Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition stutters on pause and multiplayer on Win10 laptop

[flamingflamingo]

I'm trying to play an older game, Neverwinter Nights on my Windows 10 laptop. Although my laptop isn't the greatest, and definitely isn't made for games, it should have very little trouble running a game from 2003. But I don't think what I'm encountering is a graphical issue.

The game runs very smoothly in singleplayer, until I pause it. Then suddenly everything is stuttering, and although I can still move the cursor, the game only responds and "ticks forward" about every five seconds. It's more like the game is stopping to think before moving forward.

This also happens in multiplayer. The game is unplayable in this mode. Again, in single player when not paused, it runs fine. Other users running Win10 don't seem to have an issue. I can't figure out what the issue is.

The recommended requirements for NWN: Diamond are 256MB RAM and 800Mhz processing power.

My machine runs 64bit Win10, 4GB Ram, with a 2.16 GHz Intel Pentium GHz processor.

It's been suggested that I install DirectX 9.0c, or roll back my graphics drivers, but I picked up this laptop in September. The earliest versions of graphics drivers I have are from 2016. I have DirectX 11 installed.

I have no idea what's causing this slowdown.

 

[James Mason]

The problem is the game itself.
You have enough power to run it, but it's designed for like, windows XP at best. You'll have to search online for some fixes for it.

 

[flamingflamingo]

I've been looking online for weeks, and some people manage to fix it by rolling back graphics drivers or changing a sound setting, but none of their solutions have worked for me. The server I want to play on has 900 players, and plenty of them also use windows 10, so clearly there is a solution.