25 réponses à ce sujet

[Doktor Teufel]

Firstly, here's a breakdown of my basic system specs. (I have the latest version of DA:O from Steam.)

OS: Windows XP Home Edition (32 bit), 5.1, build 2600 (fully updated)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+,  MMX,  3DNow (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 3.070 GB DDR2 RAM (4 GB total, that's useable)
GPUs: 2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS, 320 MB w/SLi bridge (updated to latest ver., 191.07, and SLi Profile Update 3)
Sound: Logitech USB Headset, and Realtek HD Audio Output, both fully updated (game tested with both)
Monitor: HP w2007 LCD, 1680x1050 (16:9) native resolution 

Now, I know my hardware isn't the best anymore. It wasn't even top-of-the-line when I first got it in 2007, though it was still pretty beefy at that time.

However, I own and play a wide range of games, so I know what kind of graphics quality I can generally expect from a game that looks a certain way. I can run Mass Effect, BioShock, Crysis, Team Fortress 2, X3: Reunion, Call of Duty 4, Oblivion, Dawn of War 2, Doom 3, and many others on fairly high graphics settings. In fact, I haven't found a single game where I need to set the game's graphics settings to medium and reduce the resolution....

Until now. In Dragon Age, I must (and I mean must) set my resolution to 1152 x 720 to reduce graphics lag to a tolerable level anywhere outside of the human noble starting castle. To play lag-free, I additonally have to turn one or both of the quality sliders to Medium, depending on the area. Turning off frame effects does nothing. The castle fooled me, because I was able to run in 1680 x 1050 there (with 4x AA and texture/graphics quality set on high) with relatively little lag. But once I got outside, yeah. Lag city. And at a certain part where four magic users are casting a ritual? Slideshow time.

In fact, as I recall, DA had a "middle-class hardware" publicity campaign using the exact same graphics card I have (I actually have two of them), with very similar hardware, and the same screen resolution, and they were (supposedly) running the game in 1680 x 1050 with very little lag.

So I really just have no clue why the game is running so sluggishly. It's probably one of those things where I have no choice but to wait six months until EA releases enough patches and NVidia releases enough driver updates for the game to run with tolerable performance, but I'm posting here anyway, just in case someone has any ideas.

[Phalzyr]

Some games, and I think I saw someone mention it here, have issues with SLI.
Then you'd be running at only one 8800 speed though, which...

Unless I'm mistaken someone posted here about turning SLI off and getting a performance boost but then they had a better card so..

Modifié par Phalzyr, 10 novembre 2009 - 02:25 .

[mufuti7]

I think the problem might be 4xAA, especially if there is a SLI problem like mentioned above.



I have Dragon Age installed on my girlfriends PC so I can play when she is off to work.

Her system is very solid except for the gpu, she has one 8800 too and more than 2x AA kills the framerates at her system.



The "middle-class-hardware-campaign" always mentioned "without AA" and I have to agree without AA the game runs flawlessly on a middle class gpu, no performance difference between medium-very high. But if you want to play on very high you may have to lower your AA setting.2 xAA should work fine but it is also possible you will notice performance drop because of your CPU especially when there are a lot of NPCs around.

[Komaro]

I have similar problems.
Pentium D 2.8, 2GB RAM with Nvidia 8600 on Windows 7 64 bits
The program only have 868MB of memory available. I am thinking it's a memory issue on my part
but when I read your topic...I am not so sure anymore.

[Doktor Teufel]

I've tried it with AA switched off entirely, all other things being equal.

The game plays better, of course. But even without AA, when I set the resolution to 1680 x 1050, I'm still looking at 15-20 FPS inside of Ostagar, especially in third-person view (as opposed to isometric), and 25-30 FPS in the wilderness area outside of Ostagar... unless there's a fight, in which case the game drops down to ~20 FPS or perhaps a bit lower than that.

Oh yeah, and the camera controls always get more or less sluggish to match the framerate.

I'm 100% sure I'm not the first person to say this, but the game simply doesn't look anywhere near good enough to justify playing at 15-30 FPS with no AA and no AF enabled. I don't think I've ever owned or played a computer game that demanding on my current system, and I really wasn't expecting this from a BioWare RPG.

So I wouldn't call the game flawless on middle-class hardware. Maybe I have some other problem you guys haven't pointed out and I haven't discovered, and maybe I need to wait for better GPU drivers and patches, but I can definitely say I've seen games with the same or better graphics quality as DA run much faster on my system, at higher graphics settings, with AA and AF enabled.

