I am traveling with a 2-year old netbook (Samsung N150+) that has Intel integrated graphics and I've been trying in vain to get BG2 to work since yesterday.

Unfortunately I am running into what is apparently a bit of a known issue with this game.

With the 3d acceleration turned on, all of the game's text is unreadable. It is either gone completely, or rendered unreadable by artifacts that cover it as the mouse moves in the text's general vicinity.

The usual fix to that is to disable 3d acceleration. And sure enough, that fixes the text issue completely!

But with 3d acceleration turned off, but game performance is somewhere around 2 FPS. Completely unplayable. The usual fix for this performance issue is to turn the 3d acceleration on.

*sigh*.

I purchased this game specifically for the netbook while traveling.

The tech details:
- Running windows 8 32-bit edition
- 2 gigs of ram
- 1.66 Ghz Intel Atom N450 processor
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 running driver version 8.15.10.2697 (newer than what's on Intel's website - it is what is offered from the netbook's manufacturer, funny because it's normally the other way around).
- Installed the game outside of the program files folder (I put it in C:/GoG Games/Baldur's Gate 2)
- Not running any mods
- Have done several re-installs of both the game, and display adapter drivers
- Tried all permutations of comatibility settings I could think of
- Ran the configuration utility and tried every combo of graphics setting I could think of
- Edited baldur.ini and fiddled about with several settings there, including enabling 16-bit textures, disabling vertex padding, setting "backwards compatible 3d" on, turning on "low end machine" and "low end machine 2", turning on "faster blur", turning off "always dither", and changing "bitsperpixel" to 16. None of this helped.
- Tried the widescreen mod. It worked as promised but did not affect the game's performance or lack thereof.

I've only seen one or two other people on the web with this particular problem... and no solution was ever posted. Finding a solution is made even harder by the fact that most people are talking about the enhanced edition, which doesn't apply here.

Your problem is twofold: Windows 8 and integrated Intel graphics chipset, particularly the last but that killer combination is simply not game friendly under any circumstances. Baldur's Gate's 3D utilises OpenGL drivers, so your first step should be to ensure you have updated and working OpenGL drivers for your system.

On my system (not Intel integrated), 3D acceleration also causes blurring, and I have had some success in altering the resolution to 1024x768 via the game's BGConfig utility -- 800x600 is unplayable with 3D. Your issue with FPS is purely down to your Intel integrated chip while using OpenGL, and there's nothing you can do about that... that I know of.

Thanks for your reply.

According to Intel, my drivers are currently newer than what they offer. I have 8.15.10.2697, they offer 8.14.10.2230. 8.15.10.2697 is available from Microsoft's database, but not from Intel or Samsung. I've confirmed that my current drivers are indeed Intel drivers and not generic windows drivers, but at the same time they are minimalist drivers - they don't come with the Intel GMA control panel that might let me fiddle with disable triple buffering and so on.

If the FPS issue was due to the Intel graphics, you'd expect low FPS when 3D acceleration was turned on as well. Yet if I guess at where the relevant menu items are, the game runs smoothly. It's just that the lack of text makes it pointless to play.

Ironically, installing the older 8.14.10.2230 driver makes the game more playable, but the mouse lags severely. I've also yet to find a way to trick windows into accepting the old driver permanently. Every time I connect the computer to the Internet, windows goes and installs the newest driver. This has nothing to do with windows update... it seems to think my graphics card is "new hardware" whenever I am running the older driver, so it searches for a driver whenever it has a network connection.

I am personally very skeptical that WIndows 8 is responsible for the performance issues. It has a much lighter footprint in terms of resource usage that Windows 7, and in benchmarks I've seen for various games and multimedia it seems to perform about the same. A confounding factor here, though, is that newer drivers for many devices are available for Windows 8, but not older versions of Windows. So in benchmark tests they may not be using the same driver versions. How are we to know?

I think the real problem here is that Intel doesn't care about OpenGL and has never bothered to make it work well.

Do you think I'd have better luck running the game in Wine under Ubuntu? I do have a dual boot set up, but have never fiddled about with Wine before. It seems this is sort of the approach that DDrawFix takes in one of their modes, but sadly that utility doesn't make a difference in my case.

Windows 8 and performance in games has nothing to do with footprint or resource usage. It is to do with the fact that Windows 8 was built with a totally different platform and interface to previous versions, and this adversely effects games, especially older games that rely heavily on technologies like Direct3D. As I said, it is not a games-friendly combination that you have there.

As for Linux and Wine, I have no experience with Wine at all, and little with Lunux, so I can't help you there I'm afraid.

Fixed!!!!!

The solution was to first disable windows 8 automatic driver installation

Then, revert to Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 driver ver 8.14.10.2230. This fixes the issue with the game's messed-up text and also fixes the FPS issue, but now a new issue presents itself - crazy mouse lag. Not to be confused with the ghosting/flickering problems other people are having.

To fix the mouse lag, I had to disable 3d acceleration and 3d animations. Disabling these options with the new Intel drivers makes the game unplayable due to low FPS. However, with the old driver version, disabling these options fixes all of the issues I've been having.

So, it was the newest drivers causing the problem, and the solution was to roll back.

Windows 8 had nothing to do with it in this case.

Game runs nicely. Extremely playable!

Quoting me: "so your first step should be to ensure you have updated and working OpenGL drivers for your system. "

:D

Haha, well, in this case the fix was to NOT have updated drivers!

Working, yes... updated, no ;)

Although to be fair to you, the link you provided directly to Intel is still hawking their older windows 7 drivers, as opposed to the newer ones that Microsoft is providing for windows 8.

I'm not sure why Intel would give MS drivers for Windows 8, yet not put them up on their own website... perhaps it was a stop-gap to fix compatibility issues with windows 8, but Intel hasn't rolled them together into an installer yet? Or maybe they just don't update their website that often, and just provide drivers to third parties instead.

No.

That's simply not true - in fact Windows 8.x is the best OS for Direct3D. It is also better compatible with older games than Windows 7.

Windows 8.x was not built with "a totally different platform and interface to previous versions", rather it is a refinement on Windows 7.

-- your opinions are not facts.

Riiiight! Opinions are *never* facts. I see no facts from you, either.

The fact is that I'm running Windows 8.1 and can run any old game without issue. Max Payne 1 to TIE-Fighter for Windows 95. I can run KotOR II *without* compatibility mode.

Windows 8.x is demonstrably the best Windows for gaming, old or new.

Oh and Baldur's Gate II. Those are facts, not opinions.

That is *your* experience alone. Your experience flies in the face of plethora of unsatisfied gamers. Note I said 'gamers'. Your experience only makes Windows 8 'demonstrably the best' on your setup. Yours are not facts that apply to anybody else but you, period.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division

This isn't a question of experience, either a game runs or it does not on Windows 8.

It can't both run and not run. So if it runs on *any* Windows 8 setup, then it is Windows 8 compatible.

This isn't rocket science.

It's quite amazing to see the complete lapse of logic in the minds of people when it comes to simple mental exercise.

If your setup is causing problems then it is not a Windows 8 problem. The problem then exists either between keyboard and chair (most likely) or there is a hardware conflict (less likely)

Isn't it!?
:Facepalm: