Neverwinter Nights performance questions

[frozentundra123456]

Hi all

Just a comment/question regarding graphics on Neverwinter Nights 2, and hoping for thoughts/suggestions from others.

I thought for such an old game, my computer would easily run it maxed at 1080p (i5 2320, HD7770). I turned up all the settings to max, including AA and AF, and thought, "Wow this looks great for such an old game". Only then when I started to move around did I notice that my framerate was only like 15 or so. WTF

Anyway, it is definitely the gpu. Turning off AA and AF still only gave me slightly above 30FPS. Turning down some of the textures and shadows got me into the 40 to 50 FPS range, but movement and combat still seems sluggish and laggy, and the game clearly looked much worse.

Is there something wrong with my system, or is this just the way the game is? Any suggestions as to what settings to modify to get better performance with minimal loss of visual quality?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[blackened23]

Are you using override AA and AF? That generally carries performance anomalies regardless of whether a game is new or old.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Are you using override AA and AF? That generally carries performance anomalies regardless of whether a game is new or old.

Not sure exactly what you mean, but I was using the AA and AF setting in the game graphics, and CCC was set to let the application determine the settings.

Surprisingly, when I disabled AA and AF in the in-game settings and enabled 4x AA in the CCC, it seemed to give better performance.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Hmm... I'm looking at old benches, which suggest that the 8800 GTX gets around 28 frames at 1200p, which should translate roughly to 31 frames per second at 1080p. Now, the 7770 is roughly equivalent to a GTX 285, which is in turn about 100% stronger than a 8800 GTX. That means you should be getting about 60 frames per second, with HDR and anisotropic filtering x16 on.

Basically, you're sitting around 50% lower frames per second than you should. I doubt it's the CPU (yours should be stronger than even the flagships from back then), so maybe it's just the fact that the 7770 is a bit too weak, and the rough estimating I did doesn't translate perfectly.

 

[alcoholbob]

NWN2 is not a GPU bound game, it's CPU bound. It's based on the old Aurora Engine which never had occlusion culling programmed in, thus it calculates all objects on the map even when you aren't looking at them. You need brute force integer calculation ability.

My framerate did not increase more than 1 or 2 while using an i7 920 @4GHz even after multiple generations of GPUs. From the 8800 GT, 285 SLI, 5870, 6970 Crossfire, to GTX Titan, I basically I had the exact same framerate, basically 30s-40s with max details. My performance didn't improve until I upgraded to a 3770K, after which framerate increased by like 50%.

It's very easy to tell that NWN2 is not GPU bound by the way. Back on my i7 920, my framerate was basically the same at 1024x768 with minimum details as it was at 1080P maxed in maps with large view distance.

Solution to your problem is either overclock or upgrade your CPU.

 

[frozentundra123456]

NWN2 is not a GPU bound game, it's CPU bound. It's based on the old Aurora Engine which never had occlusion culling programmed in, thus it calculates all objects on the map even when you aren't looking at them. You need brute force integer calculation ability.

My framerate did not increase more than 1 or 2 while using an i7 920 @4GHz even after multiple generations of GPUs. From the 8800 GT, 285 SLI, 5870, 6970 Crossfire, to GTX Titan, I basically I had the exact same framerate, basically 30s-40s with max details. My performance didn't improve until I upgraded to a 3770K, after which framerate increased by like 50%.

It's very easy to tell that NWN2 is not GPU bound by the way. Back on my i7 920, my framerate was basically the same at 1024x768 with minimum details as it was at 1080P maxed in maps with large view distance.

Solution to your problem is either overclock or upgrade your CPU.

I don't understand it, but that is definitely not what I am seeing. Gpu usage is pegged at 100% and when I turn of aa and af the framerate increases dramatically, but the gpu usage remains 100% no matter how low I set the graphics. If I lower the resolution to the lowest setting, the frame rate is in the 70s, and gpu use is still 100%. Could it be a driver issue? I can run any other games I have tried at settings of what I expect given the limits of a 7770 at 1080p.

 

[blackwhiskers]

this game is coded out of ass. contrary to OP, I don't find it beautiful, actually, I find it extremely clunky (in this sense - it's an evolution of nwn 1 - same clunky approach, but with prettier, umm, clunks), yet it performs horribly.

I have an i7 920 @ 2.8 (undervolted, multiplier x21) and hd 7850, and it is not smooth 60 @ 1080 always. but it is so most of the time, though. at worst, it dips into 40s, but never less. so I don't know about it being cpu-bound. maybe patches have helped. I still claim it performs like crap, given the levels of graphics and the unstable fps it gives.

 

[frozentundra123456]

this game is coded out of ass. contrary to OP, I don't find it beautiful, actually, I find it extremely clunky (in this sense - it's an evolution of nwn 1 - same clunky approach, but with prettier, umm, clunks), yet it performs horribly.

I have an i7 920 @ 2.8 (undervolted, multiplier x21) and hd 7850, and it is not smooth 60 @ 1080 always. but it is so most of the time, though. at worst, it dips into 40s, but never less. so I don't know about it being cpu-bound. maybe patches have helped. I still claim it performs like crap, given the levels of graphics and the unstable fps it gives.

I didn't say it was beautiful. I just thought it looked quite nice for such an old game. I was just shocked that I could not use AA or AF at all. Surely even a 7770 must be more powerful than almost any card on the market when that game came out. I also thought it would be CPU bound so I was expecting for it to perform quite well. I got it from gog, maybe textures have been updated or something. But yea, performance is terrible.

 

[blackwhiskers]

I think you should be able to use AF, though. AF comes at very little performance cost on modern GPUs, so you can try that.

but other than that it seems you're out of luck. it's funny how witcher 1 using an iteration of the same engine looks way better and runs smooth as butter.

 

[alcoholbob]

The Witcher 1 has the same hardware limitations, they just built the levels much better. In benchmarks Witcher 1 is like NWN2 as well in that it doesn't really scale that well with GPU power--minimum fps doesn't improve with double or even triple GPU power, but average fps increases--ultimate bottleneck is CPU.

Regardless, RPG engines are notoriously CPU bound, I mean just look at Skyrim, GTX Titan has the same fps at the GTX 580 at 1080p lol.

 

[blackwhiskers]

yeah, I believe that limitations are the same. but the fact remains: witcher looks and runs better on modern cards ^^

and at least some games are using all that CPU power. even though skyrim shouldn't be run above 60 fps anyway, so even there some of it goes to waste.

 

[Bateluer]

The Witcher 1 has the same hardware limitations, they just built the levels much better. In benchmarks Witcher 1 is like NWN2 as well in that it doesn't really scale that well with GPU power--minimum fps doesn't improve with double or even triple GPU power, but average fps increases--ultimate bottleneck is CPU.

Regardless, RPG engines are notoriously CPU bound, I mean just look at Skyrim, GTX Titan has the same fps at the GTX 580 at 1080p lol.

1080P counts as a low resolution. The TItan and GTX580 are both CPU bound at that resolution, in most games.

I haven't fired up NWN2 in quite some time, but I've been playing through Witcher 1 recently, and I'm maxed out the details and AA at 1440P, with some texture packs installed too. 60fps almost all the time. i5 2400, 16GB of RAM, and a Radeon 7950 3GB.

Also, NWN2 uses an engine called the Electron Engine, its a highly modified version of the Aurora engine. Witcher 1 uses the Aurora engine with modifications too, though they still called it the Aurora Engine.