Fallout 3 is another good example. No problem there with full resolution, high settings, 4x AA and 8x AF, and that was when F3 was first released, before additional patches and etc.

Modifié par Doktor Teufel, 10 novembre 2009 - 03:14 .

[mufuti7]

Well Fallout is very well optimized and doesnt stress the system that much, especially not the GPU.



I guess in Ostragar it cpuld very well be your CPU that limits the framerate especially if turning off AA completely does not help as much.

Still, if the game is only using one of your graphic cards there is definately the second culprit right there. This is especially likely because you say higher resolutions drop the performance so badly.

A middle class PC is probably meant to use a lower resolution.



@Komaro: 2 GB for Windows 7 might indeed be a problem. But your CPU and GPU are also not exactly up to date or middle class even..



Another thing you guys might want to look at is the driver. I have read numerous threads about the new nvidia driver coming straight from hell, even destroying systems to the point they had to /format c: ...

[bheezy]

Peep these drivers yo...

"This is a beta driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, and 200-series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.

New in Version 195.39


[*]Adds support for OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
[*]Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.0 features and performance enhancements. See CUDA Zone for more details.
[*]Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for Borderlands, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, G-Force, FIFA Soccer 2010, League of Legends: Clash of Fates, NHL 2009, Order of War, Pro Evolution Soccer 2010, Race On, Star Trek: D-A-C. Improved SLI and multi-GPU support for Champions: Online and Dragon Age: Origins.
[*]Includes over 200 bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
...ive got these installed and running, im not SLI, but no problems with the drivers so far.  Hope you get it goin sir!

Modifié par bheezy, 10 novembre 2009 - 04:04 .

[Komaro]

I was also able able to play Fallout 3 and more recently Borderlands at high settings. I wonder if it's not the vegetation or something like this. Those 2D animated elements are often a burden in direct X.

[Doktor Teufel]

bheezy wrote...

Peep these drivers yo...

"This is a beta driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, and 200-series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.

I already did. Believe me, I'm an old hand at this "try to get game performance to stop sucking" gig. I did a whole lot of Googling and reading and experimenting on my own before I finally posted here, mostly to share my frustration.

Unfortunately, I can't get the 195 beta drivers because there aren't any for Windows XP 32-bit. It's 64-bit only.

Modifié par Doktor Teufel, 10 novembre 2009 - 04:16 .

[Komaro]

I guess I am gonna play with the dragonage.ini file in mydocuments...sigh

[Doktor Teufel]

On a related note, I've been reading some Dragon Age reviews, and I noticed that almost all of them criticize the PS3 version of DA for having choppy framerates, which is fairly unusual for a PS3 game. So personally, I'm thinking the game itself could really do with more optimization. If MGS4 and (when it comes out) FFXIII can run on the PS3 at 50-60 FPS constant, DA really has no excuse other than being poorly optimized.

Granted, if I had a newer computer, I'd have good performance in DA regardless. But that's beside the point... most of us can't get new, expensive gaming computers every two or three years. It's once every four or five years, with one or two upgrades in between.

I should probably replace my SLi 8-series with a single 200 series, if it'll work in my chipset. SLi is waaaay more trouble than it's worth, at least it is if you depend on it for good graphics quality (with two 8800 GTS cards, I definitely need both of them for a game to run on good settings).

Modifié par Doktor Teufel, 10 novembre 2009 - 04:16 .

[dragoaskani]

Komaro wrote...

I have similar problems.
Pentium D 2.8, 2GB RAM with Nvidia 8600 on Windows 7 64 bits
The program only have 868MB of memory available. I am thinking it's a memory issue on my part
but when I read your topic...I am not so sure anymore.

er lets see first off Pentium D processor, you will experience slow down with that cpu on anything above 1280x1024, medium graphics, and medium textures, then add in nvidia 8600 the economy video card from 4 years ago. . . With your set up you should be runnign the game at 1024x768 Low detail, Low textures, No AA, no Vysnc, and honestly probably with Frame Buffers turned off also. Your machine was never a very good one to begin with, and its really really past its prime now. I think its time to start looking at setting aside the money to build or buy a core I7 machine.

Modifié par dragoaskani, 10 novembre 2009 - 04:58 .

[Phalzyr]

I have a lowley GTS 250 running at PCI-E 1.0 speed and game is fine (this version is rather cheap right now) If you are running 8800 SLI you surely have a power supply that can handle the GTS 250, but I haven't looked at price/bang since I bought card so might be better options, and I was limited due to older rig... Going any higher for me would lose effectiveness majorily. I need a new PC maybe last another year...

