NWN / Windows 7 - Sudden Stuttering and Texture Problems

[Legacy_Numos]

               So for the past two years NWN has run beautifully in Windows XP (Service pack 2) compatability mode, and with an ATI Mobility Radion 4650. Then out of the blue just last night the game started stuttering, and many placeable textures (namely those from haks) appear white. The first thing I did was run the 1.69 Critical Rebuild for HoTU. Then I reinsalled CEP. The problem wasn't fixed; and it actually came to my attention that the game's main menu was also sluggish.

I did a bit of reading online and tried playing around with the Client CPU Affinity - as NWN doesn't like dual core, but to no avail.

Has anyone ever encountered anything like this? I can't think of anything I downloaded or updated in the past few days, or any settings I may have altered. Its really baffling.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               Are you sure the vcard isn't beginning to give up the ghost?  There are diagnostic utilities to check how your graphics adapters are performing, but it would have been handy to have obtained a normal baseline before the problem was noticed.

Is NWN the only game on your current rig that seems to be exhibiting the sudden degradation?

Also, if your fan(s) velocity dropped even 10% some components are more sensitive than others to overheating. How long has it been since you blew out the chassis with nitrogen?  Maybe try reseating the card in case a hot spot developed.

The CEP and other haks tend to push the graphics demands farther than vanilla does so you would expect these resources to be the first to reflect any overloading.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par HipMaestro, 23 février 2012 - 04:42 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Numos]

               I'm able to run Skyrim and WoW just fine. I tried reinstalling and vanilla NWN seemed to work just fine too. Once I installed HoTU and ran the 1.69 critical rebuild I ran into trouble, though running the 1.68 critical rebuild... reversed the issue?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Numos, 23 février 2012 - 05:19 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               

Numos wrote...
I'm able to run Skyrim and WoW just fine. I tried reinstalling and vanilla NWN seemed to work just fine too. Once I installed HoTU and ran the 1.69 critical rebuild I ran into trouble, though running the 1.68 critical rebuild... reversed the issue?

Too bad you can't swap out the ATi card just a moment to test it. 

I also run an ATI, though it is very low-end, dying and not installed on a mobile rig, with some of the same type graphic anomalies you have described.  Much of CEP is virtually unplayable for me visually which is why I suggested that your card may have degraded just enough that you may be experiencing the effects.  Component lifespans will vary according to many factors, heat being one of most devastating ones.

It's the same with the enhancements provided with the newest patch (v1.69) though to a lesser degree than CEP and its ilk, like the addition of the colored cloaks... more visual demands.  NWN is dependant on OpenGL which "apparently" is not as economical as some of the other rendering methods used by egaming designs.  What do those 2 games you mentioned use?  The answer to that question may lead to the source of the differences in performance and be valuable to you and others that notice it.

Other than a quick cleaning and reseating of parts, there's not much recourse.  The XP OS is virtually trouble-free and even multicore issue have been fairly well-resolved by the community at large.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Skildron]

               It may be a driver issue - but then again, I am on a Linux box. On my Linux system, the latest ATi driver that works properly with nwn is the 8.84.1 from April 2011. All driver versions more recent have OpenGL issues that lead to troubles with 3D rendering and texture display and lots of crashes of NWN which on occasion takes my whole system down - something quite unusual on Linux systems.

Greetings
Skildron
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Knight_Shield]

               I dont know but also hardware sound does things sometimes...did you change any sound settings?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_lordofworms]

               This has happened to me on a windows 7.
when was the last time you actually rebooted your computer, as in Shut-Down, Restart?
try that, and post the results.