Dragon Age: Inquisition PC performance thread

I just moved everything important to another hard drive (including copies of My Documents and all the other Windows system folders where games like to squirrel saves away... basically I copied almost my entire 500gb boot drive to my 1tb backup drive), took screenshots of my start menu and desktop (so I wouldn't forget to redownload all the little helper apps you accumulate over the years), and then let the 8.1 installer format my boot drive. But my 7 installation was old and bloated and had been getting a bit weird so I welcomed the opportunity to start fresh.

I found getting everything back where it should be was pretty painless? It helps that with Steam and Origin etc. most games don't care if you move them around or change the OS, as long as you make sure you have copies of their saves; back in the days of XP it was a nightmare reinstalling every bloody game from DVD because they liked to shit random crap all over your HD and registry. Once I've gone long enough I can be sure all my game saves and documents and such are back in their rightful places I'll delete the backups and get some hard drive space back.

Ninite helps a lot. The PC Gaming Wiki might help you find save files you can't track down. And the first thing I did when presented with my shiny new 8.1 desktop was install Classic Shell.

Sounds alot better than before. I guess i've just got old memories of moving from XP to Vista to 7.
 
My PC constantly overheats and shuts down during this game, it's crazy. I really need a new one at this pout, I guess...
 
Why on earth would you even need 50 saves, let alone 250?

I already explained no? It's worth noting the 250 limit is across all characters. So I'm pretty sure people will hit it easily at some point even if they aren't like me and wants to keep a collection of saves for future referencing.

There's just no reason for the limit on PC. Space isn't an issue like it is on consoles. There's also no reason for them to not allow custom names too, but that's another issue.
 
Yeah, it's incredible how bad it is, *especially* using the tactical camera.
I pretty much gave up on any attempt to familiarize with it and I'm playing it with a controller (which is something that I wouldn't have believed before trying the game first-hand).

On a side note, the "tactical mode" is absolute garbage. I swear it makes me regret even DA2.
Beside that, there's a lot of the game I'm liking a lot. Even considering some pretty glaring flaws.

P.S. oh, and Jesus Christ, controller support is borderline amateurish. If I make the mistake to run the game without turning on the controller first (wireless model), the game:
1) gives me an error message about the lack of a controller.
2) changes M&K as default input
3) forces me to actually restart the client to use the controller.
4) it also forces me to go back to the option menu and select the controller manually once again after the restart.
5) and of course, keybindings don't work while the controller is active. Not even basic functions like ESC or F5/F9 for quicksave/quickload.

This implementation is almost offensively incompetent.

Not to mention vibration randomly deciding whether or not to actually work.
 
EDIT: can't believe there's still no patch yet. Bring it on!

Do we even know what the patch is supposed to fix?
Or, just to reword the question, did they actually announced one or people are asking for it just because?

On a related note, I just learned that using a respec medallion gives me a 100% assured freeze/crash.
At least with Vivienne, which is my default mage and the one I'm trying to respec.
 
Have you cleaned out the dust any time recently?
Yeah, obviously. I recently bought a quad core processor to run this damn game (I had core 2 duo, i wrote about this way earlier in this thread), and i cleaned everything during the installing.

What config ?
motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR
proc: Core2 Quad Q8400
8GB DDR3
Radeon HD 6800 (it's the gigabyte GV-R687D5-1GD-B IIRC)

It works, but sometimes the fans are booming so loud and then i hear the pc shutting down. Everything's just burning hot down there. I think the graphics card overheats, or the chipset. I have a massive, crazy fan for my processor, so that's probably not the source of problems.
After few seconds everything cools down and i can start the machine again.
 
Do we even know what the patch is supposed to fix?
Or, just to reword the question, did they actually announced one or people are asking for it just because?

