I'm sure this has been asked a hundred times...

I already own BG2, but my main issue with it is that it tends to stutter a bit (symptom of too many mods, perhaps). Does the EE significantly improve performance?


EDIT: Should probably specify that I don't really care about the new NPCs or content. I'm more looking for how they've fixed the game under the hood.

They did upgraded the engine to support OpenGL (for graphics) and multi-threading (for performance) so it might be worth it. But depending on which mods you have (I don't play with too many mods), you might have to find EE compatible versions or new ones, since most of the old mods don't work with the EE version (although I've heard that the most popular ones have been updated).

The Tweak pack does has been upgraded to support EE however (and the widescreen patch is pretty much redundant since widescreen is now natively supported).

If you're unsure, I'd suggest to wait for a sale.

BG2 original should not stutter at all, even on an old computer. If it does, it's your setup, not the game, and paying 27.64 CD to 'fix' what doesn't need fixing is just lunacy.

Agreed.

Talk more about your stuttering. Is it the low frame animations in the graphics? Although the game can run at 60fps or more, there are not animations for every frame.

Try looking at a Youtube video of BG and see if it looks the same as yours.

I have had BG installed on machines from 300MHz to 3.4GHz, single to dual-core, 16MB RAM to 8GB of RAM, Windows 2000 through Win 10 to Linux Mint and I've never had any stuttering or glitchy graphics.

All of that said, I'm really enjoying my EEs. I don't think anyone needs them to enjoy the game, but I do like them. I like zooming, I like the UI, and I like native WS support (I do not like the WS mods at all and I don't like the WS UI mods -- before EE I was mostly just playing on my old 4:3 laptop to get a more enjoyable game). Also, I'm anxious to play the 1.5 game they're making to go with BGEE1.

Stutter, as it turns out, is some sort of strange compatibility issue between BG2 and Windows 8 (or something). Got it all sorted now, so it looks like I won't be needing to drop nearly thirty bucks on the EE at all.

Can you please write how you fixed it incase someone else needs it in the future?