571 réponses à ce sujet

[Andreas Papathanasis]

Hi everyone,

There have been lots of reports about loading screens getting slower the longer you play the game. (Lots of people use the term memory leak for this, but please refer to it as just "longer load times" for now). We're using this thread to collect more information on this bug from people who have it happen to them.

To be clear, this thread is only about the loading screens getting longer and longer the more you play the game. Normally, loading screens should never last more than 45 seconds to a minute, especially if your computer meets the recommended requirements. This thread only applies to you if you regularly get loading times longer than a minute. The longer the loading screen is on your computer (i.e. some people have mentioned 2-5 minutes loading screens), the more useful the data you can send us might be for us to figure out what the actual problem is.

To start with, may I please ask the following info from the people experiencing the problem:

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play? 
- amount of RAM you have on your system
- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
- is the loading times situation affected at all if you force the game to run on a single CPU only? To do that, start the game with the "-singlecore" command line parameter.

Thanks for your help and patience everyone as we're working through this issue, it's much appreciated.

Modifié par Andreas Papathanasis, 28 janvier 2010 - 02:42 .

[Titius.Vibius]

how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play?

The slowdown happens all the time with no exception. For the time before experiencing it varies from as low as 30 minutes to an hour specially if big areas are loaded like Denerim, Orzammar, and Brecillian Forest after which loading goes on a downward spiral until a reboot or relaunch of DA which corrects this slowdown. I have experienced three (3) minutes consistent maximum load time in between area transitions after the slowdown is noticeable. Furthermore, the interface specially in camp is excessively slow meaning keyboard shortcuts have a delay of at least 10 seconds before the relevant player or npc interface comes up (i.e.) I'm at camp during this time there is noticeable lag already, I press on "i" for inventory it takes time not instantaneous to pop up or when I talk to Bodahn about his inventory again it takes time not instanteneous for his inventory to pop up on my screen.

amount of RAM (and other system specifications) you have on your system

3.5 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 7750 Dual Core, WinXPSp3 32 Bit, 9800 GT 1024 MB, 80 GB SATA HDD (I know, I know)

will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

Encountered both full-screen and windowed.

CPU is at 100% even at the menu screen.

During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

Immediately after the loading screen is displayed and when there is already slowdown, the harddrive indicator takes time (also) to blink unlike when DA is first launched its intantaneous, the harddrive indicator blinks immediately indicating activity.

Modifié par Titius.Vibius, 14 janvier 2010 - 05:21 .

[Sloth Of Doom]

Ging to put my basics down now, and then get some hours in on the game so I can update with exact timings and proper screenshots.

Andreas Papathanasis wrote...


- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play? 

First long load experienced at 2hrs37 minutes into the game.  (fullscreen) Load time was 2mins32 seconds (Ostragar battle reload.)  Other load times for this session have been between 10 and 29 seconds.

- amount of RAM you have on your system

 
2GB  (Windows XP SP3 in case that eventually becomes an issue)

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

Both windowed and fullscreen, although I primarily play fullscreen and hence notice it more often there.  Will attempt to get some benchmarks both ways.

- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage. To get this screenshot:

Apparently my PrtScrn button isn't working (joy) so I will have to relay typed values.  During the first slow load daorigins.exe was taking 737,500K (give or take 400ish)  memory.  Oddly, daorigins.exe USUALLY takes between 760,000K-800,000K.  The only other significant mem usage is firefox with a steady 157,380K but I get slow loads with or without firefox running.

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

[No, the harddrive is only accessed periodically.

-Do you have any custom mods installed?

At this point yes, however they are recent (within the last 2 weeks) the problem existed previous to intalling them (Since release day)


Hrm this wasn't part of the original questions, but I just noticed (Task manager on a secondary monitor) that DA seems to love sucking up my CPU.  In fact, my CPU is -always- at 100% usage when DA is running, no matter what I run in the background.  Normally I would attribute this to an insufficient CPU, but DA doesn't seem to take a performance hit between having 52% of the CPU or 93%.     Is this relevant at all?  It seems somewhat....odd.
 

