[Hoihe]

Ahoy!

It's been a while since I've been there, and I'll admit I have forgotten to check the forums after my latest issue was fixed, and I wish to apologise for that. I'll keep this one updated this time.

To not waste any more time, let me elaborate on my issue and what has led up to it.

I have been trying to install Windows 7 for a while, but I always froze during the boot-based install screen, using an image burned unto a DvD provided from Microsoft to later activate with my key. So I installed from Windows XP using the utility provided. It installed fine and dandy, if installing for 6 hours is alright. My HDD was rather full so I assume that was the reason. In any case, with Windows 7 my PC booted very slowly, taking 20 minutes to bypass the "starting Windows" part. On my desktop, I froze. Getting impatient, I reformated and installed XP again. I decided to split my HDD into two partitions this time. 20 GB for system, 129 gb for everything else. After reinstall, I installed drivers and all that, noticing an odd thing with the DirectX install option of my GPU disc being greyed out. Eventually everything worked.

Soon as I installed Neverwinter Nights 2 and got the Client Extension for it [which is more or less mandatory for online play with that game], I got on an online server [Baldur's Gate the Sword Coast Chronicles] and started playing. My issue was imminent: All animations were as if in slow motion. From moving, to spell casting and combat. Even fluff animations such as drinking and picking objects up. I had assumed it was a network issue and so I started up a singleplayer game. Same issue, but also apparent in dialogues. I then went on to write a post on the server's forums, hoping for aid but nobody can help. Still, as I wated for help I decided to play some WarThunder.

An odd issue perhaps worth mentioning with War Thunder. I used the very same settings from my previous installation of windows, but when I tried to play it crashed and said "Not enough memory". So I lowered my settings and it worked. I shrugged it off and after a while I went on to play League of Legends. League of Legends proved to me that it isn't an NWN2 only issue for the very same thing happened there. Slow animations and even some strange artifact. One of the models.. ended up being stretched across the screen. Deciding it may be a driver issue I downloaded latest Nvidia drivers, went into safe mode, uninstalled current one, rebooted, ran driver sweeper, rebooted, installed new drivers, rebooted.

This fixed the memory issue in Warthunder, and the weird stretching model in League of Legends. It also fixed the sluggishness of side-animations, but combat, spellcasting and moving still appeared sluggish in neverwinter nights 2. I also noticed this time that projectiles and VFX's were rather slow as well. And in league of legends, everything done so as well. Warthunder is running without issues, with its FPS rate even having improved to twice its effeciency [from 30 to 50-60]

To elaborate on what I mean by this "Slow/sluggish" animations: When I click to move in either of the two games with this issue my character starts moving in slow-motion for a second or two, then suddenly speeds up for 1 second, before returning to the sluggish speed again. This happens all the time. Sometimes, it warps forward some distance as if making up for the slow movement and the character's real position server-side. But as I tested it in single-player, it seems that even in normal, when moving very quickly, I experience this "Rubberbanding" issue as well. In online play, with a very fast character, I tested this. As I moved across the map, I experienced such a "forward rubberband" every second and half, with the camera following. And when I change the direction of movement with mouse clicks, the character teleports somewhere between the two destinations. It is really annoying. If there is a video capture device that doesn't cause a framerate drop, I'll capture this phenomenon and upload it to youtube for better display.


I am providing SysSpec info and DxDiag

My PSU is at 600W power, with the online PSU wattage calculator saying ~550 is used during full load.
1 SATA HDD split to have 2 partitions as shown.
SySpec info:



Item Details

Windows: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (Build 2600)
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.5512
Memory (RAM): 3392 MB
CPU Info: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+
CPU Speed: 2612,5 MHz
Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio output |