On a related note, I just learned that using a respec medallion gives me a 100% assured freeze/crash.
At least with Vivienne, which is my default mage and the one I'm trying to respec.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141708295&postcount=2011

No word yet on what's getting fixed but aside from the obvious bugs and glitches we hope for better optimization. As noted elsewhere, you can drop settings down and still have frame rate issues and stuttering in the cutscenes (not to mention them being locked at 30fps, not a big deal imo but it would be nice to have them unlocked). The game needs a bit of tweaking still.
 
P.S. oh, and Jesus Christ, controller support is borderline amateurish. If I make the mistake to run the game without turning on the controller first (wireless model), the game:
1) gives me an error message about the lack of a controller.
2) changes M&K as default input
3) forces me to actually restart the client to use the controller.
4) it also forces me to go back to the option menu and select the controller manually once again after the restart.
5) and of course, keybindings don't work while the controller is active. Not even basic functions like ESC or F5/F9 for quicksave/quickload.

This implementation is almost offensively incompetent.

After being able to switch between m+kb and controller in real time in Far Cry 4, DA:I's approach made me laugh and weep at the same time

It's just fucking absurd
 
Yeah, it's incredible how bad it is, *especially* using the tactical camera.
I pretty much gave up on any attempt to familiarize with it and I'm playing it with a controller (which is something that I wouldn't have believed before trying the game first-hand).

On a side note, the "tactical mode" is absolute garbage. I swear it makes me regret even DA2.
Beside that, there's a lot of the game I'm liking a lot. Even considering some pretty glaring flaws.

Agree with this

Before DA3 came out, I never even considered playing with my PC controller. (I loved DA1 but completely skipped DA2)

But within 15 minutes of playing DA3, it was clearly apparent the game was not designed for KB/M. So I tried with my controller and it's ten times better.

I'm happy with it now because I'm on Normal and don't bother with pause-mode. It's also clear to me that the combat is meant for real-time action, so that's how I'm playing it. I play lots of action games anyway, so it's perfectly cool with me once you stop trying to play with KB/M or Tactical mode

I've never had your controller UI issues because mine is a wired 360 version, so it's always plugged in

This is still my GOTY, excluding technical bugs the content & world is unmatched this year
 
Agree with this

Before DA3 came out, I never even considered playing with my PC controller. (I loved DA1 but completely skipped DA2)

But within 15 minutes of playing DA3, it was clearly apparent the game was not designed for KB/M. So I tried with my controller and it's ten times better.

I'm happy with it now because I'm on Normal and don't bother with pause-mode. It's also clear to me that the combat is meant for real-time action, so that's how I'm playing it. I play lots of action games anyway, so it's perfectly cool with me once you stop trying to play with KB/M or Tactical mode

I've never had your controller UI issues because mine is a wired 360 version, so it's always plugged in

This is still my GOTY, excluding technical bugs the content & world is unmatched this year

Yeah, these days pretty much all cross platform console games are better with a controller (only exception being FPS games, imo). Its nice having the option but its clear that most of them are designed with a controller in mind.
 
Found out my biggest FPS drops were from the game not adhering to my GPU overclock and sometimes even dropping it lower than the stock clock speed. Forcing it with RadeonPro fixed the issue.
 
Agree with this

Before DA3 came out, I never even considered playing with my PC controller. (I loved DA1 but completely skipped DA2)

But within 15 minutes of playing DA3, it was clearly apparent the game was not designed for KB/M. So I tried with my controller and it's ten times better.

I'm happy with it now because I'm on Normal and don't bother with pause-mode. It's also clear to me that the combat is meant for real-time action, so that's how I'm playing it. I play lots of action games anyway, so it's perfectly cool with me once you stop trying to play with KB/M or Tactical mode

I've never had your controller UI issues because mine is a wired 360 version, so it's always plugged in

This is still my GOTY, excluding technical bugs the content & world is unmatched this year


14 hours in the game with m&k and I don't mind using those peripherals

Yeah, obviously. I recently bought a quad core processor to run this damn game (I had core 2 duo, i wrote about this way earlier in this thread), and i cleaned everything during the installing.


motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR
proc: Core2 Quad Q8400
8GB DDR3
Radeon HD 6800 (it's the gigabyte GV-R687D5-1GD-B IIRC)

It works, but sometimes the fans are booming so loud and then i hear the pc shutting down. Everything's just burning hot down there. I think the graphics card overheats, or the chipset. I have a massive, crazy fan for my processor, so that's probably not the source of problems.
After few seconds everything cools down and i can start the machine again.

