problem: slow game

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I played a lot of the other black isle games, but not on this computer.
They all, ran smoothly on any of the machines i used.

i tried icewind dale 2 for the first time on this new machine, a P4-3.2ghz with a Nvidia G-force 6600le (256mb) and 1024 ddr2 ram. And the game does not run smooth at all, even on minimum settings. Not even as smooth as i remember fallout, when i played it on a P1-100mhz. :/

I have fully updated system drivers and windows xp, and the official game update installed.

I've been reading around, i've seen that other people have the same problem, even with recent machines. There's an unofficial patch - Slowdown Fixes by Extremist & Quint - that "fixes" this problem (at least i think it refers to this problem) in areas where it makes the game unplayable. I haven't got to these areas yet, but i think it is hardly a fix. Another possible cause of problems could be that - this conclusion came from reading faqs - I have some via chipsets on my motherboard:

controller:
VIA Bus Master IDE Controller

bus adapters:
VAX347S SCSI Controller
VIA SATA RAID Controller
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller (4x)
VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller

multimedia:
Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller

including this last: onboard soundcard :/

What my educated instinct tells me on this:

from seeing the nvidia logo inside the game i remembered the Prince of Persia : Sands of Times example. This is another game that was supposedly Nvidia optimized but did not function properly at all with newer Nvidia models (like mine). A patch was released - very small in file size - that fixed the problem entirely. I'm guessing the same goes on with this game.

But since interplay went under, there is no current support to tell me if this is true or not.

Any suggestions?

Thanx in advanced

sarah

 

fullmooninu
from seeing the nvidia logo inside the game i remembered the Prince of Persia : Sands of Times example. This is another game that was supposedly Nvidia optimized but did not function properly at all with newer Nvidia models
This is a common misconception. The logo is an advertisement and nothing more.(i.e. nVidia payed money for the logo only, just like on TV) Ironically, most games with such logos run better on ATi, for example Tomb Raider.

As for your prob, did you tried to lower the resolution and turning off 3D?, if it can be switched off ofc. Either that or its probably time to reinstall Windows

 

thank you for your answers

talutain: that is a pretty good suggestion, installing old drivers. But i'm not really up to it. It would be better pointing the game to an old version of them. I had already tried your other 2suggestions.

Cric: i don't think that is completely true, a lot of games are nvidia optimized, and sometimes they are paid to be, through contracts and such. A related example of that is icewind dale 1. I don’t mean by this that the whole game is built to work with nvidia cards. I’m just saying it is built to know how to talk nvidia language.
A lot of things that are optimized to a version of something, start goofing up when that same something changes a lot, while keeping the same name.


I did a little investigation into the matter and here's what i got. Maybe it will help others that are searching for this on search engines.

A lot of the game's graphic (and sound and game engine) options slowed it down, so i turned off everything i could, and set everything else to a minimum.

It was still slow.

I tried lots of compatibility modes, a higher priority mode and setting other affinities. All no good.

Following what i said about the nvidia card i started looking inside the game files for something to tweak. My superficial search for it only got me to the Nvidia logo movie file.

After that I went messing with the .ini files.

in the icewind2.ini these caught my eye

3D Acceleration=0
GLSetup Driver=-1
Backwards Compatible 3d=0

Usually 1 means on and 0 means off, for those few who don’t know it. Other values imply a wider range of options

Another search and nothing turned up. So, even if i didn't (and don't) know the full range of admissible values, i started changing them. I noticed the i.d.2 configuration program always reset the GLsetup Driver value to -1. Which meant that it was a detected value. So i figured the problem could be centered about this: a bad detection of optimal driver. Or even if it wasn't, it was worth a shot.

I set the config to the below average default settings, okayed it, then changed the GLSetup Driver value to 1 and did notice in fact an improvement in game performance.

3D acceleration value was always reset to zero by the very game executable and backwards compatible 3d=1 did not show much of difference in performance.

But it was in fact, still quite bad.

Another thing that worked - this works for any application that's running slowly (pretty obvious) - is turning off every application that you can turn off.

So I installed it in my laptop, a 900mhz, and It ran smoothly and with no problems. But now I don’t feel like playing it anymore =/

In conclusion, tweak these values to see if a combination works for you:

3D Acceleration=0
GLSetup Driver=-1
Backwards Compatible 3d=0

What worked best for me was just setting glsetup driver to 1, or setting glsetup driver to zero and backwards compatible 3d to 1.