Display Adapters: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti | NetMeeting driver | RDPDD Chained DD
Monitors: 1x; Plug and Play Monitor |
Screen Resolution: 1280 X 960 - 32 bit
Network: Network Present
Network Adapters: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller - Packet Scheduler Miniport
CD / DVD Drives: 2x (E: | G: | ) E: HL-DT-STDVDRAM GH20NS10 | G: DTSOFT BDROM
Ports: COM1 LPT1
Mouse: 3 Button Wheel Mouse Present
Hard Disks: C: 19,5GB | D: 129,5GB
Hard Disks - Free: C: 8,9GB | D: 90,1GB
USB Controllers: 2 host controllers.
Firewire (1394): Not Detected
Manufacturer *: American Megatrends Inc.
Product Make *: MS-7369
AC Power Status: OnLine
BIOS Info: AT/AT COMPATIBLE | 08/02/07 | 080207 - 20070802
Time Zone: Central Europe Standard Time
Battery Status: No Battery
Motherboard *: MSI MS-7369
IP Address: 192.168.1.3 |
MAC Address: 00-19-DB-CF-0E-52
Host Name: DACINO-50B19757
SM BIOS: V2.1

Any help is welcome!

Edit: Neverwinter Nights 2 animation stutter seemed to have returned to normal speeds until a minutes in. Then it resumed the same annoying behaviour. I wonder why.

Edit 2: Checked with speccy after playing NWN2 for a hour or so. All temps are normal. CPU ~40, GPU~ 30, MOBO ~35, HDD ~30-28
One possible thing I wonder: is it maybe because of the amount of space I have free on C:\? Didn't have the issue when I struggled with 10GB free on my sole partition last time, though.

Having 160 GB storage total, I thought 20 GB for system was enough. How wrong were I?

Edit 3: I reallocated some memory from partition D to C: without reformating using EaseUS partition master. New sizes:


C:\ 28,1 GB free space, 39,5 total space
D:\ 61,7 GB free space, 109GB total space
8mb unallocated memory

It did not help.

I have forgot to mention that while trying to fix Win7 installation I disabled USB from BIOS, but only after did I notice I don't have PS/2 keyboard. So to fix that issue, I used the CMOS jumper to reset my BIOS settings to factory defaults. Might it also be the problem?


Also, I'd noticed that I only experience the jumping issue in online games. I experience the slowmotion problem in Singleplayer NWN2 as well, but I do not jump around every X moment. However, in League of Legends and online NWN2 play, I walk a bit, then jump forward. It's as if the game is trying to synchronize my position with the server every X moments. This happens especially if I change the route with Point&Click. In single player, I just walk slowly and do everything slowly. Dialogue audio fires of faster than the game adjusts, leaving silent animations and waiting. In Warthunder and SWG this issue is nonexistent, and the occasional rubberband in SWG can be blamed on the 400 ping I play that game with. I also noticed that if I use WASD controls in NWN2 online game, I do not jump around. Nor do I jump around if I constantly update my destination and only move short distances at once. This means I can do the "Move around in combat" for LoL with ease, but projectiles hit faster than animation shows. For NWN2, it doesn't help that much for others jump around the same, while they see me stand walk around in a small spot [while on my screen I move a lot]. Serverside AI NPCs teleport at me from some distance as they attack, or just walk around doing their stuff.

Edit 4:

I tried a reinstall of Windows XP, downloading every single windows XP upldate but none has helped. Updated all drivers I could think of. Downloaded Java and Flash, Net Framework, Direct X [Although NWN2 made me reinstall DirectX, saying D3_d9.dll was missing after I installed DX. After reinstall it didn't complain]. However, I noticed one thing while playing NWN2:

It runs "Smoothly", animation-wise for about 10 or twenty minutes then it begins to slow down. However, my main issue is with "Jumping around", and the severity is shown in the following screenshot: The bear jumped across the entire rug within a split second [Which is NOT an intended feature of the game, having fought that enemy many times before reinstall]:



I only experience the jumping around in online enviornments, and I assume it's my game trying to sync my slow animations up to the actual position of the character, updating it periodically.
 DxDiag.txt   39.19KB   285 downloads

Edited by Hoihe, 28 December 2013 - 03:06 PM.