Any OC for the GPU ?
 
Meh. I understand the keyboard/mouse having issues... but the hotkey convenience put it way above the alternative.

Tactical camera is pretty worthless overall though. The only real good use is to move ranged attackers. They should really let you do that just with the pause option.
 
Finally got my RMA power supply after my AX1200i decided to shit the bed... now I can finally get into this game.

Any news on cutscenes being locked at 30? Are they planning on changing it, or does it appear like its staying? Anything I can do to make it better?
 
no one responded in OT thread. asking in here

Could someone please recommend a decent but inexpensive Bluetooth adapter for my pc that will work with ps4 controller? Amazon, newegg etc

Ty!
 
I don't suppose anyone has found a way to get rid of the 250 save limit on PC?

It seems absolutely baffling they left it in.

(I like to keep saves in case I want to return to something later, space after all is not an issue on PC)

I haven't tried this myself but I'm pretty sure you can just copy your saves into a different folder for archival purposes and just paste them in later if you want to go back.
 
I haven't tried this myself but I'm pretty sure you can just copy your saves into a different folder for archival purposes and just paste them in later if you want to go back.

Yeah I might try that. The only problem is due to the naming convention they use, it's rather difficult to tell what save is what. I could load onto my first playthrough character and do a new save and then go by date I guess.
 
If you don't want to delete anything, I'd suggest simply making a new save every 30 minutes. Even if you play for 100 hours, that's still under the limit.

But really, the lack of a useful screenshot on each save plus the way you can't manually enter a save game title should have convinced you that the game REALLY doesn't want you to archive saves in the first place. It's too much trouble to organize.
 
If you don't want to delete anything, I'd suggest simply making a new save every 30 minutes. Even if you play for 100 hours, that's still under the limit.

But really, the lack of a useful screenshot on each save plus the way you can't manually enter a save game title should have convinced you that the game REALLY doesn't want you to archive saves in the first place. It's too much trouble to organize.
Well, it would still become an issue if you do multiple playthroughs. The 250 limit is across ALL characters, not just one, unfortunately. :/

But yeah, the save system is pretty awful for a PC game. You either have only 10 or so saves so its easy to scroll and save on the oldest one, but if you need to go back further because of a bug/issue you're fucked. Or, you have a load of saves to prevent loss of data, but then it's a nightmare to scroll to the bottom to save over the oldest to keep the saves under the limit. -.- Then there's the aforementioned no custom names, or screenshot etc. It clearly wasn't changed from the console version.
 
Finally got my RMA power supply after my AX1200i decided to shit the bed... now I can finally get into this game.

Any news on cutscenes being locked at 30? Are they planning on changing it, or does it appear like its staying? Anything I can do to make it better?

Cutscenes being locked at 30 is fine, as long as you set your mouse smoothing slider at 75%. It fixes the shuttering in cutscenes. You can also unlock it by using additional lines in executable shortcut, but people claim it has its downsides too.
 
Well, I gave Win 8.1 a go. The only test I performed before/after was to follow a fixed path through Redcliffe. All settings max, with msaa off, and af 16x forced in drivers, I got the following spreads pretty consistently:

1080p
Win7: 52-64
Win8.1: 68-80

4k
Win7: 20-28
Win8.1: 34-47

Specs:
Win 8.1 (classic shell) w/ no windows updates installed yet
I5-3570k @ 4.4
16gb ddr3 2133
Gtx970 sli (oc'd beyond factory oc)

Side note: Not sure why, but I'm now getting random drops to 1-8fps for no apparent reason. Will get the win updates and various drivers installed and see if it improves.

