Acemo
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR Xbox
NWN 2
Mass Effect
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 |
 Posted: Thursday, 16 November 2006 06:33PM |
And I dont mean the monster type either.
My new PC has Core 2 Duo E6700, 2 GB system RAM and a 7950 GX2 1024 MB vid card, essentially 2 512 MB cards packaged on one card, capable of SLI.
After reading for hours and playing with setting I found that I am able to get 80-120 fps inside (the tutorial) with many settings on high. (See nwn.ini below.)
Anyway all I have to do is turn shadows on, even to low, and the fps drops to 30 or less. This seems to be too extreme to me.
What, if any settings should I be playing with to get a good frame rate with some level of shadows on?
Another question I have is on the LightsPerObject variable. In game the options are 2, 3, 4, and >4. My ini sets this number to 1000! That seems like a huge number. Any comments?
nwn.ini:
Edited By Acemo on 11/16/06 18:35 |
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Acemo
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR Xbox
NWN 2
Mass Effect
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 |
Posted: Thursday, 16 November 2006 08:31PM |
Sorry to reply to my own (and only) post, but I found that the biggest problem I was having had to do with Point Light Shadows. It seems as if this (or Bloom) is on, my framerate drops from anywhere between 78-120 fps all the way down to 20-35 fps. This is at 1600x1200 with max shadows and pretty much everything at the highest possible setting. Of course this is indoors, once I head outdoors my fps drops under 20, nothing I seem to do here seems to make much difference. Unless I turn on water effects and that of course drops the fps under 10.
I am unclear whether it is better to have a higher number or a lower one as far as performance goes for the character shadow mapsize, high res env shadow map and low res shadow map varaibles. Does anyone know if a higher number is better performance or not.
I guess I'm just gonna have to pick some settings that arent too bad until either better driver support or improvements to the game make it possible to run this game at a better setting. Maybe i will try a different resolution, although 1600x1200 is native for this LCD, but its new so maybe it scales better than I think. |
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eloj
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Mass Effect PC
Joined: 19 Oct 2001
From: Gothenburg, Sweden |
Posted: Thursday, 16 November 2006 09:44PM |
Larger shadow maps ("higher numbers") use more memory and are slower to render.
Tried to disable SLI?Edited By eloj on 11/16/06 21:46 |
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Crispy81
Game Owner
 NWN 2
Joined: 13 Oct 2006 |
Posted: Thursday, 16 November 2006 09:50PM |
Try this:
Download and install nHancer (www.nhancer.com) then launch it. Find the Neverwinter Nights 2 profile and add nwn2main.exe to the list of executables. Just exit that program then launch NWN2 and see how it does.
_________________
Roleplaying games are like sex: the anticipation leading up to them is unbearable, but once you've had them, they're usually disappointing. |
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Acemo
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR Xbox
NWN 2
Mass Effect
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 |
Posted: Thursday, 16 November 2006 09:56PM |
It was REAL bad until I enabled SLI, so I dont think that will help.
I dont really want to try nHancer unless I ABSOLUTELY have to, because I have read in more than one place that it will cause problems if uninstalled. Also I believe everything nHancer does is possible in the nVidia control panel, it is just that the profiles are better tuned and easier to manage. If nHancer does bring something else to the party let me know and I will do some more research on it. |
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Crispy81
Game Owner
NWN 2
Joined: 13 Oct 2006 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 01:15AM |
I've heard that nHancer can mess up your other SLI profiles, but if you're like me you tend to play one game at a time, so that may not matter.
You CAN NOT add nwn2main.exe to the SLI profile using nVidia's control panel only. ONLY THAT will fix the SLI performance.
Try it.
_________________
Roleplaying games are like sex: the anticipation leading up to them is unbearable, but once you've had them, they're usually disappointing. |
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Acemo
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR Xbox
NWN 2
Mass Effect
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 04:04AM |
Quote: Posted 11/17/06 01:15 (GMT) by Crispy81
I've heard that nHancer can mess up your other SLI profiles, but if you're like me you tend to play one game at a time, so that may not matter.
You CAN NOT add nwn2main.exe to the SLI profile using nVidia's control panel only. ONLY THAT will fix the SLI performance.
Try it.
