Dragon Age Performance

[Slammers]

Just wondering if I could hear some of your guys system specs and what kinda performance your getting in Dragon Age so I can gauge if mines running well.

From the look of the gfx I kinda expected to get a little bit more performance out of my system even though it's starting to get pretty old.

At 1440x900 with high detail, 2xAA and 8xAF I get 20-30fps outdoors and 30-50fps in the dungeons. I was kinda hopping to get >40fps in all areas but thinking maybe my CPU is holding it back. With AA and AF turned off I gain about 1-2 more frames.

Specs are x2 7750+, 9600gt and 2gigs of ram on Windows 7, no background apps or services running.

Not the end of the world, games still completely playable.

[MindTrickz]

I run everything maxed out and average about 35fps but doesn't bother as long as it does not get anywhere near 25. Anything above that is not noticeable to the human eye.

Game settings:

My system:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 (3M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB)

Memory: (RAM) 4,00 GB

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (512MB Ram)

Edited November 22, 2009 by MindTrickz

[deletedxyz]

I'm playing at 1920x1200 with 2xAA. My specs are in my sig.

[jimbo11883]

The only thing that annoyed me was the load times... Sometimes I waited 5 minutes or more to load an area... I was constantly exiting the game and entering it again which helped.

[svnO.o]

Not sure how much FPS I get (if anyone can tell me how to display FPS that'd be great) but it's completely smooth and don't notice any slow downs. Have settings maxed out at 1680x1050 res (tried 1920x1080 on 52" TV as well). Load times are short, just a few seconds most times, maybe 10 seconds max. Don't have the game running on my SSD though. Specs are in my sig.

[Slammers]

I run everything maxed out and average about 35fps but doesn't bother as long as it does not get anywhere near 25. Anything above that is not noticeable to the human eye.

Thanks guys, load times a lightning fast atm, I guess that could increase as my saves become more complicated.

That's not entirely true about 25fps. 25fps i considered to be smooth, but from opinion (and i know alot of others too) I can easily notice the difference between say 30fps and 50fps. It gets hard to distingiush after about 45fps for me.

Game is usually sweet for me, but annoying when it occaisonally drops to 20fps for a few secs.

[shakey]

There is a known memory leak in the PC version. Upon first starting the game, the load times are around 1 min or less and everything is super smooth. About 30 mins to 1 hour in, performance will start to degrade. Load times will jump to anywhere in the 5 min mark, and the frame rate will start to suffer.

They are still looking into it, but there is info on the forums already.

[svnO.o]

Thanks guys, load times a lightning fast atm, I guess that could increase as my saves become more complicated.

That's not entirely true about 25fps. 25fps i considered to be smooth, but from opinion (and i know alot of others too) I can easily notice the difference between say 30fps and 50fps. It gets hard to distingiush after about 45fps for me.

Game is usually sweet for me, but annoying when it occaisonally drops to 20fps for a few secs.

It also depends on the game/monitor I think. Like in CS1.6 I can notice the difference between 60FPS and 100FPS quite easily. Everything seems to move faster at 100FPS. I also uncapped my FPS in Call of Duty 4 and noticed the same thing as well. If someone were to switch between them without me knowing what the actual FPS was I would be able to tell.

[dead.cell]

It also depends on the game/monitor I think. Like in CS1.6 I can notice the difference between 60FPS and 100FPS quite easily. Everything seems to move faster at 100FPS. I also uncapped my FPS in Call of Duty 4 and noticed the same thing as well. If someone were to switch between them without me knowing what the actual FPS was I would be able to tell.

How often does your monitor refresh? I mean, aren't you only technically limited to the frames per second your monitor can actually throw out? Based on that, I would assume you would see no difference between 60 and 100fps if your monitor only throws out 60 frames per second in general.

Unless I'm mistaken, then please correct me on this one.

[ViperAFK]

The only thing that annoyed me was the load times... Sometimes I waited 5 minutes or more to load an area... I was constantly exiting the game and entering it again which helped.

Theres a bug where the load times get longer the longer you play. I just restart my game adn they are very quick again. When I play for a long time they get VERY ling though.

[Blackhearted]

There is a known memory leak in the PC version. Upon first starting the game, the load times are around 1 min or less and everything is super smooth. About 30 mins to 1 hour in, performance will start to degrade. Load times will jump to anywhere in the 5 min mark, and the frame rate will start to suffer.