Edit: If anyone is interested, I was able to get my key from the reddit post linked to earlier for only $10 USD.
 
Just happened to install Win8.1 a week ago, great to hear the game runs that much better on it. Still gonna wait for a patch or two before diving in again tho.
 
Does this mean we will get the patch tomorrow?

pcpatch_zpsbd00e9e3.png
 
Well, I gave Win 8.1 a go. The only test I performed before/after was to follow a fixed path through Redcliffe. All settings max, with msaa off, and af 16x forced in drivers, I got the following spreads pretty consistently:

1080p
Win7: 52-64
Win8.1: 68-80

4k
Win7: 20-28
Win8.1: 34-47

Specs:
Win 8.1 (classic shell) w/ no windows updates installed yet
I5-3570k @ 4.4
16gb ddr3 2133
Gtx970 sli (oc'd beyond factory oc)

Side note: Not sure why, but I'm now getting random drops to 1-8fps for no apparent reason. Will get the win updates and various drivers installed and see if it improves.

Edit: If anyone is interested, I was able to get my key from the reddit post linked to earlier for only $10 USD.

You know what, I should have benchmarked my before and after too.

I was running win 7 before but just installed win 8.1. Dragon age was one of the first games I played. I immediately noticed it seemed a lot smoother and higher framerate. I turned on the drawfps and saw it locked at 60. I then realized the game had reverted to default settings for my system (it inherited my saves thanks to the cloud but didn't move the settings). This was ultra everything and 2x MSAA and vsync. I was getting BETTER framerate with higher settings under win 8.1 than I was with win 7. I changed my settings to match win 7 (ultra everything, high spell effects, low post processing, no msaa) and now I'm running an average of 80fps where before I was averaging 60.

There is no doubt win 8.1 is better for Dragon Age. Significantly so. Wish I would have taken better numbers. Didn't even think about it.
 
Regarding 8.1, would it be possible to install it alongside my current W7 setup, so I can choose which one to boot at startup? If so, how much hard drive space would I need?
 
Damn, didn't think an OS could make that much of a difference to average frames. Is Dragon Age an anomaly or are most games like this?

Makes me pissed that my 980 is being held back because I'm still on Windows 7...

Was hoping to hold out until Windows 9 because I hate reformatting, but if the upgrade is so significant, I should move to 8.1 now.

So if I buy one of those ISOs from reddit, what's the easiest way to move from 7-8.1 without losing the progress in all of my games across Steam, Origin, and Uplay along with all my work files?
 
Regarding 8.1, would it be possible to install it alongside my current W7 setup, so I can choose which one to boot at startup? If so, how much hard drive space would I need?

Yes, you can do that. You should probably give it at least 50GB. MS says 20GB for 64-bit, but that is the bare minimum and may not be enough to hold temporary files, etc. (though you can put these on another drive via configuration options)
 
Yes, you can do that. You should probably give it at least 50GB. MS says 20GB for 64-bit, but that is the bare minimum and may not be enough to hold temporary files, etc. (though you can put these on another drive via configuration options)

I currently have two SSDs and a HDD, with Win7 installed on my first SSD. Could I install 8 on my second one, or does it have to be on the same drive?
 
I currently have two SSDs and a HDD, with Win7 installed on my first SSD. Could I install 8 on my second one, or does it have to be on the same drive?

It can be on any drive you wish. You don't even have to dedicate an entire drive, you can just partition a drive and put the OS on a partition.
 
It can be on any drive you wish. You don't even have to dedicate an entire drive, you can just partition a drive and put the OS on a partition.

So if I don't partition the drive, would the OS installation basically prevent me from using it for anything else? Or is partitioning just to be on the safe side? I've heard some stuff about a boot partition, the company that put together my PC included one (it's called System), is that needed too?

