Dragon Age: Inquisition PC performance thread

My benchmark reports back
Avg FPS: 45.6
Min FPS: 30.4

Running:
i7 3770k
8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM
GTX 770 4GB
Windows 8.1

What settings should I be running it on? I think I've got everything high, 2x MSAA and shadows on low because I hate shadows. I figured I'd get at least some good performance but could it be my CPU/RAM bottlenecking?
Just quoting myself again, what kind of upgrades should I be looking at? I know for sure my RAM needs to be upgraded, however I'm wondering if I can stick with the 3770k for the near future?
 
Just quoting myself again, what kind of upgrades should I be looking at? I know for sure my RAM needs to be upgraded, however I'm wondering if I can stick with the 3770k for the near future?

You know, the main reasons the game isn't performing well are because engine issues, not your hardware. In fact, even the most powerful set up can't handle it well. You should wait for patches. Of course, new games will make it necessary to upgrade, but your current hardware can handle the game OK (considering they will be able to fix the issues). As for MSAA, you should disable it. It is VERY expensive and there's not much difference.
 
You know, the main reasons the game isn't performing well are because engine issues, not your hardware. In fact, even the most powerful set up can't handle it well. You should wait for patches. Of course, new games will make it necessary to upgrade, but your current hardware can handle the game OK (considering they will be able to fix the issues). As for MSAA, you should disable it. It is VERY expensive and there's not much difference.

Oh I know that there are issues with the actual game outside of my hardware configuration, but it is becoming clearer that my setup is going to cause trouble in the future. I'll definitely upgrade the RAM at least, and go from there.
 
Oh I know that there are issues with the actual game outside of my hardware configuration, but it is becoming clearer that my setup is going to cause trouble in the future. I'll definitely upgrade the RAM at least, and go from there.

Yeah, but now I'd say is not a good time to upgrade. Especially if you have a 770. A case could be made as to why you should, buy I think it's better to wait.The 970's are in high demand and sell at a premium. Wait till the 8gb models dump and then upgrade. They'll have much longer shelf life. I have a 3gb 780 and I can't see anything really worthwhile in the 970/980 line for me. I'm waiting till around February and The Witcher 3 to upgrade my pc .
 
I'm running into a strange issue. Just got my first horse mount and it causes massive artefacts on my screen. Everything is fine when the mount is off screen. Anyone else get this?
 
How is this game running in Mantle for AMD card users? Especially those with a 290/290x? How is the performance? I read from a website that mantle actually decreases performance on AMD's top cards (290, 290x), so I am curious.
 
Guys, I got toally rid of cutscene stutter by turning Terrain quality from Ultra to high. It was mentioned by one of the devs.

Been playign with a pretty soild 50-60 FPS (excpet in crowded town areas) at 1440p with everything on ultra except terrain quality on high, HBAO on HBAO (not HBAO full), And Tessellation on High. Textures are on Fade touched and MSAA is off, just pure post-processing AA.

This is on an i7 3770k and an 780 ti.
 
Mine's running pretty well (2x 970 in SLI), but I am getting a weird flicker on some textures, particularly the snow in Haven. Is disabling SLI the only solution to this?
 
Guys, I got toally rid of cutscene stutter by turning Terrain quality from Ultra to high. It was mentioned by one of the devs.

Been playign with a pretty soild 50-60 FPS (excpet in crowded town areas) at 1440p with everything on ultra except terrain quality on high, HBAO on HBAO (not HBAO full), And Tessellation on High. Textures are on Fade touched and MSAA is off, just pure post-processing AA.

This is on an i7 3770k and an 780 ti.

Compromising visual quality to remedy a glaring issue is....not really a "fix", though. They need to make a proper patch to fix this.

People shouldn't have to lower settings because of crappy bugs. It's been over 2 weeks since this game released and there is still no word on when to expect a patch for this problem.
 
How is this game running in Mantle for AMD card users? Especially those with a 290/290x? How is the performance? I read from a website that mantle actually decreases performance on AMD's top cards (290, 290x), so I am curious.

I have HD 7870 Ghz edition.
It seems that I get 2x performance by using Mantle rather than DX11. I've been using Mantle since I started playing the game, but last night I tried some tweaks so I can get more stable performance. After switching to DX11 and restarting the game, my fps dips to about half from what I get by using Mantle.
 