Another value of interest, and this should interest everyone - the screen frequency

Display Frequency=60

The default, 60 Hz, is quite low.
I would recommend changing this to at least 75, or to your desktop refresh rate frequency, if it is high enough. This change should tire your eyes less, while playing.
But this last tiny tweak does indeed make the game a bit slower.

Hope this helps someone,
Sarah.

[ February 21, 2006, 01:55: Message edited by: fullmooninu ]

 

fullmooninu you are right...

The game is slow. Your hardware is not the problem.
I first played this game on a Duron 1200 Mhz and an ATI Radeon 9000PRO and it ran horribly at times, especialy when a lot of spellcasting was involved.

I then ran it on an Athlon 2400+ with a Radeon 9800PRO and it ran the same.

Finally, after deciding to play the game once again i ran it on my current machine, an Athlon 64 3800+ with a Radeon X800XTPE and it STILL runs slow.
It's not the hardware obviously, as i have no parts from the other two computers that might affect its performance. It is simply badly coded!

I also tried it on several other machines and it runs the same!

For me i get the absolut worst when i summon Chacopek - it just goes down to 5 frames per second and is unplayable.

I don't have the "pause for 1 second" problem for which there's a fix, though i do have the fix installed just to be sure.

Haven't you people seen the way it runs sometimes?
Please use FRAPS (www.fraps.com) and load a save where you summon Chacopek and tell me it doesn't run horrible for you!

 

Well I have never had any slow downs to speak of running it on much lesser machines than any listed here -

 

Than what's wrong with all my machines? I mean, seriously, on every one of them?!

 

I've never had problems with the speed. I first started playing IWD2 on a duron700 with geforce mx2, then on a much faster computer with motherboard-built in graphics card. Even my sister played it for some time on a PII 450MHz with som crappy graphics card (I think it was a SiS card with 2MB graphics memory) but maybe not with highest graphics settings. Some friends I co-played with some time ago had everything from tnt1 to GF5950 and it ran as it should.
Some of you just seem to have really bad luck.

 

Taluntain, what are your specs?

 

The game and Engine is old, they run better with older hardware becose that is what they where buildt on and for.

My Baldurs Gate 1 lags on this 1.5ghz computer with 256mb ram and GF6600 card. While it ran smooth with everything on my old 300mhz with 128mbram and 2D card. Infact it runs better on my current oldschool 133mhz with 128mb ram than on this one.

It is becose the NEW hardware is new'er than the games, and the games arent used to them, or not familiar with them. In some cases this can be fixed with downgrading drivers, or patches/fixes.

I prefer just having a dedicated oldschool machine.

 

It's a real shame no one gives enough of a damn to fix this problem... BIS is dead and nV and ATI have better things to do.


raptor, you could be right, but why does BG2 run smooth and with no problems on the same machine? It's practically the same engine, and it's even older. It would make much more sense if it were the other way around - BG2 running choppy and IWD2 running smoother as it's newer.

 

I've got an Athlon 900mhz, 384 mb ram and a Geforce 3 (+ the latest drivers of course) and I'm experiencing the same problem.
Tweaking the config doesn't help much, the slowdown fix did. (but overall, it's still a bit slow)
I'll try to adjust the ini settings as fullmoon suggested and report about it, when I've got the time.
@Taluntain: that's true, but the difference is:
BGII runs smoothly on both old and new systems; IDII always runs smoothly on old systems, and much slower on (some) newer systems. (it should be the other way around)
Only Nvidia can fix this, like you suggested. (which will never happen )

 

Blast Skeletton: Try the one about installing older drivers for your graphic card, it has worked for several others with nVidia cards.

 

I know that solution exists.
It's not the first game that miraculously works again after installing older drivers, but that's not an option, imo.
IDII still works, so I'm not going to decrease performance of other games, for a few extra fps. ^^
I don't like it that much anyway; IDI was way better.

 

Older systems still run it slow...

I'm typing this from a 500Mhz P3 with 128 MB RAM and a MAtrox G200. The settings are set all the way down, and the game runs very nicely (at 30 FPS - as i set it) untill i cast some spells. It drops the exact same amount...

I did see an "improvement" in some areas - like Chahopek. It only droped to 7 FPS and after some time it bounced back to 23-25, which is probably what this card is able to pull.

So, it's definately the game, the way i see it. Maybe my saves have some problems, who knows? But other than that, older, newer or state of the art system doesn't mean squat for this game.