Fast Video Card, Slow Baldur's Gate w/ mods?

[Guest Diomed]

I'm trying to narrow down factors, here:

So I have an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS and a recent processor- an unmodded game gives me no lag, no matter what's going on onscreen, yet the sound stutters. I can live with that, but I just finished uploading dozens of mods to BG2, among them SCS II, Fixpack, D0 Tweak, G3 Tweak, all the Weimer mods, quests romances ect...so after Imoen releases me at Jonny's with Improved Illyic installed, I can barely move my cursor around due to lag! Having play Imp. Illyic before, I know that over yonder in Jonny's dungeon there's a large group of baddies actively tromping about, and lord knows SCS II adds several sophisticated scripts to them and the area. There are possibly even, gasp, spell animations going on offscreen, or something...

 

...But here's the thing-I can play Oblivion on high settings, with no hicups, standing in front of a horribly unoptimized Oblivion gate with badies rummaging through! WHAT GIVES?

 

One possible factor might be my new screen- Its a 26-in. LCD HDTV being used as a moniter h/o I've experienced no stuttering on equally modded current gen. games. None of which are as good as this one.

[Guest Diomed]

I've made sure the basics are in order: clean install, latest patch, mods made as compatible as possible- but I never thought Performance was something I had to worry about with a game that uses sprites. Obviously I'm wrong- forgive me my tedious ignorance.

[Jarno Mikkola]

...

Well, there is at least few things you can try, especially as you have installed mods into the game.

0) Always patch the game, start a new game and exit after the game has auto-saves itself(so you have to make a char or choose a pre-made one), before you do any moding, and you might as well make a safe backup from the important files: data and override folders, baldur.exe, BGMain.exe, dialog.tlk and CHITIN.key .

1) Turn off the ambient sounds to zero, as some of the areas might have no ambient sounds and so the game tries to start them many time continuously, and so looses processing power.

2) Don't mess with the game configurations so the speed adjustment percentages stay on "normal" ratings even if you have very high end machine, as the game has own it's internal fps counter, it sometimes tries to correct the fps on it's own by lowering graphs etc. Also the games frame rate should be set to about 30, as that's the default.

3) I wouldn't recommend to install any of the speaking item mods, as they fire their comments everywhere, and that's bad.

4) Delete the old files from the Cache folder time to time.

5) Inventory management(no stacks that have more than about 200 items, in a bag, arrows etc.), -might help.

6) Trying to avoid too much effects on a character(about 20 is fine, 200 is too many, and 20 000 is way way too many...)

7) De-fragmenting your hard drive might also help... as you don't have to go find the data in the pieces. (hmm, there is a joke in there, hih)

8) Install the mods in correct order(link to a downloadable quide), and make sure you started from a clean install, so there is no leftovers from old mods, by deleting the old mod files, the data and override folders(don't go and overwrite them).

9) It might be a good idea to biff your override folder, but do that knowing that you generally can't change the game much after. Or use the End_biff from here.

Also you do have the correct settings for Nvidia card? The 26" monitor just adds better resolution options with the Widescreen mod, but it doesn't really take that much processing power.

[Guest Diomed]

...

Well, there is at least few things you can try, especially as you have installed mods into the game.

0) Always patch the game, start a new game and exit after the game has auto-saves itself(so you have to make a char or choose a pre-made one), before you do any moding, and you might as well make a safe backup from the important files: data and override folders, baldur.exe, BGMain.exe, dialog.tlk and CHITIN.key .

1) Turn off the ambient sounds to zero, as some of the areas might have no ambient sounds and so the game tries to start them many time continuously, and so looses processing power.

2) Don't mess with the game configurations so the speed adjustment percentages stay on "normal" ratings even if you have very high end machine, as the game has own it's internal fps counter, it sometimes tries to correct the fps on it's own by lowering graphs etc. Also the games frame rate should be set to about 30, as that's the default.

3) I wouldn't recommend to install any of the speaking item mods, as they fire their comments everywhere, and that's bad.

4) Delete the old files from the Cache folder time to time.

5) Inventory management(no stacks that have more than about 200 items, in a bag, arrows etc.), -might help.

6) Trying to avoid too much effects on a character(about 20 is fine, 200 is too many, and 20 000 is way way too many...)

7) De-fragmenting your hard drive might also help... as you don't have to go find the data in the pieces. (hmm, there is a joke in there, hih)

8) Install the mods in correct order(link to a downloadable quide), and make sure you started from a clean install, so there is no leftovers from old mods, by deleting the old mod files, the data and override folders(don't go and overwrite them).

9) It might be a good idea to biff your override folder, but do that knowing that you generally can't change the game much after. Or use the End_biff from here.

Also you do have the correct settings for Nvidia card? The 26" monitor just adds better resolution options with the Widescreen mod, but it doesn't really take that much processing power.

 

You're a doll. After fiddling, I disabled all ambient sounds. That fixed every stuttering problem, which rids this topic of its "mods" relevance, and is also a testament to the author of SCS II and his clean, effective scripts... but now I can't enjoy the dripping water and ominous wails. Any thoughts?

[the bigg]

Update your audio drivers?