How is this game running in Mantle for AMD card users? Especially those with a 290/290x? How is the performance? I read from a website that mantle actually decreases performance on AMD's top cards (290, 290x), so I am curious.

Mantle provides a significant performance boost on my setup (HD7970's in Crossfire). No problems during actual gameplay.
 
I have HD 7870 Ghz edition.
It seems that I get 2x performance by using Mantle rather than DX11. I've been using Mantle since I started playing the game, but last night I tried some tweaks so I can get more stable performance. After switching to DX11 and restarting the game, my fps dips to about half from what I get by using Mantle.

Mantle provides a significant performance boost on my setup (HD7970's in Crossfire). No problems during actual gameplay.

Hmm, that's good. Sadly the 290 series doesn't seem to get much improvement when using mantle :(
 
Hmm, that's good. Sadly the 290 series doesn't seem to get much improvement when using mantle :(
It's a bit more complicated than that. Some users with 290s report improvements, others report awful stuttering and increased load times. No fix yet. Might work for you, so it's worth a try. It mainly helps in CPU bound situations.
 
Honestly, the combat controls much better with gamepad and it seems designed for it. I switched to using a 360 controller for PC, and it plays much better now

The combat is not like DA1

Prefer using a mouse/key bored for RPGS.
However this game is defiantly made for controller in mind. I'll give it a go though.

No, the game does not allow anything like Origins. They would need to make serious modifications to do so.

Shame really. I wonder if anyone will be able to mod it in the future.
 
Compromising visual quality to remedy a glaring issue is....not really a "fix", though. They need to make a proper patch to fix this.

People shouldn't have to lower settings because of crappy bugs. It's been over 2 weeks since this game released and there is still no word on when to expect a patch for this problem.

Well yes, obviously a patch is needed, but if stutter really bothers you this will fix it. And the difference between ultra and high in terrain settings is minimal.
 
I don't understand why this has so many issues when every other recent Frostbite game runs perfectly. Oh well I've only recently started DA:O UE, 25hrs in plus DA2 to finish so hopefully it will be fixed by the time I get to Inquisition.
 
I don't understand why this has so many issues when every other recent Frostbite game runs perfectly.

People are getting some very random issues. Different rigs, different performances I guess.

As Kinthalis said, Dropping the terrain down has made a hell of an improvement.
I was running mostly everything mixed on high and ultra.
Now i'm running everything on ultra (except terrain obviously).
 
People are getting some very random issues. Different rigs, different performances I guess.

As Kinthalis said, Dropping the terrain down has made a hell of an improvement.
I was running mostly everything mixed on high and ultra.
Now i'm running everything on ultra (except terrain obviously).

Can you discern a significant difference between ultra and high terrain?
 
Anyone want to do some screens showing the difference between Ultra and High terrain?

Game runs perfectly for me with everything at Ultra, Fade touched textures and 2xMSAA (even though the difference it makes is pretty much impossible to see).

I would like to get rid of cut screen stutter, but sacrificing gameplay visual quality to do it is not something I am happy with, especially when it NEVER drops under 60 for me at ultra!
 
Anyone want to do some screens showing the difference between Ultra and High terrain?

Game runs perfectly for me with everything at Ultra, Fade touched textures and 2xMSAA (even though the difference it makes is pretty much impossible to see).

I would like to get rid of cut screen stutter, but sacrificing gameplay visual quality to do it is not something I am happy with, especially when it NEVER drops under 60 for me at ultra!

You have the game, why do you want others to take pics of high and ultra? Don't be lazy!
I'm too lazy to do it myself.
 
I just realized that my 8 GB of ram is only clocked at 800 mhz, as opposed to most which sits above 1300. I get occasional stutter and less FPS than most users with a GTX 970 card, hovering around 40-45 in towns. Could this be an issue? It only seems to be because of decal quality in NPCs. I know it isn't my CPU, since I have an i5 4690k at 4.3 Ghz. I'm planning an upgrade to 16 GB after Christmas.

I understand the engine has performance issues, it's just frustrating to see a 15 FPS difference between my machine and others with the same card.
 
