11 réponses à ce sujet

[MrGrublet]

I have a problem with my game where it just kind of randomly freezes for about 5 or 10 secs and then it goes back to normal. This can happen 3 times in 10 minutes or once in 2 hours. It started happenning as soon as I upgraded to a gts 450 for my PC. In the past I used a 8500gt that would run the game on low settings without freezes or crashes. It's really just more annoying than an actual game breaker. I was just wondering if anyone else had this issue and could help me fix it?

[RaenImrahl]

MrGrublet wrote...

I have a problem with my game where it just kind of randomly freezes for about 5 or 10 secs and then it goes back to normal. This can happen 3 times in 10 minutes or once in 2 hours. It started happenning as soon as I upgraded to a gts 450 for my PC. In the past I used a 8500gt that would run the game on low settings without freezes or crashes. It's really just more annoying than an actual game breaker. I was just wondering if anyone else had this issue and could help me fix it?

I had similar issues when I got at a GTS450.  Can you post your complete hardware specs, version of Windows, and what graphics settings you're playing at?

[MrGrublet]

I have kind of an old rig with a new graphics card:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6ghz
2gb RAM(I'm thinking this is causing the problem)
GTS 450 1gb

Windows 7 32 bit

I've been playing on maxed graphics with no AA. When I hit the default settings button this is what it sends me to. I've tried tweaking the resolution, but that hasn't helped. I'm just confused because the game runs fine at 60fps and then stops like this for a bit and goes back up to 60fps.

Modifié par MrGrublet, 23 mars 2011 - 02:49 .

[RaenImrahl]

MrGrublet wrote...

I have kind of an old rig with a new graphics card:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6ghz
2gb RAM(I'm thinking this is causing the problem)
GTS 450 1gb

Windows 7 32 bit

I've been playing on maxed graphics with no AA. When I hit the default settings button this is what it sends me to. I've tried tweaking the resolution, but that hasn't helped. I'm just confused because the game runs fine at 60fps and then stops like this for a bit and goes back up to 60fps.

That's exactly what I experienced.  My old rig was:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0 Ghz
6GB RAM
GTS 450 1GB
Win 7 64-bit

Here's what I've discovered... Dragon Age is a *very* CPU intensive game.  It is, frankly, poorly coded, and it uses the CPU for a surprising amount of graphics stuff, too.  The bottom line is that you now have a midgrade Fermi graphics card with high speed (DDR5) ram, but the same CPU and RAM.

When I got the GTS 450, the game ran a lot faster... I was so surprised, because I had no idea what the game was suppose to look like... it was awesome.  But I ran into two problems.  The first is the one you're experiencing... brief pauses, especially at the start of combat (when everyone is drawing their weapons).  No crashes... or very few... just freezes (although for me, the music would keep playing uninterrupted).  The second was a bizzare polygon-error thing... people and objects would get these annoying spikes sticking out of them.  In fact, that's what first brought me to these forums.

Bottom line... you've upgraded your GPU, so now your CPU/RAM combo is the bottleneck.  The *amount* of RAM may not really be an issue here... it's the speed at which the RAM and CPU combined process information, in comparison to your GTS 450.

Another factor... your GTS 450 probably comes "factory overclocked"... which can cause some issues with DAO (not DA2, thank goodness)...  mine is made by PNY, and I love it (in fact I bought a second one... more on that in a minute).

Here's what I discovered through the suggestions of many and my own experimentation:

1) Make sure you're not running other programs at the same time.  This includes a lot of the stuff that loads in the background, which is part of the Windows Pagefile.  There are some tools you can use to trim your pagefile size... which will allow the RAM to work at top efficiency.

2) Turn off "Persistant Gore" in the game's video options.  It basically adds another layer of graphics to the characters... thus, more work for the system.  You might consider turning off "Frame Buffer Effects" as well, if you can stand the look.

3) Consider turning off verticle sync.  If you do, and you experience a lot of screen tearing, you can force it on via the Nvidia Control Panel.

4) Make sure you're running the latest drivers, which came out this month.  There are not a lot of old drivers for the GTS450, since it's fairly new... but the newest ones increase performance.

5) Now we're getting into the tricky stuff... you could consider throttling back the "memory clock" speed on your graphics card.  To do this, you'd need to install something like Nvidia System Tools... which can be found on the Nvidia website.  This made the pauses for me less frequent... but did not eliminate them.  It did it to deal with the spiky polygon issue... and it solved that, at least.

6) If you're using an Asus motherboard and something like PC2 6400 ram... you may find that the memory timings are not set.  This is done in the BIOS... Asus and some other boards don't always recognize RAM timings... if you boot your computer and it shows RAM speeds at something other then what you should have... say 666Mhz instead of 800MHz, you could try that.  A google search will help there.  I do NOT, by the way, recommend upgrading your motherboard BIOS unless you've experienced other system problems, like crashes in a lot of different programs.

Finally... in all honesty, I went ahead and played with the occasional freeze for a few months until I could upgrade my CPU/RAM/Motherboard.... an expensive prospect, I know.  I ended up getting a Phenom II X4 3.4GHz, faster RAM,  and new motherboard, so I could run two GTS450's in SLI configuration. 

Still, I hope those suggestions will help.  Another option is, of course, to try lowering the texture levels down a little.  There are also mods you can find that turn off all the glowing powers (Cleaning Aura, etc), which also eat up system resources-- I always hesitiate to suggest modifying the game, but in your case, it may help.

