Hello. I've been out of loop for a while, but I know two things:

 

(1) I want to purchase and play NWN2 ASAP.

 

(2) I need a new computer to do this because my current computer is horribly outdated (and I was planning on getting a new one anyway).

 

Now, (1) should not be a problem. However, I want to make sure that the computer listed in (2) will do the job. Here's what I had in mind:

 

CPU: Core2Duo E6400

MB: Asus P5B Deluxe

RAM: 2x 1 Gb DDR2 @ 667Mhz

GPU: Gigabyte nVidia 7900 GS with 256 Mb RAM

HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 320 Gb 7200.10 with NCQ

Sound: Audigy 2

 

I would like to hear from people with similar computers regarding the game's performance. 7900 GS is quite similar to 7900 GT, and benchmarks show that it's only about 5% slower (while being 20% cheaper).

 

I want the graphics to look as good as possible. Will this computer be able to that?

(1) I want to purchase and play NWN2 ASAP.

figured you would.

 

CPU: Core2Duo E6400

MB: Asus P5B Deluxe

RAM: 2x 1 Gb DDR2 @ 667Mhz

GPU: Gigabyte nVidia 7900 GS with 256 Mb RAM

HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 320 Gb 7200.10 with NCQ

Sound: Audigy 2

while i have much less power than this, i can run the game fine though not at high settings. i have a 6800 w/128 MB upped to a GT (extra pipes minus overclocking), only 1 GB of RAM and a lowly AMD64 3200+. i also have an audigy 2.

 

i've heard of issues with the core2s, but not from everyone. i think it is hit or miss. it also depends upon what you call "good graphics." some are complaining they only get 30 fps (some only 10, of course). otherwise, you shouldn't have a problem, particularly if you have a clean build of winders.

 

taks

10fps are perfectly playable!

 

Ram, HDD and GPU should be no problem, I think. 7600GS may not pull out the absolute best, but that shouldnt matter too much. Apart from NWN2, though, I wouldn't know how long it would last before needing a replacement.

 

Core2 is the one that may give you compatibility trouble, but most such problems are surmountable with some computer knowledge anda lot of patience.

Is that CPU dual core? As NWN2 doesn't support dual CPUs as far as I know.

Is that CPU dual core?  As NWN2 doesn't support dual CPUs as far as I know.

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That is not exactly correct. NWN2 doesn't take advantage of second core, but it doesn't mean the processor is unsupported.

BTW, we have another thread on dual core CPUs.

7600GS may not pull out the absolute best, but that shouldnt matter too much.

It's 7900GS, which is a bit better.

 

Core2 is the one that may give you compatibility trouble, but most such problems are surmountable with some computer knowledge anda lot of patience.

What sort of trouble?

Thing about dual core systems and gaming is you often only use a single core.

Well, games will have to adapt, since Intel just introduced a quad-core processor, and their single-core processors from now on will be equivalents to celeron.

 

I hope it'll still work, though. I don't want 100 FPS, I just want a playable game that looks nice.

On medium texture settings and with shadows turned down to low I get 15-25 fps on my A64 3000+ and 6600GT in most areas. Not exactly smooth, but playable. Compared to that, your next rig should eat the game for breakfast.

 

BTW, make sure that you have a lot of free space on the partition which will hold your "My Documents" folder since the NWN2 save files can take up to 500MB easily. That's with 3 used slots + quicksave, and I'm only starting Act2 right now, so it's bound to get even larger.

I get the same with a Radeon 9600 Pro, though.

Yeah, I'm using my three-year-old Pentium M 1700MHz, 1GB RAM and 128MB ATi Mobile T2 (which is a version of the 9600) and I can play it at my external LCD monitor's resolution of 800x600 with no difficulty.

I get the same with a Radeon 9600 Pro, though.

