The NWN phenomenon

beorntheold · Jul 5, 2005, 12:33 AM

Hi,

I love Neverwinter Nights (NWN). I devoted most of my spare time to the game for the past year or so. And all this time there was something bugging me. "This game (released in 2002, if I'm not mistaken) -cannot- be running so slow on my machine. This just isn't right..."

My specs:

Athlon XP 2600+@2133
512Mb Hynix RAM@133MHz (dual channel)
ECS N2U400-A motherboard, 5.10 nVidia unified platform driver
Radeon 9800 Pro, Omega 2.6.42
Windows XP SP2, everything up-to-date
SB Live! Value, driver version 5.12.2.252

Recommended system req's for the latest expansion:

System: PIII 1.3GHz or equivalent
Video Memory: 32 MB VRAM
Hard Drive Space: 2000 MB

With all the Catalysts I've tried so far (i.e. most of the ones released in the last year) I got 20ish framerates with all the in game options such as number of lights, grass and environmental shadows turned OFF + 4 x AA and 8 x AF (they didn't seem to affect the performance much, only a couple of fps - sign of a bottleneck?).

Now it gets interesting... A fellow-player also using a 9800 Pro installed the latest Omega driver. He witnessed amazing boost in performance! (he mentioned 100 fps with all the eye-candy turned on). His system is slightly more powerful than mine, but nonetheless comparable (P4@2.8Ghz, 1Gb RAM). So I installed the the latest Omegas myself. Twice the framerate! I'm not kidding. I didn't see the improvements he was talking about, but still - 30ish framerates with everything turned ON and the 4 x AA and 8 x AF!

The obvious questions are - why now?! Didn't the guys from the Catalyst team ask themsevles "hey, hey... this game is N years old. 25 fps on a 9800 pro?!"? What's causing this boost in performance and (when) should we expect to see similar improvements in a Catalyst release?

Thoughts?

P.S. Disregard this post... after some more testing it turned out that "the sensation" was wishful thinking on my part.

Jul 5, 2005, 12:33 AM	#1
beorntheold DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	The NWN phenomenon Hi, I love Neverwinter Nights (NWN). I devoted most of my spare time to the game for the past year or so. And all this time there was something bugging me. "This game (released in 2002, if I'm not mistaken) -cannot- be running so slow on my machine. This just isn't right..." My specs: Athlon XP 2600+@2133 512Mb Hynix RAM@133MHz (dual channel) ECS N2U400-A motherboard, 5.10 nVidia unified platform driver Radeon 9800 Pro, Omega 2.6.42 Windows XP SP2, everything up-to-date SB Live! Value, driver version 5.12.2.252 Recommended system req's for the latest expansion: System: PIII 1.3GHz or equivalent Video Memory: 32 MB VRAM Hard Drive Space: 2000 MB With all the Catalysts I've tried so far (i.e. most of the ones released in the last year) I got 20ish framerates with all the in game options such as number of lights, grass and environmental shadows turned OFF + 4 x AA and 8 x AF (they didn't seem to affect the performance much, only a couple of fps - sign of a bottleneck?). Now it gets interesting... A fellow-player also using a 9800 Pro installed the latest Omega driver. He witnessed amazing boost in performance! (he mentioned 100 fps with all the eye-candy turned on). His system is slightly more powerful than mine, but nonetheless comparable (P4@2.8Ghz, 1Gb RAM). So I installed the the latest Omegas myself. Twice the framerate! I'm not kidding. I didn't see the improvements he was talking about, but still - 30ish framerates with everything turned ON and the 4 x AA and 8 x AF! The obvious questions are - why now?! Didn't the guys from the Catalyst team ask themsevles "hey, hey... this game is N years old. 25 fps on a 9800 pro?!"? What's causing this boost in performance and (when) should we expect to see similar improvements in a Catalyst release? Thoughts? P.S. Disregard this post... after some more testing it turned out that "the sensation" was wishful thinking on my part. Last edited by beorntheold; Jul 5, 2005 at 08:52 AM.