want to do a general google search. It could be that some extreme tweakers have figured out a way to do the impossible - but with settings as low as they'd need to be, you may as well stick with NWN.

Indeed. NWN2 on its lowest settings actually looks worse than NWN1 on medium settings.

Hey Fink, do you play on BoW by chance? NWN1 arena server.

I used to play BoW, yes, but haven't played NWN mutliplayer in over a year. How's BoW adjusting to NWN2?

Are the recommended system requirements really nessecary to play this game smoothly?

I remember not installing Oblivion because it wouldn't play on my pc anyway... so I thought. But I installled it anyway and plays like a charm on medium graphics.

BoW hasn't done anything to transfer over to NWN2 that I am aware of, Fink. Alec seems to be very busy with life, so i think it's up to the other DM's to make the big change to NWN2.

Core 2 Duo E6400
GeForce 7900 GT
Resolution 1440 x (whatever the short end of widescreen is)

I've only done the village so far, but I have to say, the game does not look any better than the original NWN, even with all my settings turned up to maximum. My character looks awful (like some sort of half dead drug addict), and the character screen / inventory windows etc look like something from 10 years ago. Also, the camera whizzes around too fast, even with the responses time turned right down. Finally, I find the "right click on target then cast spell on them OR cast spell then click on target" options very confusing - you might right click on something a while back and it's still your target when you go to cast a spell. What a nightmare.

So overall, not very impressed so far - but it's still early days and I will stick with it to see if it gets better once I am more used to it.

So, pretty disappointing so far,

HB, the game is paaants. I tried hard to like it but it just wasn't happening. My head fell off with it eventually. It's just collecting dust on my shelf now.

I will certainly give it a good go, but some games impress you right out of the box, but this isn't one of them.

It doesn't get any better. The best part of the game, IMO, is the beginning bit when the town gets attacked. It starts to go downhill from there IMO. Extremely linear for an RPG.

Bah! Someone who hasn't finished the game can't comment on what the best part of the game is.

The village tutorial is the worst of the game IMO, but the battle right at the beginning after the tutorial is a good start.

What's funny is that I just started Darkness over Daggerford in NWN1 and I look at the graphics (especially how the characters look and the environment), inventory scheme and camera control and think it's crap. I think it just depends on what you've gotten used to. I hadn't played NWN1 for a while when I started NWN2 so I wasn't biased like some seemed to be.

[ December 30, 2006, 22:52: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

Oh yeah, I might feel different after I have played it some more. I just wanted to post my 'first impression' while it was still fresh in mind. ANd my first impression was not positive.

I was playing NWN they day before I got NWN2. I made a comparison and I have to agree with BTA, the graphics suck in comparison to the sequel.

My comp is an Athlon XP 3600+, with an AGP GF6600 @ 256 MB RAM, 512 MB DDR-400 System RAM. Set to high res textures it runs smooth with reduced lighting.

I miss customisability of the armors and weapons. What I really miss are the radial manues. They allowed for much easier access to the special abilities.
I miss NWN's solo mode, oh, that was KotOR. I just hate it when I send out that tiefling rogue to disarm traps only to see my moron dwarven buddy or my main char run into it to assault a number of enemies head on. Will they also do that when I decide to play a rogue and want to scout or backstab? :rolleyes: Puppy mode is no replacement. I still haven't found a way to tell my chars to stay where they are, and don't dare moving. They do it anyway. NWN 2 char KI sucks.

And then, there is tasking. When I task a char, that dwarf especially (the tiefling is out of sight, arching, that is, I need to check on her), like 'kill that mage' and then switch to main char again, he will forget my instructions and attack whoever he sees fit. Yuck. It's maddening as far as tactics are concerned. The npc's also just don't get it to switch to a melee weapon when engaged in melee. The enemies do get that. It suggests to me that NWN 2 is optimised to multiple players to an extent NWN was not. For a single player and control freak like me that is annoying.

The first NWN had the better interface IMO.

[ December 31, 2006, 12:34: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

Go into the AI for your party members and turn off "Protect Master". I noticed after I did that everyone did what they were told.