Considering the size and scope of this game I've run into remarkably few issues. Seagulls perched in mid air and my party stuck behind cave walls while I'm slugging it out alone are about the limit of it.

Game hasn't crashed once in about 25 hours of play. I'm also running a higher overclock than usual on my 780 due to this game's stability. Using the same profile (1150 Mhz) in a game like Mordor for example would have guaranteed a crash.

I'm also having no problems with load times. SSD, uncapped framerate and no VSync clearly seem to be the way forward. Still running everything Ultra at 1080p (MSAA off) and apart from two specific areas in Redcliffe village and Stormy coast (38fps) I'm yet to dip below 40, yet to notice any tearing (144hz monitor) and hardly logged any frame-time variances of significance.

I guess it's a case of expectations. I'm still in awe at the size and detail of the game, it's a bit of a fantasy to expect it to also run at 60fps maxed out with perfect fluidity.
 
Mine's running pretty well (2x 970 in SLI), but I am getting a weird flicker on some textures, particularly the snow in Haven. Is disabling SLI the only solution to this?

Happens to me too with SLI. I don't think there is a solution other than waiting for new drivers.
 
Worst bug I've had so far is fighting the demon
Envy
.

About half way through the fight my main character goes down. Click on someone else to revive him.
All good.

Try to click back to my main....nope not happening.
"wtf"
Couldn't select any other characters to control. Even through hot keys. This was a right pain as I had un-ticked to drink potion at 20% health on my main so he just kept crapping out.

Inevitably all my characters KO'ed when the boss was at around 15%health. Screen went black.
Well done, you killed him!
"What!?..."
Game just carried on.
 
I'm pretty happy with the performance of the game. I can run it about 50-60 fps on the preset high settings and about 30-45 fps on the ultra preset, playing off an ssd as well (just recently got it and it makes a huge difference ). My setup :

i5 4670k
Gtx 760 2gb
8 gb 1333 ram

Cutscene fps is absolute ass though. So weird.
 
Is anyone able to maintain 60fps in redcliff? My fps drops from 60 to high 30s everywhere in that place. 290x here.

Was getting 60 with 970 sli at 1080p max settings (no msaa). Although, my thirst for better graphics now has me capping my frame rate to 30 to run at 4k. Lol
 
Is anyone able to maintain 60fps in redcliff? My fps drops from 60 to high 30s everywhere in that place. 290x here.

I'm CPU limited to around 50 fps in redcliff on 280x crossfire (dx11). Mantle runs at around 70 fps in redcliff when it's not a stuttering mess. AMD drivers seem to be a lot more CPU intensive.

(2600k@4.4ghz)
 
Anyone want to do some screens showing the difference between Ultra and High terrain?
Here you go, plus some more comparisons since I found the results interesting. The Terrain setting also controls some of the foliage in the world, which you'd normally think is only controlled by the Vegetation setting. Both set to Ultra produce the richest looking foliage and vegetation. Putting one at High and the other at Ultra produces different results.

Tons of pics incoming. All of the screens were taken at max settings except Shadows and Tesselation at High, and MSAA off.

Terrain Ultra/Vegetation Ultra
ultra-ultra1omf0r.png


Terrain Ultra/Vegetation High
ultra-high1jsfcj.png


Terrain High/Vegetation Ultra
high-ultra1m7c4f.png


Terrain High/Vegetation High
high-high13jc7o.png

Terrain Ultra/Vegetation Ultra
ultra-ultra2sddhx.png


Terrain Ultra/Vegetation High
ultra-high2lzina.png


Terrain High/Vegetation Ultra
high-ultra277d19.png


Terrain High/Vegetation High
high-high2c0fk2.png

There you have it, make of it what you will. Performance hit is pretty minimal for both settings, like 1-2 fps on my 4GB 770. I would leave both on Ultra, but I haven't tested if setting Terrain to high actually fixes cutscene stuttering.
 
Here you go, plus some more comparisons since I found the results interesting. The Terrain setting also controls some of the foliage in the world, which you'd normally think is only controlled by the Vegetation setting. Both set to Ultra produce the richest looking foliage and vegetation. Putting one at High and the other at Ultra produces different results.

