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Dragon Age: Inquisition PC performance thread

K

KCroxtonJr

Member
Salaadin said:
My load times suddenly increased drastically for no reason. Went from 20-30 seconds to closer to 1 minute. Very annoying.
Click to expand...
did you cap your framerate to 30fps (or at all)?

I saw someone say that lower framerates increase load times, and I confirmed this today. Had the game capped at 30fps in nvidia inspector, and the load times were AT LEAST 1 min, usually longer. On an SSD. Removed the cap, load times are exactly like you said, 20-30 seconds at most.

really, really weird, but thankfully bandicam allows you to toggle FPS lock, so I just use that now and turn it off during loading screens.
 
B

Bydobob

Member
Static Jak said:
So, if I'm understanding this correctly, it's the same textures as Ultra, it's just loading more textures at once? Sort of.

If so, how much VRAM are we talking about for it to be useful?

I'm on a 970 with Ultra on without any framerate issues but I notice a little bit of texture pop in from time to time.
Click to expand...

I was interested in this so restarted with fade touched and the difference is negligible, both in terms of pop-in and VRAM used. Only once in 2 hours did it go above 2.5Gb, spiking momentarily to 2.9 in Haven of all places.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
Pancakes said:
I fiddled with some settings without compromising too much on the visual quality and now manage to get 50fps while exploring and 30-40 in NPC heavy areas which I found much more acceptable. Still would prefer 60 but I can't tell the difference between low 50s and 60 anyway.

As for overclocking. I'm running on stock cooling but I ordered a 3rd party cooling fan so I'll try experimenting with overclocking once I get that.



I overclocked my 970 slightly with 150 MHZ main clock and 450 MHZ memory clock with 106% power percentage via MSI AB.
Click to expand...

You've got it OCed more than I do, so it's either the CPU OC or something is wrong. Seems weird a CPU OC would gain you that much.
 
K

komorebi

Member
Salaadin said:
My load times suddenly increased drastically for no reason. Went from 20-30 seconds to closer to 1 minute. Very annoying.
Click to expand...

It does this if you cap it in any way. Annoying as hell.

Corpekata said:
You might want to OC. I have pretty much the same rig, everything cranked up except MSAA on X2 and I get mostly 60 with dips into the 45ish range in heavy areas like Redcliffe. But I also OC my 3570k and have my GPU slightly overclocked too.
Click to expand...

FWIW I've been experimenting with overclocking my CPU the past few days, and one of the games I was testing was DA:I. I OC'd to 4.3ghz and didn't notice much of an increase in Redcliffe (aka Benchmark City). I might have just been burned out though, I was doing the OC shuffle for a few hours straight at that point before reverting to stock (long story short: I'm assessing if its even worth keeping it OC'd for my gaming purposes)
 
K

Kevyt

Member
gimel said:
I had everything on high with no AA. The frame rate was never a steady 60 and personally I find that jarring in a game like this. Once I got to Redcliffe I realized it was never going to happen so I started making compromises to keep it as high as possible.

I've had mixed results and ultimately couldn't keep it capped at 30fps either because it looks janky as hell despite having a smooth frame rate. Now Im at the Storm Coast and its in the low 50s with constant adaptive tearing.

I bet this will be more and more common the further I get.
Click to expand...

Well that's understandable. Maxing out games with a 770 will become less common as games will require more horsepower. I'm curious as to how a 970 would perform with similar settings in the similar places you mentioned.
 
P

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
Corpekata said:
You've got it OCed more than I do, so it's either the CPU OC or something is wrong. Seems weird a CPU OC would gain you that much.
Click to expand...

I idled for a couple minutes just chilling in Hinterlands alone and was getting average of 40 standing still with 30-40 jumps when running. This is with AA off, shadows high, and tessellation high.

(Orange tint is due to Flux, tried with flux off and on. No difference)
SsqhkVb.jpg
Wvn8ZsY.png
Click to expand...

Seems like my GPU usage just gets capped at 100% as opposed to my CPU so I don't know if OC will make the huge difference.

Would it make a difference if I bought this 970 instead of the gaming edition?
MSI GTX 970 4GD5T OC
The clock speeds were only a couple MHZ apart so I didn't think it would make a difference at all. I ran a Heaven benchmark and was getting an average 55fps on everything maxed 2x MSAA.
 
K

komorebi

Member
leonidas. said:
Well that's understandable. Maxing out games with a 770 will become less common as games will require more horsepower. I'm curious as to how a 970 would perform with similar settings in the similar places you mentioned.
Click to expand...

