[malone]

What's the verdict folks? How's it perform on your system? Are you finding that you need to tune down the details and resolution to make it playable? What are you system specs? And what can I realistically expect on my Ti867/32MB Radeon-M 9000/1GB?

[-Q-]

I think it plays fine on my iBook 800. Levels load quickly and I really haven't seen any troubles with performance. I'd think it'd work fine on a TiBook.

[a2daj]

The port is a bit more of a CPU hog than I imagined but I've heard it's just as much of a CPU hog as the PC version. I thought that with a Dual 1.2 GHz machine and a Radeon 9800 Pro, I'd be able to get smooth (25+ fps consistently) framerates at 1024x768. That's not the case though. Many of the city maps get mid to low teens at maxed out settings with the camera zoomed out. I like playing zoomed out because I can see more things. I can turn off shadows and some other CPU intensive graphics options to help speed things up, but if you had my setup, particularly the card, would you really want to have to turn graphic options off? Fortunately, NWN is not a game that requires high framerates so the game is still playable at those framerates and the fun factor lets me ignore the performance.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by a2daj:
The port is a bit more of a CPU hog than I imagined but I've heard it's just as much of a CPU hog as the PC version. I thought that with a Dual 1.2 GHz machine and a Radeon 9800 Pro, I'd be able to get smooth (25+ fps consistently) framerates at 1024x768. That's not the case though. Many of the city maps get mid to low teens at maxed out settings with the camera zoomed out. I like playing zoomed out because I can see more things. I can turn off shadows and some other CPU intensive graphics options to help speed things up, but if you had my setup, particularly the card, would you really want to have to turn graphic options off? Fortunately, NWN is not a game that requires high framerates so the game is still playable at those framerates and the fun factor lets me ignore the performance.

Hey a2daj! Your shoe's untied!

[MickS]

Playable on my TiBook 667 in 1152x768 with graphics set to fast.

Looks better on the G4 400 with the Radeon 8500 on it.

Yes there is some slow down in some areas but I know people playing on PCs that get the same slow down.

[macnnhelpme]

Originally posted by a2daj:
The port is a bit more of a CPU hog than I imagined but I've heard it's just as much of a CPU hog as the PC version. I thought that with a Dual 1.2 GHz machine and a Radeon 9800 Pro, I'd be able to get smooth (25+ fps consistently) framerates at 1024x768. That's not the case though. Many of the city maps get mid to low teens at maxed out settings with the camera zoomed out. I like playing zoomed out because I can see more things. I can turn off shadows and some other CPU intensive graphics options to help speed things up, but if you had my setup, particularly the card, would you really want to have to turn graphic options off? Fortunately, NWN is not a game that requires high framerates so the game is still playable at those framerates and the fun factor lets me ignore the performance.

Well, I bought this for the PC when it first game out, and it's hardly a HOG. Runs fine on my XP1800+ with a Geforce card. No problems with framerate.

[malone]

I caved in and bought the game. Runs pretty decent at native resolution (1280x854) on low detail for the most part, though I do get a bit of lag (still reasonably playable) in some of the bigger city scenes.

Again, for all those interested, my system is a stock Ti867 with 1GB RAM.

Reading around in the other threads, there are reports that games like WC3 are experiencing a substantial performance boost in Panther. I wonder if we might be able to expect the same for Neverwinter.

[MilkmanDan]

I don't see why most of us would need a boost in Jag, I mean neverwinter runs great one everything I've tested it on. a 466 G4 with a Geforce 2 mx and a gig of RAM ran it fine. My personal 867 G4 with 1.5 GIGs RAm ran it great, and my buddies 1.25 G4 with 256 RAm ran it great. I mean, yeah.

WC3 though. I run into problem playing online games and or LAN games. We all figure its due to some buggie blizzard code. PC to PC runs fine, MAC to MAC or MAC to PC equals a lot of Lag on a LAN.

[Graymalkin]

There's been only a few cases where my 12" Powerbook slowed down enough to be annoying. Whenever I fight something like Grigs or some such that use Entangle. All the little root things really make my framerate take a nosedive. I've also had a little problem when first entering a town, the framerate sputters for a few seconds but then smooths out. Most of the slowdown I've experienced in temporary. I've got a 12" Powerbook 867 with 640MB of RAM and the game set for Fast.

[Gul Banana]

It runs fine on my system, even with some of the prettiness options turned on. I have a Sawtooth upgraded to a Radeon 8500 and a 1GHz CPU.