I've got the game to play on a Celeron 2.4 GHz (512 MB RAM 400 MHz, GF5900XT). It's actually playable. Sure, it lags and it's obvious it's meant to look better, but it's playable. Around 15 fps isn't that hard to get if you spend many hours with the settings of your computer and the game itself.

I am now getting less than 10 frames per second. This is very frustrating. What is the point of having the latest PC if it still can't play the game smoothly?

Two questions then:
1) Which graphic settings are the prime candidates to be turned down (i.e. they use the most power but provide the least benefit)
2) How do I get rid of the fps screen once I no longer need it?

Harbs, you really need to tweak it a bit because your system is better than mine and you should be able to get it to run better. In fact, you should be able to run it fluently.

I suggest you defrag your hard drive and get rid of all the unneeded services, unneeded resident progs (stuff from your taskbar, like communicators, weather forecast, antiviruses and the like). Then switch off swap file and restart, make it a fixed size (e.g. 2560 megs) one. It should be fast and unfragged for ever after.

As for game settings, begone with vsynch - although you might be out of luck because you have an LCD monitor, I think, don't you? Stuff looks bad there without vsynch sometimes. Then you don't need shadows and the rest. Make sure you've patched the game to 1.03, as well - because earlier versions are laggier.

And go read GameSpot's guides and whatever Google returns for "NWN2 performance guide". That stuff helped me quite a lot.

I suggest you defrag your hard drive It's a brand new PC and I have used about 20g of the 160g hard drive!!

begone with vsynch - although you might be out of luck because you have an LCD monitor, I think, don't you? Stuff looks bad there without vsynch sometimes. I have no idea what you are talking about.

Then you don't need shadows and the rest. What "rest"? That's what I'm asking. What of the rest do you need and what don't you need.

I reduced the number of light sources, and reduced shadow generation to reduce processor workload, and set textures high. It works for me. It looks ok and is rather fluid.

You'll find out by trial and error what's best for you.

I came across something you guys might be interested in, I have'nt had a decent look through because I don't really understand any of it, here it is anyway: clicky (http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6163248/p-2.html).

Hope that helps a bit.

Cool. That is some interesting analysis. I think I will turn all the shadow and water effects down and see how that goes.

HB - Did you get the 1.03 patch? If not, it helps a lot with frame rates. I wouldn't turn down the shadows if you can help it, because they're sweet. There's not much water around, so you can turn water effects down as much as you want and you won't miss much.

I have whatever version you get when you push the 'update' button on the main screen.

Also, can anyone tell me how to get rid of that frames per second screen?

IIRC you just do the same command as what you did to bring it up; it's a toggle.

Sometimes the update aborts, that was in my case because I had less than 6GB free on either of my hdd's. When I changed that, updating worked.

I'm now getting 14 - 19. Still disappointing. That was the whole point of buying this new computer.

Don't worry about it; I doubt you'd notice if you hadn't turned on the FPS.

Harbs, 14-19 is playable, but the thing is, if I'm getting it on my computer, you should get twice that on yours. I don't meet minimal requirements...

I'm using an AMD Athlon XP, 2083MHz
1023MB of RAM, nVidia Geforce 6600 GT AGP (all of this is info from Everest Home Edition), and this game is simply unplayable for one reason, i don't have a DVD drive.
I made an image of my DVD on my sisters computer (which has a DVD drive) and tried mounting it on mine, it refuses to start without a physical disc, i found a 1.00 No-CD patch, tried that, it started but then i'd get 5-10 FPS just in the starting areas.

Switch off xfire, vsync and the other power eaters. As for DVD, DVD-RW's are cheap these days and they read stuff really well (writers have better lasers and read better than simple readers do), so you might want to get one.

My configuration is a Pentium 4 2.6 Ghz, 1 GB RAM and ATI Radeon 9600 TX with 128 MB (AGP).

Long load times but otherwise it runs smoothly.

I enjoy the game immensely. Good graphics, nice sound, entertaining quests, a good history and entertaining and useful NPC's.