Yeah I wasn't expecting to max it, but going by what I read beforehand I thought I could do at least high settings at a solid 60fps like most other console ports. I have to do a mix of High/Medium though and even then it dips frequently in some areas.

I've been looking at a 980 in a few weeks so I'm also curious about what people are getting without AA (it doesnt even have to be ultra, but at least a solid 60 on high settings).
 
A

alysonwheel

Member
I hope they sort Mantle out soon. Out of curiosity I tried standing in the exact same place in Redcliffe and Mantle is good for an extra 11 fps!

Sadly the hitches and random drops to 10fps make it impossible to use for now.
 
S

Shepard

Member
Pancakes said:
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here so maybe GAF can help.

I got a new GTX 970 replacing my old 660 and I did a clean install for the GeForce Drivers. I have:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz (Left at stock)
GTX 970
8 GB RAM
1080p display

With everything maxed out besides MSAA (turned off) and tessellation turned to high I'm only getting 30-40fps with dips into the 25s for NPC heavy areas. Surely this can't be proper performance for a modern graphics card. Right?

I was using the ingame console commands for FPS so I know it's not an overlay issue or anything like that.
Click to expand...
I have basically the same system, except for my 980. I get around 60fps on most areas but my framerate drops to the ~40fps in big towns. Judging by some benchmarks I saw, the game isn't as CPU starved as people are pointing out. Maybe it's some driver issue, I don't know, or maybe it's the game's problem. I personally stopped playing and I'm waiting for a performance patch.
 
P

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
Shepard said:
I have basically the same system, except for my 980. I get around 60fps on most areas but my framerate drops to the ~40fps in big towns. Judging by some benchmarks I saw, the game isn't as CPU starved as people are pointing out. Maybe it's some driver issue, I don't know, or maybe it's the game's problem. I personally stopped playing and I'm waiting for a performance patch.
Click to expand...

Yea, I've pretty much given up and will just settle for the sub 30-50 fps I've been getting for 50 hours now. It wasn't really bothering me but I just wanted to get my money's worth.
 
Z

Zafir

Member
Yeah, I've just accepted that I can only get 30-50 on my 970 at 1440p nearly max settings (Only AA isn't, think I've got it set to 2x). It's only the cut scenes where it bothers me a lot really. Even with the command line fix it's still a bit questionable.
 
K

KePoW

Banned
Pancakes said:
Yea, I've pretty much given up and will just settle for the sub 30-50 fps I've been getting for 50 hours now. It wasn't really bothering me but I just wanted to get my money's worth.
Click to expand...

Ok I just finished installing my 970 and like Shepard says above, I get mostly 60+ everywhere except the cities

So if cities are mainly the place you were asking about lower fps, then don't worry about it
 
bodine1231

bodine1231

Member
Even with 2x970's and Gsync Redcliffe is hitch city. I'm getting around 40fps there and 70+ everywhere else with the occasional drop during big fights. I'm wondering why it hitches so badly,it's enough to break the smoothness of Gsync.
 
R

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
bodine1231 said:
Even with 2x970's and Gsync Redcliffe is hitch city. I'm getting around 40fps there and 70+ everywhere else with the occasional drop during big fights. I'm wondering why it hitches so badly,it's enough to break the smoothness of Gsync.
Click to expand...

this (well except the gsync part, but yeah I got 2 970s and redcliffe was the only place it dropped from 60)
 
P

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
KePoW said:
Ok I just finished installing my 970 and like Shepard says above, I get mostly 60+ everywhere except the cities

So if cities are mainly the place you were asking about lower fps, then don't worry about it
Click to expand...

After fiddling with my card OC and changing a few minor settings I can basically get 45-60fps running around exploring the Hinterlands (Everything maxed except MSAA). Game still looks beautiful and I don't notice any major frame drops now.

I still think it's poorly optimized but I guess this is as good as it's going to get until a performance patch hits.
 
E

ELCID777

Neo Member
Holy fuck, this game is stuttering like mad for me during cut scenes. It's more like hitching than stuttering, sometimes the hitches last a several seconds almost like the game crashed but then it resumes. WTF.

Is this dual GPU related or just crappy optimization/performance bug?
 
D

dcassell

Banned
Pancakes said:
After fiddling with my card OC and changing a few minor settings I can basically get 45-60fps running around exploring the Hinterlands (Everything maxed except MSAA). Game still looks beautiful and I don't notice any major frame drops now.