[a2daj]

"Runs fine" is subjective. My observations on performance are based on numbers. I enabled framerate viewing with the "trace fps" console command. But as I mentioned in my post, NWN isn't a game that needs high fps, but I can easily tell when I'm getting 15 fps and over 20 fps.

[macaddled]

Well, I have a G4 800mhz/original Radeon/1.25GHZ and I find it to be pretty choppy in your larger areas. But it's turn based so it doesn't really matter too much, and the game is just great.

General consensus over on the Bioware boards is that 'Enable environment mapping on creatures' is the primary resource hog, and turning it off helps more than anything else. It seemed to be true to me, personally.

Also, for those who don't know, you can install the PC version of Shadows of Undrentide -- it doesn't modify the executable so it's all just a matter of putting data files in the right places. There are applescript installers around too. Check out the Bioware boards. Means you can play on most PC servers now.

[a2daj]

Both shadows and 'environment mapping on creatures' are pretty big performance hits so turning both off helps a bit.

[kentuckyfried]

Has anybody else had issues for the opening movie? Mine plays really choppy and skips. I guess the rest of the gameplay if OK though.

If you have seen this problem, please let me know how to correct it. It's just an annoyance more than anything.

[nobitacu]

Mine works most of the time, but sometimes, just sometimes, the game would crash and than I'll have to restart up the game again. So I just save a lot during the game, just in case it crashes on me again. with the 30 plus hours I've put in, I would say it has crashed on me about 8 to 10 times... somewhere there....

Ming

[kentuckyfried]

Err....does anybody know how to start this game in Windowed mode?

I followed the instructions on the NWN website, editing the nwn.ini file and all, but nothing happens. I start the game, and it still takes up the fullscreen.

It's kind of convenient to have it windowed so I don't constantly have to quit the game to attend to other business going on in other applications.

[schwa]

Originally posted by kentuckyfried:
Err....does anybody know how to start this game in Windowed mode?

I followed the instructions on the NWN website, editing the nwn.ini file and all, but nothing happens. I start the game, and it still takes up the fullscreen.

It's kind of convenient to have it windowed so I don't constantly have to quit the game to attend to other business going on in other applications.

Don't forget to change

Fullscreen=1
to
Fullscreen=0

Worked for me, though performance takes a serious nosedive when you run in a winow.

[kentuckyfried]

I did that too...but when i restart the game, it still starts in full screen mode.

This is what I followed per the website:

------


You will need to edit the nwn.ini file.

First add the following line to the [Display Options] section:

AllowWindowedMode=1

Secondly, change the line that says

Fullscreen=1

to

Fullscreen=0

---------------

Originally posted by schwa:
Don't forget to change

Fullscreen=1
to
Fullscreen=0

Worked for me, though performance takes a serious nosedive when you run in a winow.

[MickS]

Originally posted by a2daj:
"Runs fine" is subjective. My observations on performance are based on numbers. I enabled framerate viewing with the "trace fps" console command. But as I mentioned in my post, NWN isn't a game that needs high fps, but I can easily tell when I'm getting 15 fps and over 20 fps.

I agree that this is subjective but the FPS in NWN varies enormously dependent on how complex the area is. As an example with by TiBook I can get down as low as 2 FPS in the City Core and above 16 FPS in other areas. That said my new 17" doesn't drop below 10-11 FPS anywhere

[malone]

Anyone experiencing any performance increase with the 1.32 update?

[MickS]

Originally posted by malone:
Anyone experiencing any performance increase with the 1.32 update?

Not really. The main benefit I've noticed is that the talk menu now works properly in multi-player.

[lenox]

My brother has a P4 1.6ghz with 1GB of ram, and a radeon 9000 pro 128mb ddr ram.

The game gets a nice consistent 40+fps with most prettiness options enabled.

I have a dual867 mdd mac with 768mb ram and a radeon 8500 64mb ddr ram. First of all, NwN doesn't support both CPUs (bummer), and second of all, with the same settings, I am lucky to get 15-25 fps. But the game is still playable, and I guess I can just deal with it.

But yeah, shadows, dynamic lights, and environment mappings are what really seems to slow it down.

[a2daj]

Yeah an 867 G4 vs a 1.6 P4 usually has those types of framerate differences...

[lenox]

Perhaps I get faster level load times due to faster ram (DDR2100 vs PC133), but that's about it.