Either way, install it on one of your SSDs. The performance improvement is significant.

I plan to, W7 barely lets me see the welcome screen when booting up :P.

BTW, is there a list somewhere that shows what games run better on 8.1?
 
Damn, didn't think an OS could make that much of a difference to average frames. Is Dragon Age an anomaly or are most games like this?

Makes me pissed that my 980 is being held back because I'm still on Windows 7...

Was hoping to hold out until Windows 9 because I hate reformatting

This is the same exact feeling I have... I despise doing a full wipe of my PC, it's such a pain in the butt

It's not the cost of buying a new OS, that doesn't bother me at all. It's having to re-install every single program again, with the worst part is re-doing all the different settings/options

I use a lot of non-game programs, and those are a serious pain. Stuff like Lightroom, Acrobat creator, Outlook, Word, Excel, etc... they all have like 10+ sections of settings that I've fine tuned over the years. But I wouldn't remember most of it

How do yall handle re-doing all the settings for business programs on a complete PC wipe, is there some super easy way??
 
You know what, I should have benchmarked my before and after too.

I was running win 7 before but just installed win 8.1. Dragon age was one of the first games I played. I immediately noticed it seemed a lot smoother and higher framerate. I turned on the drawfps and saw it locked at 60. I then realized the game had reverted to default settings for my system (it inherited my saves thanks to the cloud but didn't move the settings). This was ultra everything and 2x MSAA and vsync. I was getting BETTER framerate with higher settings under win 8.1 than I was with win 7. I changed my settings to match win 7 (ultra everything, high spell effects, low post processing, no msaa) and now I'm running an average of 80fps where before I was averaging 60.

There is no doubt win 8.1 is better for Dragon Age. Significantly so. Wish I would have taken better numbers. Didn't even think about it.
Damn. Maybe I should upgrade to win 8.1. What's your CPU/GPU setup? I'm on a GTX 770 and I can't play on ultra or even high at 1080p without the framerate shitting the bed in cutscenes
 
This is the same exact feeling I have... I despise doing a full wipe of my PC, it's such a pain in the butt

It's not the cost of buying a new OS, that doesn't bother me at all. It's having to re-install every single program again, with the worst part is re-doing all the different settings/options

I use a lot of non-game programs, and those are a serious pain. Stuff like Lightroom, Acrobat creator, Outlook, Word, Excel, etc... they all have like 10+ sections of settings that I've fine tuned over the years. But I wouldn't remember most of it

How do yall handle re-doing all the settings for business programs on a complete PC wipe, is there some super easy way??

Copy your user directory and restore it after reinstalling, and that takes care of quite a bit, aside from programs that store settings in the registry.
 
This is the same exact feeling I have... I despise doing a full wipe of my PC, it's such a pain in the butt

It's not the cost of buying a new OS, that doesn't bother me at all. It's having to re-install every single program again, with the worst part is re-doing all the different settings/options

I use a lot of non-game programs, and those are a serious pain. Stuff like Lightroom, Acrobat creator, Outlook, Word, Excel, etc... they all have like 10+ sections of settings that I've fine tuned over the years. But I wouldn't remember most of it

How do yall handle re-doing all the settings for business programs on a complete PC wipe, is there some super easy way??

What I do (or did rather) was after I got tired of doing all of that stuff for the umpteenth time, was to install all of the stuff I knew I needed, get the settings right, and then made an image of it.

You can use something like Acronis or Norton Ghost to do it.
 
Damn. Maybe I should upgrade to win 8.1. What's your CPU/GPU setup? I'm on a GTX 770 and I can't play on ultra or even high at 1080p without the framerate shitting the bed in cutscenes

I have:

i5 2500k @ 4.2
970 EVGA FTW
8 gigs RAM

and now Win 8.1 on a SSD.

Have Dragon Age on the SSD now too. It has helped the loading times though not as much as I had hoped.
 
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