Tons of pics incoming. All of the screens were taken at max settings except Shadows and Tesselation at High, and MSAA off.


There you have it, make of it what you will. Performance hit is pretty minimal for both settings, like 1-2 fps on my 4GB 770. I would leave both on Ultra, but I haven't tested if setting Terrain to high actually fixes cutscene stuttering.

You sir are awesome! I agree with you, I'd rather take the small stuttering in cutscenes for the less than 10% of time I see them than lose quality in the normal gameplay that is experienced the vast amount of time. That is even if setting terrain to high fixes cutscenes, which we have not confirmed.

I hover around 30 with a 980.

WOW! Really?!?! I would be pretty unhappy if I was getting 30fps after dropping the money on a 980!

I get a solid 60 in Redcliff with my i7-440K, GTX 980 and 16GB RAM 1600MHZ. Game is also running off an SSD.
 
Is anyone able to maintain 60fps in redcliff? My fps drops from 60 to high 30s everywhere in that place. 290x here.

I have a 970 and I drop to 35-45 in Redcliff, whereas I'm mostly 50-70 in the bigger outdoor areas and up to 80 in indoor areas. Just seems like an area that's tougher than the rest due to the large draw distance and waterfalls and stuff.
 
What's the easiest way to get FPS to show in the game?

I'm running it on a 670 and I'm quite satisfied with the performance and visuals, almost everything is maxed, but no idea how many frames I'm getting, though I guess it's somewhere between 30 and 50 depending on the area.
 
I still don't know why this is the one game that constantly locks up my machine. It's irritating as hell (and makes it almost impossible to play).
 
What's the easiest way to get FPS to show in the game?

Bring up the console (same as the bf4 console - dunno the correct term for the key) and type this:
perfoverlay.drawfps 1

For more info use this:
perfoverlay.drawgraph 1
^ that is pretty detailed/interesting.

A possibility for anyone with 'stability/overheating' issues is this line (I'm not sure why Frostbite doesn't automatically do something like this):
gametime.maxvariablefps 60
 
I'm on a GTX 670 2GB and i5-2500k stock 3.3 ghz.

I get anywhere from 30-60fps on a mix of High and Ultra settings, no MSAA. When I'm questing it open levels like the Hinterlands it usually stays around the 35-45fps mark, and in more enclosed areas closer to 60.

I've found the performance to be quite good actually, I don't really notice the shift in fps much. I'm usually really bothered by a variable framerate like what I'm getting, but its not bad in this game. Not getting any stuttering or anything.

Even on a mix of High and Ultra though, it doesn't really look that much different than the ea acccess trial I played on Xbox One. Resolution is obviously higher (I'm running x1080), but the rest of the assets seem pretty similar. I might just bump it down to the High preset to get a more solid 50-60fps.

There are also weird "console port" oddities, like having to restart the game for things to take effect, and only being able to switch between controller and mouse&kb at the main menu. My load times are also really long, its not this long on Xbox One.

Still pretty happy with what I'm getting out of my 670. Aiming to get Witcher 3 on PC as well.
 
Just quoting myself again, what kind of upgrades should I be looking at? I know for sure my RAM needs to be upgraded, however I'm wondering if I can stick with the 3770k for the near future?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell

You are going to see very little performance improvement with faster RAM on a single GPU configuration. And a 3770k is plenty for the near future.

Best bang for your buck would be a GTX 970 or a second GTX 770 for SLI.
 
Here you go, plus some more comparisons since I found the results interesting. The Terrain setting also controls some of the foliage in the world, which you'd normally think is only controlled by the Vegetation setting. Both set to Ultra produce the richest looking foliage and vegetation. Putting one at High and the other at Ultra produces different results.

Tons of pics incoming. All of the screens were taken at max settings except Shadows and Tesselation at High, and MSAA off.

Thanks a ton for doing these pics, appreciate it!

Although I come to a different conclusion than you... I don't consider it much visible difference between Ultra & High, especially when moving around normally. I guess I just don't care that much.

However, on my system there seems to be more than a 1 fps difference. I would guess on average maybe 5 to 8 fps for me. If it truly was only 1 fps difference, then I would set it to Ultra
 
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