Modifié par Sloth Of Doom, 13 janvier 2010 - 07:07 .

[Nwalya42]

There have been lots of reports about loading screens getting slower the longer you play the game. (Lots of people use the term memory leak for this, but please refer to it as just "longer load times" for now). We're using this thread to collect more information on this bug from people who have it happen to them.

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played).
Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play?

Can't check this now, will do next time I play, but I think it started as being a handful of seconds to around 5-10 mins after about 3-4 hours. (sorry about the generalised times, I'll try and get more accurate ones)

- amount of RAM you have on your system

As in sig, 8GB (running 64 bit Windows 7)

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

Happens in fullscreen for me, shall try running in windowed.

- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage.

Will do, I'll play a few hours now and try and get this info for you.

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

Once again, I'll have to get back to you on that.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?

This one I can do. I do now, but when I first played I didn't, and the problem is there with or without them.

Modifié par Nwalya42, 13 janvier 2010 - 08:34 .

[devida]

Ill fill in the form next time i play (need to get the screen shot). But first I'd just like to thank you guys for looking into it.



I want to buy the expansion when it comes, but I dont think I will while this issue is here. If it gets fixed i will 100% buy it

[dan107]

Anyway, I experienced this issue myself a few times as well. I don't make it a habit of playing with a stopwatch, so I can't give exact times, but for me it became significant enough to notice after at least 3-4 hours of play. Load times are typically a few seconds initially, but would get long enough for me to go to the kitchen and make myself a sandwich while the game was loading. Don't know if it's relevant, but I Alt-Tab frequently while playing and usually have Firefox running in the background. Quitting and reloading fixes the issue.

I have 4 gigs of RAM, a dual core AMD CPU (6000 or thereabouts), EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS, running Vista 64 bit. Again, not sure if it's relevant, but I also have RivaTuner, Avira Antivirus, and Comodo Firewall running all the time. No other programs in the background.

Modifié par Torias, 13 janvier 2010 - 09:52 .

[phordicus]

it has varied from as short as 40 minutes before noticeable slowdowns to as long as 2 hours.  it happens every time i play.

4gb ram (really 3.x since it's XPSP3).

i've never run it windowed.

daorigins 278,872 (menu screen)
svchost 35476
explorer 23544
avguard 11804
sqlservr 7808
svchost 7184
21 others totalling ~66000

[kraftykid114]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played).
Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play?

on 6 loads and tests via a stop watch the load time would start at 5 secconds, and within 1/2-1 hour of play the load times are 2min 50 sec /  3min 22 sec / and at the peek  - 3min 54 sec

- amount of RAM you have on your system

8 gigs ram

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

the problem occurs in full and windowed mode, makes little to no difference between the two

-
a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on
your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage.

i will edit in and add a screen for you at a later time the ram usage is pegged at 100% along with cpu if that helps for now, and no i run nothing in the background aside from base win 7 operations.

[Andreas Papathanasis]

Thanks for the info so far everyone, and please keep adding information and the task manager screenshots to help us try and get an idea of the nature of the problem.



Some more info that may be of use to us (also added these to the original post)



- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

- Do you have any custom mods installed?



Sloth Of Doom: It can be possible for the CPU usage to reach 100% on single and dual core PCs, depending on the video card you have. This is normal and shouldn't cause any problems.



phordicus: It looks like you got the readings on the main menu screen, if you get a chance, could you please post the same readings from the task manager during a very long (longer than 2 minutes) loading screen?



Titius.Vibius : When you press I in the party camp and the inventory screen takes 10 seconds to come up, is your hard disk drive constantly being accessed during that time ?

[Dfballa]

I am running DA:O as administrator.

