8 réponses à ce sujet

[Squidmaster]

I am getting a fair amount of game crashes of the variety: Dragon Age: Origins has stopped working.  The messages never give any details.  Sometimes I get these seemingly at random, such as when in the middle of combat or when transitioning between areas (I don't think I have had any in conversations yet, nor at startup or initial save loading).  Other times I think I am getting a specific bug interaction with Affliction Hex.  I have had at least 5 crashes that have happened immediately upon casting this spell.  One thread on the internet suggests that this happens when another combatant is also casting any spell, but I have not tested that element thoroughly, and no solution was provided on that thread.  I do know that I have sometimes had 2 characters casting, one of them using this hex, and not get a crash.

I have this computer, unmodified hardware-wise with all drivers updated fully, running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit with 6 gigs of ram.  I have Origins 1.04 with no Awakening, and only the Shale DLC along with that, installed from DVD.  I have no mods currently installed.

Thanks for any help you can provide.  I am chronically ill, so dealing with this kind of stuff is a challenge.

Modifié par Squidmaster, 24 octobre 2011 - 12:02 .

[Althernai]

This game doesn't get along with quad core CPUs and Windows 7 x64. You can reduce the frequency of crashes by setting the CPU affinity to exactly 2 cores (if you have a modern CPU, this should not hurt performance much). You can either set the affinity in Task Manager once the game is running (but you have to do this every time the game is started) or you can do it automatically with a shortcut. I've described the latter method in this post. Hopefully this will help you -- otherwise you've found yet another hard crash...

[Squidmaster]

I will try the shortcut out and see what happens. Which cpu affinity should I choose with my computer? I am not an expert on the specifics of architectures and the like.

You mention in that thread that you need the 1.05 patch for downloadable content. I have 1 of them downloaded and it worked correctly. Does this mean I don't need it, or is 1 not really a test? I am strongly considering getting more, maybe all of them if people recommend them, as I am really enjoying the game.

I was able to avoid some crashes today by being very careful with my Affliction spell, by the way. Today suggests that it is related to having 2 characters casting at the same time, with one of them using Affliction. I will test more thoroughly with that once I feel a little better and am in an easy reload situation. I think I recall having someone cast Cone of Cold at the same time as the Affliction and not having an issue, but I will try that again to be sure.

[Althernai]

I will try the shortcut out and see what happens. Which cpu affinity should I choose with my computer? I am not an expert on the specifics of architectures and the like.

Set it to 5. Your link doesn't say exactly which CPU you have, but all of the Core i7 processors have hyperthreading so 5 will make it use the first and second physical cores.

You mention in that thread that you need the 1.05 patch for downloadable content. I have 1 of them downloaded and it worked correctly. Does this mean I don't need it, or is 1 not really a test? I am strongly considering getting more, maybe all of them if people recommend them, as I am really enjoying the game.

That problem is rather specific. I bought the so-called Ultimate Edition which includes the original game, the Awakening expansion and all of the downloadable content for about $30 or maybe even less now. Unfortunately, the version I bought (from EA's Origins service) fails to install the service necessary to authenticate this content. Thus, the content is instaled, but you can't use it. The beta patch 1.05 fixes this, but it also breaks something else which causes loading times to rapidly increase after the game has been played for about an hour or so. This is independent of the CPU affinity issue.

[Squidmaster]

Your instructions are very clear for setting up this fix in your other thread. Thanks for that. When I run this, do I need to reboot to get all my cores going again or is this specific to the game only?

<update>
I set this up and ran it today.  I haven't had a crash yet (that isn't really indicative of anything), but my load times are quite a lot longer using this than not, and my framerate/general game speed seems to take a small hit larger areas.  Is that normal?

Modifié par Squidmaster, 25 octobre 2011 - 11:29 .

[Althernai]

You don't need to reboot -- it's application specific and only gets called when you run the application through that shortcut.

Regarding the load times: that should not have anything to do with this. The number of CPU cores should not be a bottleneck; load times are bound by the speed of your storage access and whatever bug Bioware has introduced that makes them slower with the patch. Even for me, the load times are fairly rapid for about half an hour, it's just that they deteriorate with time.

The frame rate decrease is possible (you are preventing the game from using all of your hardware), but a bit strange. Can you tell me the exact model of your CPU (the linked page only says "Core i7" which includes several processors). Also, make sure you are using affinity value 5 -- anything lower and you're only loading up one physical core.

[Squidmaster]

It's an i7 920. There was no doubt of the change between using the executable and not when it came to the speed issues. I would guess that my load times for walking out of a building in Denerim were about 3 times longer than they were prior, and even walking out of a building in a tiny zone like Flemeth's house involved a several second delay at first where it wouldn't even say it was loading anything on a black screen. This is not typical of my experience to date.

I didn't get any bugs yesterday. I have had some days like that, and it was a very conversation-heavy day in the game. Still, none beats more than none.

[Althernai]

The i7-920 should be enough even with only 2 cores. I have an i7-2720QM and I don't see this issue even when I disable Turbo Boost and limit the CPU to 2 cores running at 2.2 GHz. I don't know why the loading times would increase. If you're lucky, it is related to whatever is causing the increase with the beta patch and in that case, the promised patch 1.05 (final version) should fix it, but that's not guaranteed.

If you want, you can try setting the affinity to 15 instead of 5. This corresponds to logical cores 0, 2 and 4 (I am assuming you have not disabled hyperthreading so those are the first 3 physical cores). If you do that, there should be no CPU bottleneck at all. The drawback is that the frequency of crashes will increase. As I said in the other thread, reducing the number of cores only partially fixes the problem and you'll get more crashes with 3 than with 2.

You can also check this thread for other solutions (scroll down to "Performance Issues (Slow Gameplay) and Crashing Issues"). There are a few other solutions there that may be worth trying if the affinity thing is not working out for you (running in compatibility mode, disabling the frame buffer, etc.).

[Squidmaster]

Would alt-tabbing over time slow the game down? I tend to do that a lot. I look up stuff or check a football team or whatever and go back in off and on.

Oh, and an update.  So far, this method seems to have fixed my issues with Affliction hex.  I have tried having both casters cast at the same time a couple times now and no crashes.  On the last one, there was a very mild hiccup and then business as usual.

Modifié par Squidmaster, 27 octobre 2011 - 01:06 .