Really Recommended Spec?

Recoba · Post by **Recoba** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 4:43 am

Hello All

I had a quick look through the threads and I could not see this one but apologies if it has already gone before.

I am thinking of upgrading my computer and I was wondering what do people recommend as the minimum spec for Neverwinter - the boxes are sometimes a bit 'optimistic' with theirs - I was wondering if I could have a few comments about peoples specs and their performances

Thanks

Recoba.

Rob-hin · Post by **Rob-hin** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:12 am

Yeah, I'm curious too!
A lot of times you see the recommended specs, actually beiing the minimum specs...

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:35 am

Anything Beefy. GF4 Ti, Pentium 1.9, or AMD Athlon XP 1.9, 512 mbs of Ram, 2 gigs of hard drive space. 40x CD drive, at least. It needs this stuff, otherwise it freezes, crashes, chopes... you name it..

Ned Flanders · Post by **Ned Flanders** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:37 am

I've got an Athlon 1.2 thunderbird, 256 MB ram, win2k profressional, ge force2 mx 440, sound blaster live, MSI system board 233 MHz bus speed. The game runs pretty well on it although it is begging for a better vid card and sound card. I had to tone down my sound and video to get them both to run without burping. It is nice to boost up the aesthetics of shadowing and 3d sound but they really hamper the system. That said, the specs on the game box are way off in my opinion. They need to reclassify specs as minimum, sort of recommended, definitely recommended, and "for enjoyable play". I think they mention PII300 w/ 64 MB RAM as minimum. I'd say at least double both and don't bother with a PCI video card. Go for the AGP and you'll need a GeForce3 or higher/ Radeon 7500 or higher to get the most out of the graphics.

The shadowing in the game is incredible. I love those little details.

Recoba · Post by **Recoba** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 11:38 am

Hmm - looks like the old wallet will be taking a dent - thanks for the advice. Looks like the best I can afford then!

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 12:31 pm

Originally posted by Aegis
Anything Beefy. GF4 Ti, Pentium 1.9, or AMD Athlon XP 1.9, 512 mbs of Ram, 2 gigs of hard drive space. 40x CD drive, at least. It needs this stuff, otherwise it freezes, crashes, chopes... you name it..

I have a GF3ti and and Athlon at 1.4 and it runs FINE....I have not experienced ANY freezing, chopping OR crashing. I wonder where you are getting your information Aegis - another poster in this thread says their 1.2 GHZ processor is adequate and they are limited by their GF2MX - not the best flavor of GF2. When you say "it needs this stuff" you are exaggerating (by quite a bit in processor terms especially). I don't know why you feel the need to post this misinformation but for accuracy's sake I think you should edit your post to reflect reality.

I would recommend, and believe the game is playable with 1.0 GHZ, GF3ti200, definitely 2GB free disk space , I do not know how much of a difference 512 RAM makes - I have 512 so I cannot say if the game would suffer with less. It would be a shame if someone ends up spending too much money upgrading their computer because for whatever reason you feel the need to post completely innacurate recommendations.

Krimmy · Post by **Krimmy** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 2:50 pm

I have 2 machines running the game

Celeron 500
Geforce 2 400MX
256MB RAM
CDROM 24X

Celeron 500
TNT 16MB card
256MB RAM
CDROM 24X

The unit with the Geforce 2 runs the game a bit better of course but only at the lower resulotions and with some one the options turned off it's playable. (it's been awhile since I upgraded)

Also I tried to run the game on my Compaq duel 300mhz Win2k server and the game only saw 1 of the processor's, anyone know if there's a setting withen the game itself to use both processors?

Rattman · Post by **Rattman** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 4:02 pm

i have a really good computer

25.1 gigs and other good stuff (two hard drives)

but i have ye old windows 98

i need a new computer

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 5:18 pm

Originally posted by THE JAKER

I have a GF3ti and and Athlon at 1.4 and it runs FINE....I have not experienced ANY freezing, chopping OR crashing. I wonder where you are getting your information Aegis - another poster in this thread says their 1.2 GHZ processor is adequate and they are limited by their GF2MX - not the best flavor of GF2. When you say "it needs this stuff" you are exaggerating (by quite a bit in processor terms especially). I don't know why you feel the need to post this misinformation but for accuracy's sake I think you should edit your post to reflect reality.

I would recommend, and believe the game is playable with 1.0 GHZ, GF3ti200, definitely 2GB free disk space , I do not know how much of a difference 512 RAM makes - I have 512 so I cannot say if the game would suffer with less. It would be a shame if someone ends up spending too much money upgrading their computer because for whatever reason you feel the need to post completely innacurate recommendations.

I'm getting this information from myself. I'm running a P4 1.8 Ghz processor, mixed with an ATI Radeon 64 DDR, Windows ME the full 2 gigs of required space a 40x CD drive, completly updated drives, and patches, and 256 mgs of DDR ram. Now, tell me, it should work on my computer right? Well, it doesn't. I think that is cause of alarm, and my displeasure. IMHO, Bioware and Infogrames messed up royally...

THE JAKER · Post by **THE JAKER** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 5:30 pm

Well, that explains a lot...I'm sorry if I was rude but I wanted to get at where you were coming from...as you can see there are people with more limited specs running the game fine (I run it in 1600x1200 with all details on high) so I do not think it is raw horsepower that is the problem. It is probably some incompatibility, I hate to say it but it might end up being an ATI thing. Well, good luck and I hope Bioware (and any other company that might be involved) fix whatever is causing your problems quickly.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Fri Jun 21, 2002 9:20 pm

Originally posted by THE JAKER
Well, that explains a lot...I'm sorry if I was rude but I wanted to get at where you were coming from...as you can see there are people with more limited specs running the game fine (I run it in 1600x1200 with all details on high) so I do not think it is raw horsepower that is the problem. It is probably some incompatibility, I hate to say it but it might end up being an ATI thing. Well, good luck and I hope Bioware (and any other company that might be involved) fix whatever is causing your problems quickly.

