The "test version" of this discussion was used the past three months in the DAO PC Tech Forum, while the hoopla leading up to last Tuesday was building to a crescendo. There are some things that are very elusive when chasing down PC problems, and this should help you with that chase.
Dragon Age has had its share of bugs and running problems, and yet sizable numbers of the game have been sold, of which the majority are actually working just fine. Nevertheless, there are a great many complaints that range across the spectrum of possibilities. I'm not claiming to have the magic skill to answer all of the many complaints, only to make it easier for some other folks in here to offer their suggestions.
Since I will probably reference this to readers of the Mass Effect forums, let's be very clear that the same principles are going to apply, no matter whether we discuss a Tech problem with ME-1, ME-2, DAO, or DA2.
Very few of the gamers making the complaints about Dragon Age or Mass Effect are approaching this with any plan of action to deal with their problems. Once upon a time, a few experienced gamers making regular visits to the NWN2 forums, and prior to those, to the NWN / KotOR forums, had some excellent experience and understanding of everything found in the DxDiag Reports, and those were occasionally used, but almost all of those old timers are now gone, it seems. I never ask for them, myself.
Right from the top, everyone needs to understand that neither Bioware nor EA makes any particular effort to hire their own "Hardware Geeks", and both are blissfully unconcerned about publishing practical, truthful, and useful system requirements for games. Mass Effect is a really bad example of this, as there is only one Geforce 6n00 graphics card "series" able to handle the game, the 6800s, and two out of six of those are worthless (6800 SE, 6800 XT). The Radeon X1300 "XT" was a very late name change in the X1n00 generation, of which few were sold in that name compared to the original naming, when it was the X1600 Pro.
The rest of the X1300s are perhaps half as good as the X1600s, for the very best of them.
This is my substituted, PRACTICAL verson (for Mass Effect, but the list of "unsupportable" cards still applies to DAO and to DA2).
Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 6 series (6800GT or better: 205, 210, 310, 7100, 7200, 7300, 7400, 7500, 7600 GS, 8200, 8300, 8400 GS, 8500, 9100, 9200, & 9300 are below minimum system requirements)
ATI Radeon X1800 GTO or better (X1300, X1300 Pro, *X1550*, HD 2400, HD 3100, HD 3200, HD 3450, HD 3470, HD 4100, HD 4200, HD 4250, HD 4350, HD 4550, and (probably) HD 5450 are below minimum system requirements)
So, the very first thing any game player needed to do was ignore the official game warning label on that box, and stick with Mainline Gaming cards, whose names have either a "600" / "650" / "670" in them, and upward from there, or for recent Geforces, a "50". Higher is better, when you have the needed power supply and added spare cash to go that far (the stock, original equipment power supply isn't good enough for higher numbered, current-sucking High End parts).
You need to be at the Administration level for the Vista & Windows 7 pair, and then you can run the game install. Here is a corrected DA2 requirements list
What are the Dragon Age Two system requirements?
Minimum System Requirements :
Minimum:
OS: Windows XP 32-bit with SP3
OS: Windows Vista 32-bit with SP2
OS: Windows 7 64-bit ("dunno about that")
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8 GHz or greater
RAM: 1 GB (1.5 GB Vista and Windows 7)
Video: Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 256 MB cards
Disc Drive: DVD ROM drive required
Hard Drive: 7 GB
Sound: Direct X 9.0c Compatible Sound Card Windows Experience Index: 4.5
If you don't understand those requirements, particularly the confusing Geforce graphics naming, fill in an information query blank like this for your system to discuss it with the current hardware forum residents.
Retail or Digital: Retail CD / Retail DVD / Direct (Vendor name)
Processor Manufacturer: AMD / Intel
Processor Type: Athlon 64 / X2 / Phenom, or Intel Core / count of cores
Processor Speed: * ?.? *Ghz (or AMD Performance Number)
Operating System / Service Pack: WindowsXP with SP # ?
System RAM:* ? ? *GBs (or MBs, if less than 1024)
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI / Nvidia (only those are supported)
Video Card Model: (examples) Radeon x1950 Pro / Geforce 7800 GTX
Video Card onboard RAM: *???* MBs
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst ?.? / Nforce ??.?? (use numbers, not
the word latest)
Power Supply Make, Model, and 12 volt amperage
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Model:
Sound Card Driver Version: ?.?? (again, numbers please)
Problem Description: Explain your problem here
(To be expanded below)
_________________
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Various of the PC components require a piece of software called a "Driver" that makes the connection between Windows and the hardware devices, such as Audio Processors, Network Interface Cards, and especially Video Graphics cards. For a fairly new computer, the newest drivers are usually best, and you need to explore the 'Net to collect those, and then install them in the PC. Older machines that are still capable of running the games sometimes need an "in between" driver, newer than when the PC was brand new, while not actually the very newest available. You need to seek game-aware geeks' advice in this regard about an older high performance PC.
After the install has been completed, run the first test of the game with the AV still off, no 'Net connection, no bevy of background processes running, and see what happens. If the test ran nicely, but the next day you find the second run does not, it's the background processes you'll want to work on. The games we are dealing with here in the Social Forums Community are more demanding of resources than many other games are. Such things as IM / PM processes cause tons of problems (Xfire is a frequent cause of difficulty). Several popular AV programs have pro- active procedures that cause games to stutter, stop, and generally misbehave.
Microsoft has several pages' worth of advice on their web sites about how to use the "Clean Boot" startup to deal with gaming trouble (different pages for each of their OSes):
http://support.micro...kb;EN-US;331796
Just since Dragon Age was brand new, the popularity of various "Social" internet sites has exploded, and many game players think nothing of having Browser windows/ Tabs for Facebook, MySpace, & Twitter all active in the background at the same time, all of the time. None of the several games that Bioware has used the UT3 engine, or their own, to design were intended to run in competition with sites such as those. Those are only the tip of a truly huge iceberg of luxuries that gadget-happy people are loading in their PCs every time they start up.
I constantly see that game players have over 2 GBs of programs and services loaded, running in the background, which is twice as much as should be there.
Proper use of the Clean Boot procedures can identify the programs and services that are conflicting with the game. Black Viper's web site can assist regarding Windows' own excesses.
Before starting still another message thread about the same old problem, check the FAQs on the official support pages, and run searches in here to see about any work-arounds that other gamers are suggesting, while we wait on permanent fixes, if your problem is with the game, rather than a background process.
To describe your problem, I'm going to quote a friend and Community Director from here, Chris Priestley, and his description
3. Problem Details
a. When it comes to problem details, think about the five basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Okay, so “Who?” doesn't really apply here, but the others do.
b. What? What is the nature of the problem that you're seeing?
c. When? When does the problem occur? Every time you engage in a particular action or only after so many hours of play?
d. Where? Where does the problem occur? Is the problem localized to a particular planet or does it occur everywhere?
e. Why? As much as possible, can you isolate the problem to a specific set of steps?
If you follow these guidelines, and provide the requested information when posting, it will increase the likelihood that someone will be able to help you diagnose the problem and find a solution.
Please report issues, after checking these steps, in new threads.
P. S. Please use every day business style paragraph breaks, punctuation, and spelling.
Good Luck,
Gorath
Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 10 mars 2011 - 02:13 .
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