Any program that messes ANYTHING up won't be in use long here
I have already added nwn2main.exe from NVidia's CP, so I'm not sure what you mean. I never got anything better than 40 fps until I did add it. I get great performance (80 fps+) indoors with all the bells and whistles, and crappy performance outdoors and I have to turn all shadows off to get 20 fps and better. That seems like too much of a drop to me. |
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kwdblade
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
NWN 2: SoZ
Mass Effect PC
Joined: 02 Mar 2005 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 05:33AM |
That is VERY odd, as every other post I have seen says they get much better fps outdoors, and sucky fps indoors. Only thing I can say is don't worry about shadows. Do they really enhance the game that much? Not in my opinion.
And to the guy that created this thread, holy crap man, that is one nice system. I didn't even know 1024 cards were out there. That must of costed a fortune. |
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Acemo
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR Xbox
NWN 2
Mass Effect
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 05:04PM |
Quote: Posted 11/17/06 05:33 (GMT) by kwdblade
That is VERY odd, as every other post I have seen says they get much better fps outdoors, and sucky fps indoors. Only thing I can say is don't worry about shadows. Do they really enhance the game that much? Not in my opinion.
And to the guy that created this thread, holy crap man, that is one nice system. I didn't even know 1024 cards were out there. That must of costed a fortune.
I know i seem to be backwards as far as performance goes, that is thw whole reason why I think I can substantially imrpove it.
As far as what shadows bring to the game, I saw some beautiful graohics in the first scene. I positioned my character so half his face was in (flickering firelight) shadows and the other half was better lit and it looked fantastic, especially the leather grain on my rangers's outfit. I played the game a little with my old system P4 2.53 GHz, 256 MB ATI 9800 Pro card, and i had no idea the game could look so great. Is it worth the $$ to make it look great? Everyone needs to make that decision for themselves.
As far as the system goes it was a bit more than $3,000, it seems as if my computers are always roughtly the same to buy. I could have built it for a bit less, but alienware puts together great systems. the only thing that bugs me is that it looks like the 8800 card actually out-performs the 7950 GX2. What ya gonna do?  |
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deftech
Game Owner
 NWN 2
Mass Effect PC
Joined: 04 Nov 2006 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 05:57PM |
Point lights are really nice and pretty but I don't think there is any machine out there that will have a fantastic framerate with them enabled.
If you don't know what they are:
WIth it enabled, every single light emitting source (torch ex.) will create a shadow on every object that the light source is shedding light on. That can be a LOT of shadows and light mapping.
If a torch is sitting next to a table, some chairs, your characters, the ceiling, the floor, other torches, boxes, chests. That one torch will create shadows and light maps around all of those objects.
You can see why it's a resource hog  |
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Crispy81
Game Owner
NWN 2
Joined: 13 Oct 2006 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 06:17PM |
Acemo, you're not backwards in terms of performance. Generally, FPS are lower outdoors in this game than indoors. There are exceptions, though, such as when interior areas have multiple light sources, as was said above. Then FPS can slow into the 20's, regardless of hardware setup.
I recommend changing light sources to 4 instead of >4. This almost completely solved that problem for me, with no apparent loss of graphics appeal.
Lastly, if you don't want to try nHancer then you may never realize the SLI performance you paid for with *this* game in particular. If you did figure out how to add an executable to the SLI profile without nHancer, please enlighten us as to how to do so.
_________________
Roleplaying games are like sex: the anticipation leading up to them is unbearable, but once you've had them, they're usually disappointing. |
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Jonnyblade21
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Joined: 29 Oct 2003 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 06:22PM |
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try turning off water reflections that made and shadows as well as clicking normal terrain mapping that made a huge difference for me |
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Acemo
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR Xbox
NWN 2
Mass Effect
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 |
Posted: Friday, 17 November 2006 06:55PM |
Quote: Posted 11/17/06 18:17 (GMT) by Crispy81
Acemo, you're not backwards in terms of performance. Generally, FPS are lower outdoors in this game than indoors. There are exceptions, though, such as when interior areas have multiple light sources, as was said above. Then FPS can slow into the 20's, regardless of hardware setup.
I recommend changing light sources to 4 instead of >4. This almost completely solved that problem for me, with no apparent loss of graphics appeal.
Lastly, if you don't want to try nHancer then you may never realize the SLI performance you paid for with *this* game in particular. If you did figure out how to add an executable to the SLI profile without nHancer, please enlighten us as to how to do so.
Thanks for the tips, I'll try using 4 instead of >4.
To add an application in nvidia's control panel:
open control panel
pick 3d settings
select multi-GPU configuration
pick manage 3d settings (not in the main window, to the right, in the related tasks area)
select the program settings tab
from this tab one will be able to see all the apps with profiles
click add and then browse to the executable
that is it |
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