18 réponses à ce sujet

[Binglesthecat]

Hey guys, So I bought DA:O during the massive steam sale that went on at christmas, but I didn't really start playing it until recently, when I built a new pc.
I have a slight problem though. Ostagar, Denerim and Lothering all drop the frame rate down to 25-30.
I can sit on 55-60 maxed out at 1360x768 with AA at 4x, but as soon as I enter any of these areas, it slows to a crawl.

AMD AM3x4 640 3.0Ghz Athlon II Quad Core.
ASUS M4A78LT-M-LE 760G AM3 DDR3 Motherboard.
Kingstone 4GB DDR 1333.
Hitatchi 3.5" Deskstar 1TB SATA HDD.
Gigabyte 1GB 6850 OC
Antec 500W Earthwatts psu.

[RaenImrahl]

You don't list a graphics card. Info on that is critical to diagnosing issues... unless... are you running the video graphics off the board? If so, that's your problem. Without a discreet GPU card, your not going to get a high frame rate, even on those settings. You could turn off AA, of course, and make sure the Catalyst software is set to let the game handle all the graphics.



Actually... 25-30 fps doesn't sound that bad if you're running of an onboard chip.

[OBakaSama]

I think that's a Radeon 6850 they're running there RaenImrahl. Should be a pretty powerful set up.

EDIT: does say 'OC' for overclock? Maybe an issue?

Modifié par OBakaSama, 25 février 2011 - 04:37 .

[Moondoggie]

I noticed an overclocked GPU that might be the problem as DAO gets fussy with overclocked things sometimes. First port of call should be asking the OP what drivers version they are using ^^

[RaenImrahl]

OBakaSama wrote...

I think that's a Radeon 6850 they're running there RaenImrahl. Should be a pretty powerful set up.

EDIT: does say 'OC' for overclock? Maybe an issue?

Ah... missed that.  Yes, Moondoggie is spot on as usual... driver version and what Catalyst settings are being used in addition to the in-game graphics settings.

OC might be an issue, yes, but what I experienced (this was with an Nvidia card) was in-game errors and crashes.  This seems to be a simple matter of DAO's infamous CPU-piggishness.  The FPS drop when there's a lot of math involved on the screen... big areas with lots of objects and people to calculate.  So system optimization, including using current drivers (and making sure DX9c and Windows are up-to-date), reducing pagefile size, closing background applications, and of course monitoring overheating could all be a factor. 

And for the OP... before there's the inevitable (and understandable) "but other games run fine on this"... DAO uses its own engine, so other games (including other Bioware games) will perform differently on the same system.

[Binglesthecat]

Yeah, my video card is the 6850. It's a factory overclock, so I figured it should be pretty decent.

I'm using the 11.2 catalyst drivers.

[Kloreep]

Overclocks have been known to produce instability, but I don't think they've been known to reduce performance, have they? That would be a bit odd.

For what it's worth, Ostagar also drops to around 30 FPS for me, despite high FPS in other locations. (Never have measured Lothering or Denerim.) But you have a much more powerful card - I just have a 4770. And you're at a slightly lower resolution than me.

Unless someone can say that they've observed FPS higher than 30 at any of these places, I wonder if these places cap FPS somehow? Something left over from console development, perhaps?

Modifié par Kloreep, 25 février 2011 - 10:46 .

[Moondoggie]

Denerim is the main one i notice frame dropouts in the market square bit the framerate is all over the place. It could just be a symptom of certain areas in the game that have frame dropouts. I've had a similar thing happen in other games. In Mirror's Edge i get a constant 62fps except on this one area in the first level where the framerate drops down to about 30fps for no reason.

[CrustyCat]

One other thing, if you get some money, buy a decent power supply. The one you have is ok, but during testing, they only put out about 400 watts on the 12V rail as seen here http://www.jonnyguru...=Story4&reid=35

[Binglesthecat]

Hmm, Ok. It's not a huge issue, it just made me a tad concerned is all.
Edit: That psu issue wouldn't reduce performance would it? 

Modifié par Binglesthecat, 26 février 2011 - 12:32 .

[CrustyCat]

Probably not, but if your pc starts to randomly shutdown, that's your problem.

[Binglesthecat]

Oh, that's not an issue.

[RaenImrahl]

If you want to see if it's system performance or something else, you need to try one of those problem areas with 800x600 res, no AA, lowest textures, no frame buffering, and all the Catalyst enhancements OFF. See what your FPS are like. That will show you the max you can get... then you can incrementally adjust settings upwards to find a nice balance.



I suspect this is simply a situation where your Athlon II CPU is the bottleneck in the system, and you'll have to govern your expectations accordingly. The fact that it's a quad-core helps, but it is a budget chip, a stripped down version of the more powerful, L3 cache enabled Phenom II. It works... but it won't be lightning fast for DAO, which chews a lot of processor power in calculations.

[Binglesthecat]

Really?
Edit: With everything on low it stays at 60 fps in all the troubling areas.

Modifié par Binglesthecat, 26 février 2011 - 05:36 .

[RaenImrahl]

Binglesthecat wrote...

Really?
Edit: With everything on low it stays at 60 fps in all the troubling areas.

Really.  Sorry to rain on your parade.  Here's the upside... you can now start adding some graphics enhancements and increase res, and find a happy balance between FPS and visual look.  You could also come up with two sets of settings and, if you get in the habit of saving often, drop down to the lower settings when things get rough.

BTW, your system is a bit future-proof, too.  You made a good choice with that Asus AM3 board... you could, down the road, upgrade to a Phenom processor without too much trouble.   I almost bought that one myself, but I am limited to using boards with Nvidia chips for my SLI config.   

[Binglesthecat]

Oh damn.

[CrustyCat]

Binglesthecat wrote...

Really?
Edit: With everything on low it stays at 60 fps in all the troubling areas.

Look to see if Vsync is disabled, if not, disable it and you could get higher fps.

[Binglesthecat]

But then I get screen tearing.

[RaenImrahl]

You can try disabling screen vsync in-game, and using the ATI Catalyst software to do it. I am not familiar with ATI products, but I suspect you can. There's a good comprehensive guide to it at:

http://www.tweakguid...m/ATICAT_1.html