Of note, dont have an area opened and viewable in the Toolset while the game is running, it doesnt like that at all performance wise. Youve effectively got two NWN2 clients (at least graphically) running at once technically when doing so, save the area, close its window and you should be fine. (having and area open, and a preview window plus running the game will cripple your PC big time... why the Toolset when not focused on would continue to take GPU resources for its view port baffles me)
Some people have issues with the toolset and NWN2 running at once, me personally I have no problem and it runs as fast as normal with the Toolset going in the background also (as long as no area is open in the toolset)... heck i also run Photoshop, 2 instances of Crazybump and often Explorer and numerous word pads for xml and 2da editing at the same time. I do have one issue and thats if I alt tab out of the Game for the first time its loaded with the toolset also running NWN2 crashs, but works flawlessly alt tabbing from then on running the game (until the next time I restart my machine).
And i only have 2gigs of ram...
As for Shadows, they are mega performance hogs... if you want to use em set em to mid for Characters (high is no different from mid, and low is but ugly), low for near and far shadows, and turn off far shadow rendering... normal map terrain textures also take a decent chunk of your FPS and im sure having 6 terrain textures comprised of 2(3) textures each on a single mega tile all blended on top of each other causes issues as well with performance so try not to get your terrain textures to stacked ie grass next to dirt with a 25% something else and a 50% little of another and so on all on the same small patch of ground, blending a butt load of various opacity of normal mapped textures all over the place has to cause some noticeable lose of performance id say so keep your blends distinct, and blend between at most 3 textures only.
I wish there was an option to have Character shadows off and environment shadows on, rather than the opposite we currently have.
Also look at setting certain NPCs in your modules to Self-Shadow only for shadow casting, its a short range full shadow cast... however if the Player moves about 3 meters from the NPC in question their shadows vanish... its a little distracting but frees up resources while allowing shadows when you'd really need to see em.
Also keep all dynamic lighting to at least 3 per mega tile (showing light spheres have a purpose
after all) and make sure NPCs are only really effected by 3 lights at any one time. The 3 lights also includes the areas directional environment light and a players light... you can break the rules by a couple of lights (say 4-5 total lights), but any more and you'll start to see FPS drops in places you didnt really expect.
And finally, I think ATI's have issues with shadows its something ive read concerning them in alot of games, given NWN2 is a "the way its meant to be played" game I wouldnt put it past some industrial sabotage or GPU favoritism on Nvidia/Obsidians part, it DOES happen and has been documented in other games.
I try to keep my FPS to 45+, 50+ as much as possible anything in the low 40's and lower becomes noticeable, some people have no issues with it going into the 30's but i find it too distracting. You can make a decent complex area all the while keeping 50+ FPS (even with shadows on) its just a matter of planning, cutting and compromise. Unfortunately sometimes FPS just tank for no reason in NWN2s engine, it just happens... heck Ive got a test area im using currently testing out my renormal mapping of the OC terraint extures, its simple and very resource lite but in certain camera angles and locations in it (its only a 4x4 area) the FPS drop to the 41-42 region... why?, no logical reason it should but it does.
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