They are still looking into it, but there is info on the forums already.

Yep. It also causes extremely long hitches before, during, and after character dialogs, as well as moderate hitches in bringing up menus. Rather annoying problem tbh. I can't help but wonder how they let such an obvious and glaring flaw slip by though. Did they actually have ANYONE testing and working on QA for the pc version of this title? Sure doesn't seem like it.

[Slammers]

Damn I don't like what i'm hearing about these load times. I'm 10 hours in now and still everything is responsive and load times are short. Hopefully they patch this before I get much further :p

Is this problem on all systems all just some?

[toadeater]

Damn I don't like what i'm hearing about these load times. I'm 10 hours in now and still everything is responsive and load times are short. Hopefully they patch this before I get much further :p

Is this problem on all systems all just some?

It doesn't get bad until you start going through a lot of area transitions. At the beginning there are very few of them. It gets progressively worse the longer you play without restarting the game. Most of the time it's not that noticeable if you only play a couple of hours at a time.

[GreenMartian]

Most of the time it's not that noticeable if you only play a couple of hours at a time.

That explains why I'm not seeing it yet.

I'm running DA on an old fan-less 7600GS. Coupled with the heatwave that's been plaguing us the past couple weeks, it's the perfect recipe for disaster. The sucker overheated after running on "normal" quality for 15 minutes (on the char customization screen!!)

I'm now running it windowed, 1280x960, at lowest setting. At least it will now run for around 3 hours before reaching 90^oC; at which point I shut the game off and do other stuff :p

[Slammers]

Ah I see that's not too bad then, i usually don't play for more than 2-3 hours at a time.

Lol greenmartian at least your 7600gs runs it at all. Although your shouldn't get any performance gain/ heat decrease running in a window over fullscreen. It's just the same resolution anyways.

[rajputwarrior]

core 2 duo e6400 @ 3.0ghz

4 gigs of DDR2

8800gt

windows 7 x64

runs great!

[GreenMartian]

Although your shouldn't get any performance gain/ heat decrease running in a window over fullscreen. It's just the same resolution anyways.

Not really. Fullscreen means running on 1920x1080.

Besides I like playing windowed. I can sneak a chat or two in between loading / area transitions. Or check the status of my neowin threads :p

[Slammers]

Ok I suppose if you want to keep the pixel ratio correct you would need to run in a window. But fullscreen can be whatever resolution you want. I'd much rather for instance play 1024x769 stretched to fullscreen over a window, windows in the background would just put me off.

I know what ya mean with chatting etc. I used to do the same when I played Wow and i'd always end up getting distracted typing something in here for like 15mins then going back to the game and everyone in my partys like "OOOYYY DICKKKHEAD!!" lol

[Raa]

Runs perfectly on my machine, 1900x1200, FSAA, max details.

I threw the patch on too. :)

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I have the game maxed out at 1680x1050 with 2xAA enabled. It runs fairly well on my PC: C2D E6750 @ 3.2 GHz, Radeon HD 4870 512MB, 8GB DDR2-RAM, and Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

[Slammers]

Damn I feel like I should be getting a wee bit more performance, might OC my gfx and CPU a little tonight and see if that helps. I really want it to stay over 30 plus at the moment I have vsync turned off because it's usually hovering round 27 outdoors so the v sync drops it to 25 or even 20 sometimes.

Tried it at medium detail with no AA and still get the same frames I rekon my CPU is the limiter.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Damn I feel like I should be getting a wee bit more performance, might OC my gfx and CPU a little tonight and see if that helps. I really want it to stay over 30 plus at the moment I have vsync turned off because it's usually hovering round 27 outdoors so the v sync drops it to 25 or even 20 sometimes.

Tried it at medium detail with no AA and still get the same frames I rekon my CPU is the limiter.

It's your video card too. The GeForce 9600GT is somewhat dated, even more-so in terms of performance. From what I remember from benchmarks, it's on par with the Radeon HD 3870.

[Slammers]

Yeh I know how fast my card is but people with 8800gt's are getting much better performance than me and the 8800gt is only marginally faster.

[hjf288]

Dont forget the game does slow-down over time for some reason...

Longer you play in one session, slower loads get

[MindTrickz]

My 96000GT runs it smooth. About 45-50 fps in normal play and down to 30-35 in battle intense plays. I'm fairly happy with that. I run everything on full blast except AA. that is on 2x right now.