taks

oh, bummer. taks

uh, i thought you could just go to the world map transition with bishop and would be there... it seems that's what i did anyway. wistrik, u9 runs like a dream on my system, too. but that game was released when, 6 years ago? it was pretty cutting edge for its time, and pretty broken. it's hardly cutting edge anymore, however. taks

oh, that's right... forgot about that. b****. taks

btw, i should note that after a few patches with NWN1, it worked much better. however, not every update (and there were many) did favors for me. some caused more problems than i wanted, others were benign. taks

wait a minute... something just ain't right with that statement. taks

yeah, i know. the recent stutters were actually made worse by the latest upgrade. they did something to the engine i think. taks

i had many more problems with NWN1 than i am having with this. it _still_ stutters on my system sometimes. taks

u9 was simply unfinished even by all of the developers' accounts. this was why lord british left the team. the patch made it playable on my system, though it took nearly 2 years before technology allowed me to really play it. then i discovered all the holes in the game. oh my was it done poorly. a really sad ending to an otherwise great series (yeah, mario ultima wasn't the best, but it was better than 9). taks

uh, toee anyone, ultima 9 anyone, pool of radiance anyone, bloodlines anyone, NWN1 anyone??? i can see now how you manage to label the rest of us fanboys. from your obvious prejudice, anyone else is _obviously_ just a fanboy. if you hate this game so much, STOP PLAYING IT!!! sheesh... taks

NWN2 in particular seems to load the CPU heavily. that thought based on the fact that textures don't make much of a difference. i'm using a 128 MB 6800 with all 16 pipes turned on with a 3200+ and only 1 GB of RAM (asus a8v mobo, or something like that) and i'm doing quite well (triple what you are getting, tigranes) except during large spell battles. i'd imagine turning down lights to 1 or 2 would improve my performance. i'm guessing, btw, that shadows and lights are using a lot of CPU time for setup. i don't really care about either too much, so out they went. there are very few places where water is a key factor in the visuals so out it went, too. taks

i've got everything on "high" (high textures, linear mapping) with no shadows, no bloom, no water using 1024x768 @ 85 Hz and i'm getting up to 60 fps outdoors and around 20-30 indoors. it dips a bit when there are a lot of critters/NPCs running about. massive spell fights also dip, but not quite to slide-show mode. (i've got a vanilla 128 MB 6800 with the extra pipes turned on). good luck on your adventure sammael. i'm envious of your new system. looking at what it will take for me to do the same came up to around $1500 for a mid-level system. ugh. taks

uh, yeah... sure. taks

flying elves were in bg2. in fact, that **** b**** aerie wouldn't shut up about it. taks

that's an unhealthy fetish you have going on there, wistrik. taks

btw, i did notice tearing in some of the movies (during startup) with v-sync off. it is unnoticeable during in-game cut-scenes, however. taks

the BCM1480 has a 2 MB shared cache across 4 cores. it is connected to the L1 via a CPU_SPEED/2, 256-bit bus. high-bandwidth is an understatement. the total core, btw, only runs at 23 W @ 1 GHz. hehe, not this one! yup. yup again. performing an image compression routine, for example, involves operating on rows and columns of the image independently. a quad-core system can operate on 4 rows/columns at a time with ease, and very little conflict. the speedup is nearly 4:1. using all four cores to operate on a single row/column at a time, however, probably only provides 2:1 speedup and less if the sizes are small (say, less than 4k elements). taks

btw, i've kicked it up to high textures and, as it seems others have noticed, there is no noticeable dip in frame-rate. so now i'm running high textures, no bloom, no water, no shadows, linear filtering for every option, and i'm getting 30 or so fps inside and 50+ outside at 1024x768 (85 Hz refresh). of course, it drops below that when there are a ton of CPU sucking AI scripts running about. heavy spell battles also impact performance as well as weather effects (i.e. snow in seasons puzzle). taks

the loveland ski resort is claiming 22"... nothing in ft. collins, however? taks

hehe, kwinkydentally we're getting more snow again. 5th time this year. the mountains are apparently suffering right now. I-70 was shut down for 60 miles due to the mounds of fluffy white stuff. ALL of colorado's moutains are beneficiaries this year. wolf creek is at 93 inches and it snowed all day (i.e., they'll be over 100 by tomorrow), steamboat is near 70", my mountain, copper, is in the 50s or so with bunches coming down still... yay. i don't get my skis till thursday, however (season rentals) and my ski-buddy and i are meeting at 6 am friday. yay 2. taks

i don't think this game is GPU limited per se (textures are just a fill rate issue, right?). i think the load on the CPU is the culprit. just a hunch based on the complaint trend. taks

bummer, too, because i have a beautiful samsung 213T sitting at home unused. another on my desk at work though it is only used for development and, i even have a 20" dell on my desk at work. you won't see me run games other than solitaire on any of these. maybe the new 8800s will suffice? taks

i prefer the latter organization for parallel. split L1 is a given necessity for speed reasons. a shared L2, however, allows cores to play together in the sandbox a little better. of course, associativity semi-reserves areas of L2 anyway... taks

i wasn't referring to physically moving anything. i was referring to the down time while things get moved, stalls, etc. i.e. these functions are handled automatically, but they still take considerable amount of time. i'm running into that right now with a benchmark i'm running that requires threads for larger sizes (an FFT). my times are all over the map because i cannot lock down affinity. oh yes, i realize that. taks

cool. i'm due for an upgrade myself, but i have about a half a dozen other things i need, all in the $300+ range. pooter gets to wait. it'll probably be summer before i get to upgrade anything other than extra memory. given the issues with my mobo (8237 HDD controller died), i'm probably going to do a complete wipe and do the duo. taks

mcginnis was just named some sort of VP in the blue's organization, btw. he was loved nearly as much as hull in st. louis. of course, his reputation and fan-love was well earned. st. louis is a diehard hockey town, too. taks