Graphics Performance

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Hello all, I picked up what I thought was a bargain the other day, a 3 game boxset of Neverwinter Nights which included, 'Neverwinter Nights', Shadows of Undrentide' & 'Hordes of The Underdark' for the sum of £23.

I thought it would play ok on my computer as BG2 plays fine, but I was wrong. It's rather jerky, and I just know it's my video card that is the problem. I have the SIS chipset, which I know isn't good, and it's 64 Mb AGP on board graphics.

My question is how can I mprove the performance with what I have got, or if it needs a new video/graphics card, can you recommend a half decent one. I realise that there is a problem with putting in another card when you have onboard graphics AGP, but I do have a spare PCI slot, and I think there are still some half decent PCI cards out there, I will spend up to £75 but no more, as I'm not after an all singing, all dancing card for these 3D heavy supergames, just a card to give me a decent performance with NWN.

Sorry if I've posted in the wrong forum, but I don't see a tech forum for NWN.

 

If you have onboard graphics, you can still disable them and use the AGP slot. If you are lacking an AGP slot, a Radeon 9200 PCI will do just fine and let you play NWN at a decent clip. Considering I maxxed out the game's settings on a GeForce 3 when I played it in 2003, you'll be just fine.

The Radeon 9200 Series starts at 60-some dollars in the U.S., so it should still be affordable for you in England.

 

Rednik: Thanks for that.

I did a quick Google search and came up with a ATI RADEON 9200 PCI 128MB TV-Out DVI card for £70, also there were was a ATI RADEON 9200SE 128MB PCI TV-Out DVI card for £37. The only difference between the two being the 'SE' after the 9200 on the cheaper one!

 

To be honest, I would opt against the 9200SE in favor of just getting the regular 9200, as the 9200SE is basically a 9200 halved(or worse) in every aspect. A regular 9200 will get you more bang for the buck.

 

I have been able to get NWN to run on a Riva TNT2 (less than your on-board), so I'm not convinced that you necessarily have to buy a new chip.

Try going into graphics, turning everything off and setting quality to "Fast." That may help somewhat, at least if you want to hold off on a new card.

 

hmm...
My graphics are great... only problem is that I run a 9fps when in combat and 17 in normal gameplay... so I tend to get a little dizzy playing too long... all that lacking...

I have a Gforce4 mx440 or something I believe(aint at home, cant remember)
I think I should be able to play it somewhat faster... maybe you know something that may drag me down?

 

First off, run an AdWare and a virus scan and get rid of anything found. Those sort of programs can rob you of system resources.

How much RAM do you have? You can definitely get better performance out of that graphics card if you have plenty of RAM and hard drive space.

You could probably improve performance by reducing the amount of "eye-candy" (in the graphics menu), but that card should be able to handle NWN + HoTU at max everything.

Do you have any TSR programs running (shouldn't be a problem if you've got good RAM, but maybe)? This includes things like Norton, a digital camera, any virus scanner or firewall, any multi-tasking, etc.? If you do, disable it. To ensure that NWN gets max resources, the only programs running should be EXPLORER.exe and SYSTRAY.exe. You can see what programs are running by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete.

 

This is an important topic, I hope we get a lot more commentary/personal experience on this question.

My System:
Asus A7V266-C motherboard
AMD AthlonXP-1700 1.4ghz CPU
512mb 266mhz ddr ram
Nvidia Geforce4 440mx 64mb AGP dual-vga
Netgear ethernet card
IBM 80mb UDMA 7200 rpm HD
MS Windows 2000 pro
Two CRT monitors @ 1024x768

That said, when I first intalled NWN+SOU on my sys, I ran it at 1024x768 with all the graphics and sound options on and it ran fine without disabling any extra software (anti-virus, broadband internet connection, AIM, etc), and without even disabling the second monitor. Interestingly, when I updated the Nvidia driver a year later, Nvidia had added some bells and whistles and the game slowed significantly with the driver update. I reinstalled the original Nvidia driver, and everything ran fine again (but I lost all the cool extra features Nvidia had added esp. for dual-monitor systems)... It's worth noting, however that while I was using the updated Nvidia driver, if I disabled the 2nd monitor, NWN+SOU ran fine.

I'm concerned about the advice that you should get a fast PCI graphics card. The AGP bus has much more bandwidth, but I don't have any real PCI "bottleneck" data showing the theoretical maximums for a graphics card on the PCI bus. My concern, of course, is that current over-the-counter technology has far exceeded those theoretical maximums. As such, I'm not certain where those PCI cards, which have been recommended to you, compare to the (limited) power of the PCI bus.

--Hope this info helps a little,

 

I have 3x256 pci 2700 ram...
so I would believe it to suffice...

I can run games like far cry with 35-55 fps (A bit lousy yes)
icewind dale runs smooth too... as with dungeon siege...
all the games I have(most of them) run as good as I could hope for.
Ofcourse Neverwinter nights is a bit heavier than icewind dale and the likes but still...

It might be my driver... have'nt tried going back to the old...