Horrible Frame Rate - What could be the problem?

Whitesoul · Post by **Whitesoul** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 12:48 am

Hello. I love playing NWN =) And espeically on Neversummer 4 =D. First the title gives it all - But let me tell your my comp specs before we begin processing the issue.

Processor - 3.2ghz Pentium 4
Graphics Card - 9800 ATI Radeon 128 MB
Ram - 1gb DDR
Flat Screen Monitor / Dual Victory Speakers
And Other things that don't really matter.

Now the Issue - I am receiving Horrible Frame Rate...1-10 FPS during fights , impossible to make moves productively / smoothly , must be patient. So what could be the possible problems?

1) Yes..Drivers..are up to date..atleast I think they are - I downloaded them for guru3d.com (Omega) If you have a better suggestion or an more effiecient download please post the link =) Will be greatly appreciated.

2) De-Frag - Done - Didn't Solve Issue

3) Disk Clean-up - Done - Didn't Solve Issue

4) There are no programs running in backround.

5) Ad-aware / Spyware Search & Destroy - Done - Helped a little

What else could there be? Today I noticed I was "playing the game" WITHOUT THE CD ..could that be an issue? I hope not or i'm going to look real dumb.

Well Any suggestions / solutions are more than greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading ^_^

<3 Puresoul !

kingfatzo · Post by **kingfatzo** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:27 am

puzzling...well for starters :

1. you dont need the disk to play the game as i found out accidentally a few months back...

2. are you on dial up ?

3. are other games or greater than or equal to graphics having similar problems?

4. have you tried re-installing nwn ?

just a few thoughts, o and btw, i hate ATI cards

Whitesoul · Post by **Whitesoul** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:29 am

1) Thanks =D I was thinking maybe the game is laggy donkey stuff because it was running from my hard-drive / ram..and the CD may give it more boost? who knows.. =P

2) Nope.. =D Cable + plenty of bandwidth and love.

3) World of Warcraft..I use to play..and thats not high quality graphics but when raiding 30+ people it was laggy but i could still play effiecently

4) Thinking about doing that =D thanks

Thank you. I appreciate it much =D

I officially hate ATI cards now =D

kingfatzo · Post by **kingfatzo** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 1:39 am

hahaha , aye unless someone out there has a more brilliant suggestion than my own, i would attempt the fairly easy solution of re-installing....takes all of 5 minutes, and can potentially save u alot of frustration time

my roomie has a 1.2ghz Pentium 3 pos!!1!oneone ccomputer and it still runs NWN allright....somthin must be screwy thats all...

Post by **Amoenotep** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:16 am

i run a 1.2Ghz AMD 640mb pc133 sdram and ati 9800 128mb vid card.

i get about 15-20fps. never had over 25fps never had less than 5fps. i play ok, load ok, but then again..i'm used to playing on crap.

Post by **TGPO** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:31 am

My desktop is 1.2 athlon 133FSB 1gig on board with nVidia fx5500 256meg. 20 - 50 fps.

I noticed that you said you got the drivers not from the the ATI site but a secondary. Have you tried the stock drivers from ATI instead to see if that clears you up.

When in doubt and troubleshooting its always best to reset everything you can to stock, if only to rule out possible issues. Also if you have custom hakpaks for other tile sets ... lets just say that there are some sloppy people out there. Clear out you hak/override/and custom .tlk files including CEP. I know you have heard me say that for every trouble shooting session with game, but its amazing how many times that is the real issue.

kingfatzo · Post by **kingfatzo** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:14 am

now i see why TGPO was looking to buy a new CPU

aye -- speaking of hak packs....i managed to get a trojan once from one of those sleezy individuals out there on the ign vault.....pain in the butt to get rid of too.....i dont use any haks anymore, unless i get them directly from someone else whom i know....

i can refer to my experiences playing morrowind and using mods / addons....some of the ones i downloaded caused a big graphics hit on the game --- it would suddenly turn to crap

just shows the lack of modding skills that are out there...

on a more recent note - now that i play oblivion instead of morrowind, i also had a wierd occurance --- when i updated my nvidia drivers to the most recent ones ....oblivion took a major dump ---and ran like total crap --lagging all over the place ....i rolled back the drivers and wham - back to awesome preformance again.....as much as i bash ATI cards, it seemed some n00b slipped up at Nvidia

i guess my point to this ramble is taht it is often somthing quite stupid that can ruin your day....

Kromix · Post by **Kromix** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:23 am

i wouuld say try doing a fresh install as you might have some background services eating up your resources...

Squikker2001 · Post by **Squikker2001** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:23 am

I use a HP Pavillion Laptop, and my frame-rates are usually between 15-23, altough it can quickly drop to 2 or 3 when in a very mob/scenery intensive area (examples are Ice Giants and the entrance to the Water Plane).

Sometimes it gets so bad that NWN crashes. I have a kind of 6th sense to detect an imminent crash, like when things don't light up when my mouse passes over them, or the music/sound effects start skipping.

My suggestion would be to just try turning down some grafics options if the re-install doesn't work. Also, before you re-install, make sure you have your CD keys available, I had a big scare like that on another game.

Myrdyr · Post by **Myrdyr** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:12 am

There's a bug with the cloak update that we're using that causes framerate problems in some systems. I had this problem, and solved it by turning off sound support completely. I've heard the problem can also be solved by removing files used by certain hak paks.

SkotG · Post by **SkotG** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:40 am

so many problems, graphic cards, drivers,

my 4 year old mac MD dual 867 w/ 512mb ram, and ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB DDR SDRAM runs like a champ....no problems with frame rates are usually fine can drop in big big mobs like ice giants, but it's a real trooper

Whitesoul · Post by **Whitesoul** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:10 pm

wow thanks for all the feedback..

also another thing with the drivers i downloaded both downloads for 9800 on the ati website download 1 of 2 worked perfectly fine and then i did download 2 of 2 which is 6-9_xp-2k_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_35774 when I run that I get a shutdown computer error and comp shuts down in a minute nothing to stop it either. I have Novell so that could be an issue but thats the reason i downloaded it from somewhere else (guru3d.com) lol

so I think I'm going to Uninstall and re-install ... thanks for all the feedback much appreciated lets pray it fixes the issue.

Cyrix · Post by **Cyrix** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 6:23 am

One thing you might want to do is to uninstall the gfx card driver, but before you do that make sure you get the newer version of the gfx card driver. I believe that should be able to solve the problem.

-Sirus

Whitesoul · Post by **Whitesoul** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 6:40 pm

Cyrix i'm horrible with computers most of the time..where is the gfx card driver and where can i get the newer version?

kgb · Post by **kgb** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 7:30 pm

Ok this is your graphics card: 9800 ATI Radeon 128 MB

Now you dont mention what Operating System you use whether it is Windows XP or Windows 2000.

If you use Windows XP it has to have Service Pack 2 install. If you dont have it installed go to microsoft's web site and search for service pack 2 - shouldnt be too hard to find.

Next you will need to make sure .Net framework is installed see here to download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info ... tnetfx.exe

Then the catalyst (graphic drivers) here: (put this link in your address bar)
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/ ... _35774.exe

good luck