Bheezy: Ah seems they admit an SLI issue with Dragon Age so OP might just have to wait for drivers to get out of beta for much better performance.

Kamaro: It could be memory as Vista/win 7 has a huge overhead and if game tries to use more it has to use the hard drive and the hard drive is the slowest part of a computer hence lagging and longer load times. My specs:

Pentium D 3.0 GHZ
3GB ram (windows XP)
NVidia Geforce GTS 250 Darknight

I'm running the game at max settings with no issues. of course my card is better than yours but it is also running at PCI-E speeds so not sure real specs compared to it running at designed speed. half? 

Modifié par Phalzyr, 10 novembre 2009 - 05:06 .

[dragoaskani]

Phalzyr wrote...

I have a lowley GTS 250 running at PCI-E 1.0 speed and game is fine (this version is rather cheap right now) If you are running 8800 SLI you surely have a power supply that can handle the GTS 250, but I haven't looked at price/bang since I bought card so might be better options, and I was limited due to older rig... Going any higher for me would lose effectiveness majorily. I need a new PC maybe last another year...

Bheezy: Ah seems they admit an SLI issue with Dragon Age so OP might just have to wait for drivers to get out of beta for much better performance.

1 250 > 2 8800 gts in sli performance wise.

[Jorithel Ravencrest]

I have a very similar spec...and use to run 2 8800 GTS with SLI...to be honest i found switching to a single 260 card vastly improved my performance. Now my 2 8800GTS cards are collecting dust on the shelf and i can run at full graphics.

[Phalzyr]

dragoaskani wrote...

Phalzyr wrote...

I have a lowley GTS 250 running at PCI-E 1.0 speed and game is fine (this version is rather cheap right now) If you are running 8800 SLI you surely have a power supply that can handle the GTS 250, but I haven't looked at price/bang since I bought card so might be better options, and I was limited due to older rig... Going any higher for me would lose effectiveness majorily. I need a new PC maybe last another year...

Bheezy: Ah seems they admit an SLI issue with Dragon Age so OP might just have to wait for drivers to get out of beta for much better performance.

1 250 > 2 8800 gts in sli performance wise.

I know that. though I am running under the full capabilities do to connection type. If it is an SLI issue it probably means when fixed one would gain a significant boost in performance, I wasn't trying to say my card and a 8800 SLI should get same exact performance

BTW I added my spec to previous post.

Modifié par Phalzyr, 10 novembre 2009 - 05:11 .

[Neyzen_Michael]

Try STR+Alt+Entf, then have a look at the priority of the game. Change it to "Real time".
Also have a look on the cores. Does it use both of them, or just one? you can easily see that on the diagram, I suggest you play the game for severak minutes and then switch to the task manager. XP does have problems with using dual core processors, especially with certain Bioware RPGS. I got these problems with NWN1, 2, Mass Effect and CD Projects The Witcher.
Download a dual core hotfix (google).

Maybe setting it to real time will solve your problem, or the dual core hotfix.

Installing Windows 7 did the trick for me, as I got a similar system but with an 8800 GT. Windows 7 provides about a plus of 10 fps, regardles which game you play. I suggest it is better concerning dual core processors.

But the others are right, your PC is nowhere near middle class.

Edit: Also have a look at your virtual memory. Set your system to "performance for programs" and your virtual memory to twice and a half of your RAM. Beginning and End of that value should be the same. Say set it to Beginning: 3500 MB and Ending 3500 MB (Do not know the proper English expressions).
Also defragment your C:\\ device or wherever you installed Windows to. But do not use the windows crap for doing so. Use some other defragmentation program.

Modifié par Neyzen_Michael, 10 novembre 2009 - 05:17 .

[JironGhrad]

@ the OP, try setting processor affinity to your second core... there are numerous reports of AMD x2 processors causing memory leakage when switching cores mid-application

[Doktor Teufel]

Neyzen_Michael wrote...

But the others are right, your PC is nowhere near middle class.

Are you addressing this to me or Komaro? I'm pretty sure my PC qualifies as middle class, perhaps the lower end but my system actually exceeds the recommended system requirements, and seems to fit what BioWare represented as a middle-class system.

As for your suggestions, I'll have to try those out. Same goes for the suggestions everyone else has made so far in this thread (don't want to quote everyone), I'll definitely give them a whirl.

To be honest, I have a feeling people are correct in that DA's SLi support isn't up to snuff yet. I have a VERY hard time believing I wouldn't get better performance if the SLi were functioning correctly. I've seen SLi/non-SLi games on my setup before, and DA's performance is exactly what I expect to see when SLi is turned off.

