Nvidia 400/500 series graphics cards and NwN.

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

TL;DR This post is basically a warning to anyone thinking of buying a newer graphics card, and also a request for help if anyone has had the same issues and solved them.

Newer graphics cards from Nvidia, the 400 series and 500 series, seem to have discontinued support for the version of openGL that older applications (like our beloved Neverwinter Nights) use.  I believe it's openGL 1.2 but my memory might not serve.

Anyway, it does mean that framerates are utterly crippling with these extremely powerful (and expensive!) cards.  You're looking at 10FPS with a GTX 570, compared with around 30FPS for the older and far inferior GTX 220, for instance.

Apparently disabling cloaks and ranged weapons is a bit of a workaround fix, but I've yet to try it.

I was wondering if anyone else had had such issues and if they had solved them in any way, as - as you may have guessed - I currently have one of the aforementioned cards now, and would rather like to play NwN on my new machine - for reference I have the GTX 570 installed on it.

It's not the end of the world, I still have my trusty laptop.  But I digress.

-  Nuke

[Caster13]

I actually bought an ATI card because Clucky warned me about this >_>

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

It's a bit naughty of Nvidia.  I've bit my tongue somewhat, I don't want to recommend ATI - but certainly I consider them and AMD to be the 'nicer' companies (which means, of course, that they're utterly doomed.)  Certainly, NwN works better with new ATI cards.  Food for thought - for laptops, at least, where there's a bit more parity in the GFX department (all as bad as another :) ).

[core]

FTR I run a GTX 460 and it seems OK. I have heard negative things about GTX 570 though.

[Spiffy Has]

GEforce GTX460 does indeed run well with NwN!

[PureeOfPelican]

Another that doesn't work is the Intel HD Graphics 3000 you will find built into a lot of notebooks these days.  I have one in my MacBook Air, and most textures are missing whether I run NWN in VMWare Fusion or natively under Windows and Bootcamp.

[mucka1916]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-280.19-beta-driver.html -64bit version

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-32bit-280.19-beta-driver.html -32bit version
Not sure if it'll help and it's a beta but the release notes states

• Supports  OpenGL 4.1 on GeForce 400 series and later GPUs.

According to the nvidia forums it should work fine with NwN + cloaks.


Hope it helps

[Sternhund]

I used to have a newer NVIDIA that used to have this issue but I found a workaround. I run NWN in Administrator and Compatability mode. Maybe that'll help.

[River Walker]

Forgive the thread necromancy, but I have been grappling with this problem and I would like to document my findings, both in the hope of solving my own issues and helping anyone else with theirs.

I am using an ATI Raedon Mobility 4200 series. The 4250, to be exact. I'm playing on a netbook. In the Mistlocke town square, I get between 10 and 19 fps. I can get my fps up to 30 in that area if I zoom in all the way and point the camera directly at the ground. My fps is consistent regardless of what resolution I am using. I get the same fps in 800x600 as I do in 1366x768.

I was able to increase my average fps by about 4 by updating my audio drivers. Several people have reported in forums that NWN can stutter and lag with older audio drivers on newer machines, and this turned out to be true in my case. I have not eliminated the video stutter, but I have reduced it somewhat by optimizing the audio.

The main problem remains: my video drivers do not make use of the version of OpenGL that NWN likes, even though my hardware reportedly supports it. The result is 1) unbelievably slow area loading times, and 2) ridiculous fps loss in the Mistlocke square and Marketplace areas.

I've tried a number of solutions I've found on the web, but none of them seem to work. I'll be glad to describe them if someone else is having similar issues.

EDIT: It's worth noting that this little 2 year old netbook runs many modern games just fine. It only chokes on NWN.

[Paha]

Nwn is old, but that does not mean any less demanding for graphic cards.

It is demanding for texture fill rates and other, and to give you an idea of the shape of your card compared to my desktop good card that is already also out of sale, 5870 here's some data:

Your card: Texture Fill Rate   2 GT/s
5870:        Texture Fill Rate   272 GT/s

Memory Bandwidth   20.8 GB/sec   
5870: 153.6 GB/sec
Memory Interface Width 16-bit
5870: 256-bit

Fact being, your card is mobile onboard graphic. It is not meant to perform things that nwn requires or any game. It can run them, but you can't even compare it to when game is running properly, until you see it.

Even my old 5870 can find problems at times in certain situations, it's just how nwn lacks in optimization, but it can still be demanding in bits for any card.

With the model you gave me, it's impossible for it to run any game properly in terms of good quality.

I would simply say the solution here is to buy better.

[River Walker]

Thank you very much for the reply, Paha. I am not an expert on this stuff, and that really helps me understand why NWN has so much trouble on this machine while other games don't.

I should add, however, that I've read reports of others getting NWN to run smoothly on this card.

[KingHovCopy]

I have absolutely no issue with the cards myself.

[Paha]

I am sure it can run what seems somewhat smooth.

Indeed, drivers are first thing. Second is making sure you aren't running 3d audio or any such thing, that isn't a driver issue. It's more a matter on Windows 7 as some older features aren't supported and most older cards don't work proper with it (Which also brings trouble in nwn).

Next is settings. You should lower shadows/light effects and textures in game. On your own card, check that you don't got anti aliasing high or any other such settings. Test between animated water/lava on and off and few other effects. These would be the first step.

Next.. There was this mod to help loading up textures for bit lesser machines.. Override was it? I can't remember what it was I am afraid, but it changed tga reading or something else? I hope someone could remember it.

Try with these things first and see if there's any help.

EDIT:
You can also check your nwnplayer.ini file if you are using dual / multicore machine. Open it and edit it with notepad and find [Game options] and there Client CPU affinity. It should be 1, 0, possibly -1. There is a trick that defaults -1 to 0 usually, so if you want to turn off the affinity, put in -2. It might be good to try both -1 and -2 to check if it helps, if not, turn it back to default or the number of cores you want the game to use. That might help in some case, in conjuction of using 2d miles audio what ever the option was in game.

[River Walker]

Oh, I've done all that already Paha. I'm pretty much at a brick wall here and I'm pretty sure it's the drivers. I'd love it if KingHovCopy could point me to where he got his drivers.

[River Walker]

I just got a (for me) new desktop and set up NWN on it. This is my first experience of NWN on a relatively modern computer, so I maxed out everything. Shiny water, NWNCQ, all of it.

Holy sweet Jesus. I now get 70fps in the town square with all that stuff turned on. I think I've solved my problem.