9800 Pro and Neverwinter Nights

  • Thread starter Thread starter AWU
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A

AWU

I just got an ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB and was a little underwhelmed when I ran
Neverwinter Nights. Used the 64 MB textures, graphics options were set to
'best', and the resolution was 1024X768. AA and AF were turned off. The
performance is not terrible, but I expected it might be a little better with
the 9800 Pro, even though it isn't the latest and greatest. The frame rate
is relatively smooth a good amount of the time, but I'm surprised at how
often it dips into lower numbers. Using FRAPS, I estimate 40 - 50 FPS
(average), though at times it is in the hundreds. Battles and highly complex
scenes, however, can
bring it down to the (sometimes low) 20s. I'm just curious, is this normal
for
this card? Some people say that the game engine is not optimized
(specifically the shadow rendering system) for ATI hardware, but I haven't
seen an official statement from ATI or Bioware regarding this claim. If that
is the case, is there a patch available I don't know about? For the other
9800 owners out there, what settings do you use to get the best balance
between speed and quality?

The rest of my system is as follows:
Asus K8V SE DX
Athlon 64 3000+
512 MB PC3200 OCZ EL (2-3-2-6)
SB Audigy
Windows XP Home

I have audio quality also set to high with EAX 3.0 enabled, but I find that
this doesn't affect performance much at all in other games.
Thanks to any who can help me out,

A
 
AWU left a note on my windscreen which said:
I just got an ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB and was a little underwhelmed when I ran
Neverwinter Nights.
Click to expand...

As was I when I changed to my 9800 Pro from a GF4 Ti4600. Unfortunatly
the reason appears to be the NWN engine is built on OpenGL. Radeon's
simply don't perform well with this.

I looked for a solution for a few wekks for this issue and couldn't find
one I'm afraid. If you have more luck then pls let me know.

Sorry I couldn't be any more help.
 
Stoneskin said:
AWU left a note on my windscreen which said:


As was I when I changed to my 9800 Pro from a GF4 Ti4600. Unfortunatly
the reason appears to be the NWN engine is built on OpenGL. Radeon's
simply don't perform well with this.

I looked for a solution for a few wekks for this issue and couldn't find
one I'm afraid. If you have more luck then pls let me know.

Sorry I couldn't be any more help.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I too have been searching for a solution with little
luck. I have noticed that the shadows seem to have the greatest impact on
performance in NWN with the Radeon (at least on my system). With the shadow
details turned down, I can get a decent frame rate (probably about 40 FPS
average - based on my experiments with FRAPS - though it is often higher)
with every other option on max AND with FSAA (even 4X) enabled. I've noticed
that complex shadow rendering in other games (like Rainbow Six 3) can hit
the 9800 Pro pretty hard also.

NWN sure looks pretty with the shadows, but I'd sooner have a smoother frame
rate. As a point of interest, character shadows seem to have less effect on
frame rate than environment shadows. I'm going to keep playing around with
the settings and looking into this for a little while yet -- if I come
across anything of importance, I'll post it.

A
 
I just got an ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB and was a little underwhelmed when I
ran Neverwinter Nights. Used the 64 MB textures, graphics options were
set to 'best', and the resolution was 1024X768. AA and AF were turned
off. The performance is not terrible, but I expected it might be a
little better with the 9800 Pro, even though it isn't the latest and
greatest. The frame rate is relatively smooth a good amount of the time,
but I'm surprised at how often it dips into lower numbers. Using FRAPS,
I estimate 40 - 50 FPS (average), though at times it is in the hundreds.
Battles and highly complex scenes, however, can
bring it down to the (sometimes low) 20s. I'm just curious, is this
normal for
this card? Some people say that the game engine is not optimized
(specifically the shadow rendering system) for ATI hardware, but I
haven't seen an official statement from ATI or Bioware regarding this
claim. If that is the case, is there a patch available I don't know
about? For the other 9800 owners out there, what settings do you use to
get the best balance between speed and quality?

The rest of my system is as follows:
Asus K8V SE DX
Athlon 64 3000+
512 MB PC3200 OCZ EL (2-3-2-6)
SB Audigy
Windows XP Home

I have audio quality also set to high with EAX 3.0 enabled, but I find
that this doesn't affect performance much at all in other games.
Thanks to any who can help me out,

A
Click to expand...

NWN is simple more optimal on nvidia hardware... yup. On my ati cards it
always had a "sluggishnes" on it... I learned to life with it!
 
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