I sure hope so too. I spent 90 bucks on this game, jsut have it sit in my CD shelf while I spend 20+ hours debugging my computer in such a way where it will work. I'm pretty sure it isn't my video card, as others have had it run on the same chip set. My last idea is that it might be my Sound card. Oh well, I'm gonna try it out at a frineds place, to see if it works on his computer...

Nightmare · Post by **Nightmare** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 8:11 am

Aegis, you probably have already done this, but have you updated your video and sound drivers? Because if you really don't have enough horsepower to run the game, then I might have a problem...

Arcane · Post by **Arcane** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 8:17 am

i have a 850 mhz amd
between 200-256 ram
radeon 6 sdr 32 mb 3d card
3 spare hard drives
windows xp home

i was rather doubtful about nwn working on my machine...wat do u think?

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 8:51 am

Originally posted by Gaxx_Firkraag
Aegis, you probably have already done this, but have you updated your video and sound drivers? Because if you really don't have enough horsepower to run the game, then I might have a problem...

Yeah, my drivers are all up to date. I have a feeling that the freezsing issue, though, may have something to do with drive compatibility.

smass · Post by **smass** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 11:11 am

@arcane - your specs should be fine. That being said I have been hearing about many problems with varying hardware configurations. This leads me to believe that there may be a software/windows configuration issue - possibly an issue with some software that some people have installed that is incompatible with NWNs. I have not had any problems running the game with an Athlon XP1700 and a geforce 2 video card.

My advice would be to either wait a week or two until most of the know issues are worked out - or get the game knowing that you may have some problems in the short term - unfortunately at this time they are not isolated to a particular video card.

@Aegis - I feel for you - sounds like you have done everything short of a reload of your system. What sound card are you running?

Advice to all - don't skimp when you are configuring a new system for yourself - and avoid retail systems with proprietory components. Go with the best, most used parts - saving $50 bucks to go with ATI when Nvidia owns the market and is the card of choice for developers is not a good idea. If you buy betamax be ready for VHS to steamroll you

. Same goes for soundblaster cards - fact is they are industry standard.

For the best most problem free gaming parts its a good thing to check out tomshardware.com for unbiased and expert reviews of hardware.

The above statements are in no way meant to excuse the probems that some folks have had with this game. Just stating my opinion on best practices with hardware.

Alvin · Post by **Alvin** » Sat Jun 22, 2002 7:11 pm

Originally posted by Aegis
Anything Beefy. GF4 Ti, Pentium 1.9, or AMD Athlon XP 1.9, 512 mbs of Ram, 2 gigs of hard drive space. 40x CD drive, at least. It needs this stuff, otherwise it freezes, crashes, chopes... you name it..

LMAO yea right.

I'm usin a AMD K7 500, TNT2 32MB, 256 MB Ram.
I play the game in 1024*768 res, 32MB and Medium video.
So far the game has run flawlessly so I can't help but laugh at your statement.

tRiKzTaR · Post by **tRiKzTaR** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 6:45 am

Hmm...I was actually a little surprised when I started this game...My machine is:

Athlon XP 2100+
512 MB pc2700 DDR
Geforce TI4600
Soundblaster Audigy Platinum
50 gb free hd
50x cdr

And yet when I run it in 1600x1200x32, 64 mb textures with 4xaa and everything else to the max, it actually does not run smoothly when I zoom in on my char...When zoomed out it runs pretty ok, but still - I would've thought that with a system like that, it should just fly...I guess I was wrong...wicked reqs!

So now I'm playing 1280x1024 which IMO actually makes the game look better, because the chars look more natural...But damn - I'd love to see a system that can run this one without any stuttering at all when it's crancked up to the max...oh well - awesome game btw!

- tRiKzTaR

Nightmare · Post by **Nightmare** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 8:16 am

Originally posted by Alvin

LMAO yea right.

I'm usin a AMD K7 500, TNT2 32MB, 256 MB Ram.
I play the game in 1024*768 res, 32MB and Medium video.
So far the game has run flawlessly so I can't help but laugh at your statement.

You really shouldn't belittle other members like that. Aegis is now in fact returning the game because it won't work for him. Do you really think he enjoys being made fun of like that?

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 8:54 am

@Alvin

Behave yourself - and respect other people!

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

GameBanshee - Make your gaming scream
Neverwinter Nights @ GameBanshee
Forum rules

smass · Post by **smass** » Sun Jun 23, 2002 9:23 am

I think Alvin's point was that all this talk about minimum specs being so high is simply not true.

These forums are a great way for us to share information about games. Several people have posted in this and other threads that you need a super high end system to run NWN. Alvin pointed out that in his experience that is not the case. Indeed I installed the game on my backup Athlon 850 with 128mb ram and 32mb tnt2 card - and it works fine at 800x600.

Furthermore, just for kicks I installed the game on my Celeron 433 with 8mb of onboard graphics and 128mb ram. The game runs - although it does chug a little - but this system is over 2 years old - a dinosaur in computer land.

I understand Alvin's frustration - if I can run the game on mid to low end systems than the problems other folks are having may be in the software compatibility area and not because you need a HAL 2000 to run it.