I still think it's poorly optimized but I guess this is as good as it's going to get until a performance patch hits.
Click to expand...

Same boat here so no worries. The fps is annoying, but it's way better than locking at 30 IMO. I was getting agitated with it, but I'm fine with it now.
 
D

Dick Justice

Banned
Any news on a fix for the driver crashes? It happens from time to time, and always during cutscenes. Is it a side effect of the framerate tweak?
 
L

Levyne

Banned
ELCID777 said:
Holy fuck, this game is stuttering like mad for me during cut scenes. It's more like hitching than stuttering, sometimes the hitches last a several seconds almost like the game crashed but then it resumes. WTF.

Is this dual GPU related or just crappy optimization/performance bug?
Click to expand...

Try putting this in the game properties box in the launcher

-GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+

Even though cutscenes dip fps compared to gameplay still for me, this made them stutter a whole lot less.
 
N

NoWayOut

Member
Zafir said:
Yeah, I've just accepted that I can only get 30-50 on my 970 at 1440p nearly max settings (Only AA isn't, think I've got it set to 2x). It's only the cut scenes where it bothers me a lot really. Even with the command line fix it's still a bit questionable.
Click to expand...

Turn off MSAA completely, especially if you play at 1440. I use 1920x1200 and I hardly notice any difference in aliasing between off and 2x. Definitely not worthed for me.
 
S

Smushroomed

Banned
Thinking about purchasing this

I read someone recently post that someone had an issues with their sli 970 + gsync setup, I have the same setup. I was wondering if the overall game experience was acceptable?
 
S

Salaadin

Member
KCroxtonJr said:
did you cap your framerate to 30fps (or at all)?

I saw someone say that lower framerates increase load times, and I confirmed this today. Had the game capped at 30fps in nvidia inspector, and the load times were AT LEAST 1 min, usually longer. On an SSD. Removed the cap, load times are exactly like you said, 20-30 seconds at most.

really, really weird, but thankfully bandicam allows you to toggle FPS lock, so I just use that now and turn it off during loading screens.
Click to expand...

gimel said:
It does this if you cap it in any way. Annoying as hell.



FWIW I've been experimenting with overclocking my CPU the past few days, and one of the games I was testing was DA:I. I OC'd to 4.3ghz and didn't notice much of an increase in Redcliffe (aka Benchmark City). I might have just been burned out though, I was doing the OC shuffle for a few hours straight at that point before reverting to stock (long story short: I'm assessing if its even worth keeping it OC'd for my gaming purposes)
Click to expand...


I was actyally one of those guys a few days ago bitching about the load time increase with a FPS cap. I turned that off and just went with regular Vsync in Nvidia control center and it was fine. No problems.

Then, out of nowhere, the load times just increased with no changes anywhere.

EDIT: Annnd just tried it. Vsync on, 120 second load. Vsync off, 24 second load.
Very annoying. Im not opposed to in game Vsync, if it actually worked. Hopefully they patch it. Im a little frustrated with it as screen tearing gives me a headache so I guess I just have to deal with minute loads.
 
K

komorebi

Member
Salaadin said:
I was actyally one of those guys a few days ago bitching about the load time increase with a FPS cap. I turned that off and just went with regular Vsync in Nvidia control center and it was fine. No problems.

Then, out of nowhere, the load times just increased with no changes anywhere.

EDIT: Annnd just tried it. Vsync on, 120 second load. Vsync off, 24 second load.
Very annoying. Im not opposed to in game Vsync, if it actually worked. Hopefully they patch it. Im a little frustrated with it as screen tearing gives me a headache so I guess I just have to deal with minute loads.
Click to expand...


Wow, vsync increases loading times? I never noticed this but I've had some kind of vsync on since the beginning. Like you constant tearing gives me a headache.
 
S

Salaadin

Member
gimel said:
Wow, vsync increases loading times? I never noticed this but I've had some kind of vsync on since the beginning. Like you constant tearing gives me a headache.
Click to expand...

Yeah, nearly triples them.

Ive messed around so much trying to fully eliminate it but the in game option isnt that great and forcing it on the driver side increases the loads. I havent found a workaround yet.
 
I

IceIpor

Member
robgrab said:
The bloom on indoor fog is blinding in some areas. Sure wish there was a way to fix that.
Click to expand...