I am only playing for a like 20 minutes and then the load times get horribly slow and the lag is bad too. I am running fullscreen. I also have mostly everything set on medium settings. My rig:



AMD phenom 9600 quad-core 2.31 GHz

Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT 512 Mb

6.00 gigs of ram

WIndows vista x64 ultimate

[gx99-nq9y]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few
hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with
a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single
time you play? 
Yes, but now i cant even play the game properly
- amount of RAM you have on your system,
6gb DDr3 1066 mhz
- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?
i only use full screen
- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
no it doest,
- Do you have any custom mods installed?
battle dungeon Enigma, but turned it off and still doest fix my problem


afther a  time of the long loading screens the game fps start slowing down, and cpu being 100-99% all the time
stuttering frames at this rate the game is unposible to play, but now i have it instant

System specs
Windows 7 64bit home edition
6 Gb ddr3 1066mhz
T6600 2.20ghz Intel core 2 mobile
Ati Hd4650 1gb 320 stream processors Mobile version
15inch monitor

Modifié par gx99-nq9y, 13 janvier 2010 - 05:10 .

[Bfler]

When I start the game usually loading times are lower than <30 seconds, when it slows down some minutes. The slowdown isn't only affected by the time I play but also by the amount and size of the areas I visit. The worst area seems to be Orzammar. And like some others mentioned the the gameplay becomes a bit choppy because of lower fps.  
After a reload from the main menu the loading times are very short again.
I don't have special mods installed. 



My PC: CtD 2.4 ghz, 8800 GTS 640MB, 4 GB Ram, Vista 32bit

Modifié par Bfler, 13 janvier 2010 - 05:09 .

[Apophis2412]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play? 

The time at which the bug occurs seems to depend on which area you are playing in. In Orzammar the loadtimes slowed down after an hour. In the Circle of Magi only after 1 hour and 45 mins.

The load times sometimes go to 7 minutes.

And it happens every single time.

- amount of RAM you have on your system

2048

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only? 

Unknown. Never play in windowed mode.

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
 
No. It doesn't do anything for the first five minutes and than slowly begins to flicker again. After that you'l hear the 'cracking' sound for 30 secs and the area will load.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?

Official Content: Stone Prisoner, Warden's Keep, Lucky Stone, the Edge, Blood Dragon Armor
Mods: Some minor ones. Two of Val's Shapeshifting mods and one mod that adds talent books to your inventory.

- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage. To get this screenshot:

I'm not a home for the moment, so I'll update my post when I have the time.
  




EDIT: After the bug occurs both dialogue and inventory take 5-10 sec to load. The game itself runs without any lag however. Things like movement and combat are as fluid as ever. And as with the others, my processor goes to 100%.

System specs:
AMD Athlon 5600+
Geforce 8600 GT
2048 MB Ram
Windows 7

Modifié par Apophis2412, 13 janvier 2010 - 05:05 .

[Dercas723]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch

Loading from title screen to inside redcliff castle - 8seconds (10:15:20 to 10:15:28)

No lag at this point, runs perfect.

Loading from inside redcliff castle to courtyard - 10seconds (10:15:40 to 10:15:50)

Loading from map to mage tower - 50seconds (10:20:03 to 10:20:53)

Loading from mage tower entrance to inner tower - 1m 35s (10:22:45 to 10:24:20)

fights are slowing down a bit, some movement lag here and there

Loading from map to Redcliff village - 2m 50s (10:34:10 to 10:37:00)

Loading into Redcliff basement from city - 6m 54s ( 10:39:06 to 10:46:00)

Movement is laggy, 2-3 second pause when starting to talk to group members or ending conversations, menu loads take a few seconds.

Loading from basement to courtyard - 4m 8s (10:48:22 to 10:52:30)

Loading within Redcliff castle - 4m 55s (11:04:00 to 11:08:55)

Battles are very laggy at some points, turning your camera is laggy and the battle becomes a slideshow at some points.

Final Load - 7m 10s (11:15:05 to 11:22:15)

- amount of RAM you have on your system (and other stuff)

4GB of RAM
AMD Phenom 9600 Quad-Core Processor 2.29
Windows 7 64bit (had the same problems using win xp 32 bit)
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

Both modes.

