Bards sing tales of heroes from ages past, but never have the Forgotten Realms so desperately needed a champion. Years have passed since the war between Luskan and Neverwinter, almost enough time for the wounds of war to heal. But the brief peace the Realms have known may be at an end. Tension growing between the mighty city-states means the Sword Coast again teeters on the edge of open war.

Unnoticed, a greater danger stalks the City of Skilled Hands. Unbeknownst to the denizens of the North, deep in the Mere of Dead Men, dark forces from across the Realms have been rallied under the banner of a legendary evil. If left unchallenged, all of the North is doomed to fall under its power.

Even in this darkest hour, hope remains. A mysterious relic is borne to Neverwinter in the hands of a lone hero so that its secrets may be unlocked - secrets that carry the fate of all the North. So begins an epic tale of shattered alliances, noble acts and dark deeds to be told across the Realms for generations to come.

Under Game options, we maxed all available visual settings.

Anisotropic filtering was enabled from the "Advanced Graphics" tab, while Anti-aliasing modes were set by using the 3D control panel.

We saved a gave and ran the exact same root (more or less), moving the camera a lot around the player. This is the worst a case scenario while playing. By using FRAPS, we recorded two minutes from the game and logged the lowest and average framerates.

NeverWinter Nights2 is a "difficult" game, with all visual improvements enabled, even for high end cards. The Asus EAX1650XT CF was faster than the Foxconn 7900GS but a good deal slower than the 7900GS SLI.

Antialiasing is not offered from within the game options. Using each card's 3D control panel, we enabled up to 14x AA. The Asus EAX1650XT CF's performance drop was fairly steady, but at 6xAA the game becomes unplayable. Only the 7900GS SLI offers satisfactory framerates but it too succumbs at 8xQAA, where it drops below 10 FPS.