NWN & Graphic Cards [Post & Review your Rigs]

[Legacy_TimG]

               The old Dell has been replaced.  Last night we set up an IBuyPower Paladin 3.70ghz Win7Pro with a GTX780 card.  It is very satisfactory.  FPS seems to be well over 100 on most screens with every setting maxed.  I just copied the NWN folder over from the Dell and ran it from the icon in the folder.  It was expensive but I expect it to last for a while.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               

TimG wrote...
The old Dell has been replaced.  Last night we set up an IBuyPower Paladin 3.70ghz Win7Pro with a GTX780 card.  It is very satisfactory.  FPS seems to be well over 100 on most screens with every setting maxed.  I just copied the NWN folder over from the Dell and ran it from the icon in the folder.  It was expensive but I expect it to last for a while.

Too bad about the Dell.  '> I know nothing about your new box but am happy to hear NWN is running well on it.  A few questions.

Is it a multicore config?

What is the ID of the driver you have installed?

Have you tried to use the toolset yet?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TimG]

               I copied the whole NWN folder over with no changes.  I never made any settings change to go back to single core (the -1 thing).  As far as I know it's running full multicore.  The Nvidia Driver is 320.11 which is what it had on it out of the box.  I haven't tried the toolset as I have no skill and haven't ever successfully used the toolset.  The Paladin is a 3.70ghz and it looks like it is better than my Systemax 3.40 with a GTX295.  
The old Dell was awesome with the GTX280 and factory Dell RAM chips.  I wish I hadn't changed anything as that's when problems really started.
I was really scared of this GTX780 because it is the first Fermi card I have ever run but it seems great so far.
I think Win7 is the best OS for NWN in the Windows family but the install is tricky.  I've had good results with the copy over from XP method so that's what I use.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Master Jax]

               Time for my two pennies. I have played NWN with four different systems. They have grown incrementally but I've noticed the deciding factor in performance has always been the videocard. First I had an MSI Nvidia chipset thing. I can't even remember the model name. It had 256 MB and worked. Of course, this was back in the early 2000's. Then I had the only Radeon I have bought, an HD 3870; 512 mb. Shiny water didn't work, sky textures were messed up, and I had regular crashes. That one baked and gave so many problems. Next was a Twin Razor GTS 250 Which was a huge improvement form the ATI. My current one is a Twin Razor GTX 285 with one Gig of memory. It works, it looks great, but like many have said, I experience 10-20 fps in open/high placeable areas. I also suffer the split-second freezing when creatures/items are spawned. I am tired of this.

Question is, has anyone tried playing NWN with a top of the line GTX 690? Also, is the difference really so great between the 285 and 295 you get 100 stable fps in the latter? That seems quite... unbelievable. Also, the point is moot as far as no one seems to share what modifications they have installed. My NWN is VERY enhanced to make it look far above original quality. Config options are overriden by the NVIDIA control panel in order to push them to a higher level of quality. It would be useful to know if people posting info are using vanilla game or some other additions, from low-stress like CEP to really high like Medieval City or Project Q haks.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tim.G]

               I have some GTX 280 and GTX 295 cards and can't tell a real performance difference betwwen the two in most cases.  The GTX780 in Pam's new PC is a monster.  It runs better than anything else I've been around but her whole rig is top notch components.  The GTX 670 at work is very good.
I think drivers and O/S matter a lot and the graphical upgrades REALLY drag a rig down.  If you load up original Bioware content and then switch to current custom content even a top flight machine can bog down.
Nothing will give a stable 100 fps in a highly customized content area like the Cutlass Tavern in Udasu's Accursed Tower module.  At least nothing I have will...
They say the 690 is a beast but picking the right driver and having a fast processor make a big difference.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Master Jax]

               Oh Oh! You make a very interesting mention here, Tim! What are the fps for a rig like yours, with the 780 in said Cutlass Tavern of Accursed Tower? How low do they drop and what's the average?

