NWN/Driver issues? Stuttery game play

[CleanSlate]

I've been messing with this one for a while. Some times when I play neverwinter nights I get stuttering game play. As if my graphics card is running at 10 fps. Some times it's perfectly fine, as if there's no problems. This is the only game it does this in. Updated the driver once when the problem started happening with the last update of NWN to the newest WHQL from the NV web site. My gut instinct says it's the game's last update that did it...

Any suggestions? The void may know more about this one.

System specs:
Core 2 duo 2.66 ghz
2 gigs of ddr 2 pc800 ram
intel mobo p35dp media series with P35/ICH9R chipsets
7900 GT with 256 megs of ram

 

[astrallite]

The Aurora engine is neolithic. It's the same generation engine as the Bethesda's Morrorwind. Both had the same problems--polygon overdraw. Basically if you are facing a direction with a lot of polygons, even if you can't see them, they are being generated by the cpu. Someone found this out by fiddling around with a 3rd person toolset and found out that even when your vision is completely impeded by mountain, the game is trying to render a million polygons off-screen. Even if you overclocked your CPU to 10GHz it won't help, its just saturating the CPU bus.

If you look at any iteration or derivative of the Aurora engine they all have the same performance problems. You can quad SLI 295s or Tri SLI 285s and run an i7 at 4ghz and I guarantee you you're still gonna stutter in some areas.

If you look at the Witcher benchmarks (an Aurora derivative), 4870 x 3 vs a 9800gtx, both benchmarks are bound at 18fps with a CPU overclocked to the stratosphere. In other words, you need NASA space command to run some of those scenes at 30fps. Crysis in comparison is a crowning achievement in engine efficiency.

 

[CleanSlate]

The problem with your explanation is the fact that it's an intermittent issue. I frequent the same server as most people do and at times (during my entire game play) it's choppy as hell and then other times (during the entire game play, until I shut it down) it's smooth as silk!

This has to mean there's a problem somewhere that I'm just not seeing.

 

[qlippoth]

It's a driver issues with the newer nVidia cards. I hear they are working on a fix, but it could be several revisions of the driver before (or even IF) we see it.

The problem is I think they dropped support for OpenGL 1.5, which the NWN Aurora engine uses. So any time there are slings, bows, robes, or cloaks (that use transparency) you'll see a huge frame drop.

I (and much of the NWN community) am trying to figure out whether ATI cards have issues as well before we make a purchasing decision... I like having PhysX, but not if I can't develop scripts and modules for NWN (my main hobby, as I"m learning C and the NWScript is basically C).

EDIT: Whoops, just noticed your OLD card. My 8800GTX is fine, but I bought (and returned) a 460 GTX that had this issue. is probably shiny water or some other graphic setting that needs to be turned off.

- Qilppoth