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Possibly, but I'm getting those frame rates while playing at my monitor's native resolution which is 1280x1024. :cool:

Yeah, I'm using my three-year-old Pentium M 1700MHz, 1GB RAM and 128MB ATi Mobile T2 (which is a version of the 9600) and I can play it at my external LCD monitor's resolution of 800x600 with no difficulty.

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How many FPS do you get, Mets?

Um, haven't got that switched on at the moment, but there aren't many slowdowns ... I'll switch it on again (I do have the Omega drivers installed) and report back.

games taking advantage of multi-threading on multiple cores will be a while, IMO. there's a whole new paradigm w.r.t. programming that developers will need to learn. it's not just simply "program it for multiple cores" as some might think... not to say that it can't be done, just that it may be a while.

 

taks

Um, haven't got that switched on at the moment, but there aren't many slowdowns ... I'll switch it on again (I do have the Omega drivers installed) and report back.

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Having encountered any massive spell battles have you?

games taking advantage of multi-threading on multiple cores will be a while, IMO.  there's a whole new paradigm w.r.t. programming that developers will need to learn.  it's not just simply "program it for multiple cores" as some might think...  not to say that it can't be done, just that it may be a while.

 

taks

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It is interesting to see what Valve will do with their new multi-threaded architecture.

 

PS

The only thing I can't understand from the article is what is so good about spinlocks?

Locks in general are evil. Coarse-grained locks are easy to program and reason about, but are extremely inefficient. Fine-grained locks are performance-efficient, but it takes pro programmers to reason about their correctness. Transactional Memory seems to be a promising alternative, but the concept is still at a very researchy stage, and it's going to be a while before we start seeing them on real systems.

Yes, but that was not what I was asking. I was referring to this bit of the article:

The new pipeline featured so much multithreading that special efforts were needed to avoid the dreaded deadlocks and other pitfalls mentioned earlier. To accomplish this, programmer Leonard made use of a technique called lock-free algorithms. He implemented a spin lock to replace the more traditional mutexes (mutual-exclusion algorithms) and semaphores that are used to flag threads as being "safe" to multithread. The spin loop utilizes a new interlock instruction that is built into the CPU.

I don't quite get how replacing mutexes with spinlocks helps with deadlocks, let alone implementing lock-free algorithms.

Hmm, I can't figure out what he's talking about either... you need a compare-n-swap or some such atomic instruction in order to implement lock-free synchronization. Also, I'm not quite sure what a "hardware" spin lock is... a hardware test-n-set instruction is required for any kind of a spin lock.

Um, haven't got that switched on at the moment, but there aren't many slowdowns ... I'll switch it on again (I do have the Omega drivers installed) and report back.

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Having encountered any massive spell battles have you?

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Sure have.

My ATI X1600XT graphics card starts to lag when there are a lot of animations going on at once, like a lot of people in fights and the worst is when you have a bunch of spell casters casting spells. This is a game that would need a high end card if you want to play with the settings on high for visual effects.

 

A Gigabyte RAM would be a must have. This game is worse than Oblivion when it comes to keeping the PC high end.

Yes, but that was not what I was asking. I was referring to this bit of the article:

The new pipeline featured so much multithreading that special efforts were needed to avoid the dreaded deadlocks and other pitfalls mentioned earlier. To accomplish this, programmer Leonard made use of a technique called lock-free algorithms. He implemented a spin lock to replace the more traditional mutexes (mutual-exclusion algorithms) and semaphores that are used to flag threads as being "safe" to multithread. The spin loop utilizes a new interlock instruction that is built into the CPU.

I don't quite get how replacing mutexes with spinlocks helps with deadlocks, let alone implementing lock-free algorithms.

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Interesting....

 

Semaphores, and Mutual exclusion, stuff like dekkers algorithm, are surprisingly simple.

i'm not surprised that a FPS engine would be the first to use threading. the bleeding edge of technology tends to come from FPSs.

 

taks

Well, the rig is on the workbench right now, and I should have it tomorrow.

 

Now to hunt down NWN2.