If any of you know what X3: Reunion is, I get less lag in a system packed full of polygon-intensive asteroids, starships and space stations, with AA and AF on full and graphics maxed, than I do in DA. And X3 is unbelievably badly optimized, as well as extremely CPU-intensive... and it can't multithread, either, due to an older game engine.

Jorithel Ravencrest wrote...

I have a very similar spec...and use to run 2 8800 GTS with SLI...to be honest i found switching to a single 260 card vastly improved my performance. Now my 2 8800GTS cards are collecting dust on the shelf and i can run at full graphics.

Thanks for the heads-up on that significant performance boost. Yeah, I'm thinking very seriously about getting a single, fairly inexpensive 200-series card to carry this setup for another year or two before I have to fully replace it.

Plus, many games are fussy with SLi, or it just doesn't work optimally. There are some games in which lights shine through characters' bodies with SLi turned on (The Witcher, f'rex), and this can be sort of fixed with tweaks, but you still see it.

Modifié par Doktor Teufel, 10 novembre 2009 - 06:42 .

[Doktor Teufel]

This is an example of what I'm talking about: I got Left 4 Dead 2 on release day. Download, install, set all graphics options to High (there are one or two that allow Very High, but I leave them on High), AA 8x, AF 4x, and the game runs at 50-60 FPS constant.



This is why I think DA:O has some serious problems in the optimization department; even with AA and AF turned off, I get 30-40 FPS. L4D2 may be based on the HL2 engine, but if its graphics are somehow less sophisticated than DA:O's, I'm definitely not seeing it. If anything, they're better.



I truly never thought I'd see the day when the latest first-person shooter runs smoothly on high settings, while the latest RPG runs choppy on medium settings.

[Crispy8181]

It's the SLI. Guaranteed. Because you can't get 195.39 for XP then you're only running on a single GPU in DA, and at that resolution with AA enabled you're going to see poor framerates in this game.



Either upgrade your GPU or upgrade your O/S.

[Unreal Butcher]

I'm running two 8800GT 512MB's in SLI with these drivers, and this SLI patch . I'm getting a smooth 60fps.

To the OP, I can't say for sure what you're problem is for this game, if I had to guess I'd say your CPU. My 8800GT ran much better going from a higher clocked AMD dual core to an lower clocked Intel Quad core a year ago. Although I wouldn't rule out coding in this game as I've had more then a few issues (none of which were frame rate issues).

[Doktor Teufel]

I agree with Crispy, it's almost certainly the SLi. Has to be, there's no game in existence that runs so badly on my machine — and I don't think it's the CPU, Butcher. It's not the best CPU of all time, but I don't have problems with it anywhere else, even in other games that I know for a fact are very CPU-intensive.

But that's my point: Even if SLi is the issue, DA is pretty much the only modern game in which SLi is broken for me. I'm not going to change my entire OS or GPU for one game that runs badly, and apparently those are my only options, other than waiting for a GPU driver update or DA patch, or both. I'll upgrade eventually, but not because of one title, especially when I meet or exceed the recommended system specs. (Again, if it's my CPU causing it, then their recommended specs need revising, because my CPU exceeds the recommended specs.)

I consider BioWare to be a legendary company, alongside the late Origin Systems and Black Isle Studios, and the still-alive Valve and Blizzard. But now I can't trust BioWare games to run on my system without bleeding-edge hardware and software anymore, and that bothers me a lot.

@Butcher: The first link is broken for me, and both load very slowly. If those can potentially fix my performance problems, I'd love to try them out if you can point me in the right direction.

Modifié par Doktor Teufel, 20 novembre 2009 - 04:57 .

[Unreal Butcher]

They the 191.07 drivers for an 8800GT on Vista 64. http://www.nvidia.co...1.07_whql.html' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>See if this link works.

Here's the latest SLI profile patch on NVIDIA's site. I'm using one off EVGA's site, and the game runs smooth on highest settings. I'm just having other problems, that I was hoping to fix with a clean OS install, but I think my DVD drive is faulty. As it seems to come up with some data error no matter the disk I try to install. Couldn't even make it through the OS install. Argh...

[Dagor]

OP, I've got the same CPU as you, but running with a GTX 280 on Win7x64 with 4 gig of RAM and I have been pretty dissappointed with the frame rates. At times it's like watching a slide show. I consider my machine to be better than middle-class, but yet DAO tells me otherwise.