Nvidia card? Probably a bug that some users were reporting earlier.
Fog seems to be normal fog for AMD users.

Wait for patch, I guess.

EDIT: Also, for those who are having trouble with Mantle and clean installed drivers... Have you tried deleting your cache from "My Documents\Bioware\Dragon Age Inquisition\cache" ? Does that change anything for you?
 
J

jacksepticeye

Member
Salaadin said:
Yeah, nearly triples them.

Ive messed around so much trying to fully eliminate it but the in game option isnt that great and forcing it on the driver side increases the loads. I havent found a workaround yet.
Click to expand...

Curiously does that happen on Battlefield games too? Like is it an engine thing or game specific? First time I've ever heard of Vsync affecting load times
 
E

ELCID777

Neo Member
Levyne said:
Try putting this in the game properties box in the launcher

-GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+

Even though cutscenes dip fps compared to gameplay still for me, this made them stutter a whole lot less.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, going try this now.

Edit:

So capping the games FPS is responsible for the super long load times? Fuck me, no wonder my load times are incredibly long. Is there a workaround to this?
 
K

komorebi

Member
ELCID777 said:
Thanks for the info, going try this now.

Edit:

So capping the games FPS is responsible for the super long load times? Fuck me, no wonder my load times are incredibly long. Is there a workaround to this?
Click to expand...

Yep, and not yet, if ever. Looks like its tied to the Frostbite engine.
 
A

AU Tiger

Member
OK bit of a problem when trying to downsample.

SLI 970's using most recent drivers

set geforce experience to render @ 1440p and is being displayed on my 1080p tv

The screen shows a really fast intense flickering. If I go into options and drop the resolution back down to 1080p, it is perfectly fine.

I've tried turning v-sync off and on as well as trying different refresh rates besides 60 hz on the display's resolution selection and nothing but the native screen resolution seems to display properly.

What is wierd though is that the nvidia shadowplay recording of it all shows zero screen flicker.

Something up with the TV I'm using or what?

EDIT: Borderless windowed mode fixed it... strange.
 
K

KCroxtonJr

Member
Salaadin said:
I was actyally one of those guys a few days ago bitching about the load time increase with a FPS cap. I turned that off and just went with regular Vsync in Nvidia control center and it was fine. No problems.

Then, out of nowhere, the load times just increased with no changes anywhere.

EDIT: Annnd just tried it. Vsync on, 120 second load. Vsync off, 24 second load.
Very annoying. Im not opposed to in game Vsync, if it actually worked. Hopefully they patch it. Im a little frustrated with it as screen tearing gives me a headache so I guess I just have to deal with minute loads.
Click to expand...
That's really weird, you should try deleting your ProfileOptions_profile file and/or fresh installing your drivers as well as the directx and vc files in the Dragon Age Inquisition folder. Even with vsync on (the ingame one, not inspector), when I don't cap my framerate it hits up to 200fps during loading screens.

I'm not sure if you also messed around with settings, but I mentioned before I ran into performance problems after doing so and I did the things said above and everything returned to normal. This was before I knew about the whole capping affecting FPS tho so Idk if that was affected or not.

ELCID777 said:
Thanks for the info, going try this now.

Edit:

So capping the games FPS is responsible for the super long load times? Fuck me, no wonder my load times are incredibly long. Is there a workaround to this?
Click to expand...
Best advice I can give is do what I do, use bandicam to cap your FPS. You can toggle it on and off, so just turn it off when at a load screen, and back on after. Idk if there are any other limiters out there that can help you in the same way, I've only tried bandicam.
 
S

Salaadin

Member
KCroxtonJr said:
That's really weird, you should try deleting your ProfileOptions_profile file and/or fresh installing your drivers as well as the directx and vc files in the Dragon Age Inquisition folder. Even with vsync on (the ingame one, not inspector), when I don't cap my framerate it hits up to 200fps during loading screens.

I'm not sure if you also messed around with settings, but I mentioned before I ran into performance problems after doing so and I did the things said above and everything returned to normal. This was before I knew about the whole capping affecting FPS tho so Idk if that was affected or not.


Best advice I can give is do what I do, use bandicam to cap your FPS. You can toggle it on and off, so just turn it off when at a load screen, and back on after. Idk if there are any other limiters out there that can help you in the same way, I've only tried bandicam.
Click to expand...

I think I got things working the way I want. Im not noticing any screen tears and my load times are normal.