There are other possiblities linked in the solutions roundup that's pinned to the top of the forum... it's also linked to my signature, below. 

Good luck, and let us know what happens!

RI

Modifié par RaenImrahl, 23 mars 2011 - 03:33 .

[MrGrublet]

I got it to work last night for about 4 hours of playing and no problems at all. I tried a lot of those solutions already, but never considered turning the vertical sync off. I turned that off and lowered the graphics detail to just high settings(I can hardly tell the difference between high and very high) and now it works like a charm(with screen tearing). Thanks!

[RaenImrahl]

Glad that worked. You might want to try and force the GTS450 to handle v-sync... don't know if that will reinstate the problem or not, but may be worth a try.

1) Launch the Nvidia control panel (right click on desktop with Origins NOT running, select Nvidia Control Panel)
2) Under "3D Settings" select "Adjust image settings with preview". Select "Use the advanced 3D image settings" and hit "Apply" at the bottom of the screen.
3) Now go to "Manage 3D settings" and click the "Program Settings" tab
4) In the drop-down menu, select Dragon Age: Origins. If it's not there, click on the "Add" button and find the file Program Files(x86)\\Dragon Age\\bin_ship\\daorigins.exe and select it.
5) Scroll down to the last option in the list and set Vertical Sync to "Force On". Hit the "Apply" button.

[MrGrublet]

I started forcing on the v sync. There is no screen tearing anymore, but longer loading screens. Something I can deal with. Thanks a lot for all your help.

[Vladrian]

I've been having a similar issue, but my game freezes are centered around initiating conversation as well as during conversation the game freezes. The initiating conversation isn't bothersome, but the ones during conversation cause the game to become unresponsive. I had recently downgraded my operating system from Windows 7 64-bit to Windows 7 32-bit due to the incompatibility problem. I have the same video card, Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 with 275.33 drivers installed as earlier drivers cause graphical errors.
The rest of my computer specs:
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU
4.00 GB ram
Gigabyte EP45-UD3L motherboard

[RaenImrahl]

Vladrian wrote...

I've been having a similar issue, but my game freezes are centered around initiating conversation as well as during conversation the game freezes. The initiating conversation isn't bothersome, but the ones during conversation cause the game to become unresponsive. I had recently downgraded my operating system from Windows 7 64-bit to Windows 7 32-bit due to the incompatibility problem. I have the same video card, Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 with 275.33 drivers installed as earlier drivers cause graphical errors.
The rest of my computer specs:
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU
4.00 GB ram
Gigabyte EP45-UD3L motherboard

Graphical errors, like spiky polygon things?  That's the issue with the GTS450's factory overclocking.

Also, 275.33 has caused some serious issues with DA2.  I haven't seen any reports of it affecting Origins. 

Overall, to test, I suggest lowering your graphics settings and/or resolution... and see if you still get the problem.  The GTS450 is a good card, but it *is* a "budget" gaming card... not as powerful as higher 400 or 500 Nvidia cards.

Note sure what compatability problem you're refering to between 32 and 64-bit.

[Vladrian]

Well I had been having issues of constant CTDs when I had Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit, but that was before I upgraded my video card, and it was also after patch 1.03, if I recall correctly. I stopped playing because the crashes got rather annoying and just returned when I upgraded the video card about a month ago. After upgrading the video card the crashes became more frequent, so I scoured the forums and even checked out Microsoft's website which claimed there was an incompatibility between the two which is why I changed to Windows 7 32-bit. The graphical errors had nothing to do with the game, but when I installed the 270 (not sure of the exact driver number) driver for Nvidia, as my computer reloaded it had lines all of the screen that didn't go away so I switched back to 275.33.
As for the problem, I have tried reinstalling Dragon Age: Origins (original, retail CD) with Awakening, patch 1.04, and DLCs at least four times since downgrading. I have turned off persistant gore, the graphics are only set to high, and I'm going to try turning off vertical sync see if that works. The crashes are centered around scenes.
My audio specs are: High Definition Audio Device (which is a standard audio driver, I think) 6.1.7600.16385. I originally had Realtek High Definition Audio Driver installed, but assumed that was the issue and uninstalled it.

[Vladrian]

I turned off vertical sync, which had little affect on the game itself, and actually sped the game up (which I thought was a good plus). However after the intro video and conversation (I've been testing on a Dwarf Noble since their intro seems the most conversation heavy early on) I just left the warden's room when I received a blue screen error.
The report reads:
Faulting application name: DAOrigins.exe, version: 1.4.12393.0, time stamp: 0x4c093423
Faulting module name: MSVCR80.dll, version: 8.0.50727.4927, time stamp: 0x4a2752ff
Exception code: 0xc000000d
Fault offset: 0x00008aa0
Faulting process id: 0xae4
Faulting application start time: 0x01cc33a361eb8568
Faulting application path: C:\\Program Files\\Dragon Age\\bin_ship\\DAOrigins.exe
Faulting module path: C:\\Windows\\WinSxS\\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.4927_none_d08a205e442db5b5\\MSVCR80.dll
Report Id: 506abe76-9f9a-11e0-a61b-00241dd60349
I've gotten blue screens before with Dragon Age, but this is the first one that popped up since the most recent reinstall. I'm sorry I'm not very tech savvy so I'm just using trial and error to see if I can find a fix or not.

[RaenImrahl]

If you're getting BSOD, I suggest trying the folks in this forum:

http://www.sevenforu...shes-debugging/

.. they're pretty helpful. Read the first post on that site, and it will have instruction on how to compile your crash dumps for analysis.