As for mine, I am on said 285 1gig with an i7 at 950 3.05 processor, with 6 gigs in RAM at 1330 latency. I run a Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bits system, so I am guessing we're running very similar gizmos and I could benefit from your experience with the 780, which I am more and more enticed to get!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tim.G]

               mostly 60-80 fps with the occasional drop into the 40's.  Generally better than the GTX295/I7 3.40 ghz that I play on.  To be fair, nothing pulls down FPS like that screen.  There's something about the Cutlass that chews up graphics cards.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TimG]

               

I recently got a refurb EVGA GTX780 for one of the ASUS 3.4 GHZ rigs at home.  The GTX 280 it replaced was getting hot and causing graphics issues, what I call tearing.  If the EVGA software was used and the fan maxed out then it was good for 2-3 hours of Eye of the Beholder.  There's no real graphics improvement with the 780 but it is stable at any amount of playing time.

 

I've also got a Cyberpower 3.6ghz at work with a GTX770 that is very satisfactory.  I played around on a weekend just to see how it would handle NWN and it did very well.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Silly question but how do you find out the fps in NwN? I only ask because I recently replaced my radeon HD3870 x2 with a msi geforce gtx 750 ti. The 3870 x2 had 2 flying six pin leads while 750 ti has none and uses around 1/3 the power. The only drawback to that is that I've had to turn my room heating up to compensate (no really). Also, on paper at least, the 750 ti has around 5-6 times the graphics power of the 3870 x2. I do know that in the test/demo that comes with lost planet I'm getting an average fps of around 190-200 in the native resolution (1680x1050) for my monitor.

 

The rest of my system is CPU Intel Q9450 (quad core, 2.66 MHz), 4 gig ddr3 ram, asus p5e3 deluxe motherboard, win 7 home premium 32 bit dual boot win xp pro 32 bit.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

The easiest way to do this is just to install FRAPS.  There are other ways, too, but FRAPS is the easiest and it's very accurate.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Verilazic]

               

I just ordered a new laptop, and for the first time in my life I am about to be in the position of having a machine that is much more powerful than necessary for the majority of games I play. Can anyone point out where I can look for ways to try to max out the visual quality of NWN?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Other than simply changing the options in NWN, itself, I think there are a few threads in the Custom Content forum where people have asked about graphical enhancements.  Other than overrides or NWShader, you're mostly going to be at the mercy of whatever custom content haks the module builder used. 

 

There's also the matter of making sure things are running smoothly on your end.  You might need to tweak some of your *.ini settings in order to improve performance and I've found, along with searching here, nwn.wikia.com or Google, that the Omnibus can be useful.  For instance, to learn more about settings such as "Max Memory Usage" nwnplayer.ini.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TimG]

               

One of my NwN computers is mostly used for other stuff these days.  It's the ASUS 3.4 I7 with an EVGA 9800GT (with aux power input and audio cable).  Well the HDMI port gave up so I got an MSI GTX750ti 2gb card with HDMI output.  Before taking the 9800GT out I ran some FPS tests using a Daggerford save.  The 9800GT was fantastic with highs around 100 and lows around 50 on 1980x1020.  I put the GTX750ti in and let windows install software.  Results were poor.  High in the 60's, low in the 40's.  Biggest disappoinment, 1980x1020 didn't work.  The opening load screen flickers badly and the character boxes on the right and spellbar underneath all flicker during play.  Going down to 1600something resolution (one step back) it works fine.  I updated the drivers and the FPS came up into the 80's for the most part.  The flickering problem remains in 1980x1020 but goes away turning the resoltion back one step.  The whole rig does very well now with Netflix and the GTX750ti does seem to have a little more clarity than the 9800gt but the old card is still better for NWN.  It's not my primary gaming computer and none of it is a crisis, I just thought I'd pass it along.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               

Tim either there is a problem with the card or the drivers. I'm running an I5-3570 Ivy-bridge system with a GTX 770 4Gb with NVIDIA Drivers 350.12 at a Resolution of 1920x1200 on a 5ms IPS 24 inch monitor and everyting if fine and dandy. Maybe rollback driver versions and try that. Admitedly, I'm running on Windows XP, but last time I checked when I dual booted to Windows 7 64bit, it was running fine there too.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TimG]

               

turns out in the Nvidia control panel there is a setting for the GPU to override the scaling.  I checked the GPU override and set it to scale to aspect ratio and it is very good.  Just a matter of finding time to tinker with it