Basically, I went to Nvidia CP and set the Dragon Age Inquisition profile to "Vsync: Use application setting".
Then I went to my Origin Games folder and set the DragonAgeInquisition.exe to "run as administrator".
After that, the ingame Vsync worked perfectly, My frames are capped at 60 but I dont get any screen tears and Im not subjected to long load times.


If you set the Dragon Age profile in Nvidia CP to "Vsync: Off", it will actually disable Vsync for the game regardless of whether or not you have the in game Vsync turned on. Previously, I thought that setting it to "off" on the driver side only disabled it in Nvidia CP and that I was free to enable it in game at that point. I was wrong and thats where my problems were coming from.
 
K

komorebi

Member
Salaadin said:
I think I got things working the way I want. Im not noticing any screen tears and my load times are normal.

Basically, I went to Nvidia CP and set the Dragon Age Inquisition profile to "Vsync: Use application setting".
Then I went to my Origin Games folder and set the DragonAgeInquisition.exe to "run as administrator".
After that, the ingame Vsync worked perfectly, My frames are capped at 60 but I dont get any screen tears and Im not subjected to long load times.


If you set the Dragon Age profile in Nvidia CP to "Vsync: Off", it will actually disable Vsync for the game regardless of whether or not you have the in game Vsync turned on. Previously, I thought that setting it to "off" on the driver side only disabled it in Nvidia CP and that I was free to enable it in game at that point. I was wrong and thats where my problems were coming from.
Click to expand...

Interesting, good to hear.

Tonight I tried no Vsync with borderless window mode. Its much smoother when the frames drop but without any tearing. I've never tried this before, probably because not many games have a dedicated borderless window setting. Or maybe they do, I've just never noticed them because I never needed to jump through so many hoops to get a performance I'm happy with.
 
K

KCroxtonJr

Member
gimel said:
Interesting, good to hear.

Tonight I tried no Vsync with borderless window mode. Its much smoother when the frames drop but without any tearing. I've never tried this before, probably because not many games have a dedicated borderless window setting. Or maybe they do, I've just never noticed them because I never needed to jump through so many hoops to get a performance I'm happy with.
Click to expand...
Borderless window mode automatically gives you vsync and triple buffering
 
Ivory Samoan

Ivory Samoan

Gold Member
The more I read this thread, the more I think I should be quite happy with my modest 7970 Ghz's performance (i7 3770k/16GB/SSD) getting around 50-60 in most areas with most settings on High/Ultra with a couple on medium (Tess/Water) and PP AA on low (MSAA off).

The 60fps lock for cutscenes works perfectly too... think I should just be happy and play the game me thinks (keep tinkering though.. lol).
 
P

Pancakes

hot, steaming, as melted butter slips into the cracks, drizzled with sticky sweet syrup OH GOD
LongMuckDong said:
The more I read this thread, the more I think I should be quite happy with my modest 7970 Ghz's performance (i7 3770k/16GB/SSD) getting around 50-60 in most areas with most settings on High/Ultra with a couple on medium (Tess/Water) and PP AA on low (MSAA off).

The 60fps lock for cutscenes works perfectly too... think I should just be happy and play the game me thinks (keep tinkering though.. lol).
Click to expand...

The curse of PC gaming.
 
Z

Zafir

Member
NoWayOut said:
Turn off MSAA completely, especially if you play at 1440. I use 1920x1200 and I hardly notice any difference in aliasing between off and 2x. Definitely not worthed for me.
Click to expand...

I noticed the difference when I was messing around when I first got it. I just kind of left it on because it didn't solve my main issue, the cutscenes running really poorly.
 
R

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
this is almost off topic, but kinda not really, and is probably a question that cant even be awsered since it most likely changes from monitor to monitor but...

is there a way to "lock" a monitor to always be in game mode? I have a 1080p samsung 27inch and the picture quality in game mode is ridiculous, probalem is, a lot of the time I just forget to turn it on :/
 
R

Renekton

Member
LongMuckDong said:
The more I read this thread, the more I think I should be quite happy with my modest 7970 Ghz's performance (i7 3770k/16GB/SSD) getting around 50-60 in most areas with most settings on High/Ultra with a couple on medium (Tess/Water) and PP AA on low (MSAA off).

The 60fps lock for cutscenes works perfectly too... think I should just be happy and play the game me thinks (keep tinkering though.. lol).
Click to expand...
I have a i5/7970 with similar settings except PP high.

If I drop the resolution scale by one notch, it manages cling to 60fps most of the time.
 
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