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

No. Only once in awhile.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?

At the moment I have a few, but the problem was still there when just the base game was installed (and during all the patches as well)

- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen.

This first screenshot is taken before loading to a new area.
http://img706.images...98/72786123.gif

This second screenshot was taken during my last long load.
http://img5.imagesha...96/44149776.gif

-additional information

A few days ago I loaded into the game and went into my codex /journal to read all of the lore/information that I never read while playing. When I left that menu and went back into the game (around 1h 55mins later) there was no lag.

I did a test in a small zone like inner Redcliff castle. I loaded directly into the zone and just ran around for 30-45mins. I noticed a small increase in movement lag but nothing too big.

I did a second test in a large zone like Denerim City. I loaded directly into the zone and just did laps around the city. The first lap around there was no lag at all. After a few laps, some areas began to lag slightly and this kept increasing as I did more laps.  After about 30-45mins of laps almost all of the areas had atleast some lag and in a few areas the lag was extremly bad ( like a slideshow). The only thing i did was run around the city (no talking, fighting, and no loading into new areas)

Video after 45mins in Denerim: 

Modifié par Dercas723, 13 janvier 2010 - 07:27 .

[Sloth Of Doom]

Andreas Papathanasis wrote...


Sloth Of Doom: It can be possible for the CPU usage to reach 100% on single and dual core PCs, depending on the video card you have. This is normal and shouldn't cause any problems.

I don't worry that the ame CAN go up to 100% CPU usage, but why in the heck is it ALWAYS at 100% usage, no matter what I am doing in the game whether paused and minimized, fighting a huge battle, or sitting at the main menu screen?   The lack of a performance hit whether DA is using 51% or 93% of the CPU makes me think that the game doesn't NEED all those extra cycles fr anything, it is acting more like 'System Idle Process' and just registering whatever CPU percentage isn't being taken by other programs.   I have never seen any other program behave this way.

[TheWretchedDe]

Andreas Papathanasis wrote...

Hi everyone,
 [snip]

To start with, may I please ask the following info from the people experiencing the problem:

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play? 

It depends... but from initial sub 10 second load times in the dwarven city (i.e. a fresh start of the game itself), they can easily go up to 2 minutes (measured with my stopwatch, but some time ago, but I remember it being 2+ minutes) and more after 2-4 hrs of consequtive playing. Then, the game also starts to get choppy and laggy in game (i.e. opening menus, picking up loot, switching from game camera to "cutscene camera" takes some seconds instead of being instant)...

Yes, this happens every time I play, sometimes it takes longer to happen though.

- amount of RAM you have on your system

6 Gigabytes

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

Never tried windowed mode... so only fullscreen applies

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

No. It doesn't light up at all. But, the CPU is completely maxed out. Even tab switching takes 20 seconds and more to work. The in-game memory usage is about 1.1GB if this happens btw.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?

None at all. Just the official DLC.

- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage. To get this screenshot:
   - If you're running in fullscreen mode during the loading screen, press Alt+Tab to return to the desktop
   - Right click on the window's task bar and select "Task manager" 
   - On the window that appears, select the "Processes" tab
   - Click on the "Memory" cell in the grid that appears, so procecess that use more memory appear on top
   - Press Ctrl+Print Screen to take a screenshot of the window. Paste that in a program of your chose (like Paint) and save it out as an image. Alternatively you can type in your reply the name and memory usage of the processes that use lots of memory.

Sorry, I am not at my gaming machine now (here's Linux only) so I cannot provide a screenshot now.

Thanks for your help and patience everyone as we're working through this issue, it's much appreciated.

I might add... my computer has the following specs:

AMD Athlon X2 3800+
2x1GB and 2x2GB RAM (800Mhz)
ASUS M2N32 Sli Deluxe Mainboard
Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB

installed and running software:

Windows 7 Professional 64bit
Fraps
Pidgin
Daemon Tools Lite
Avira Anti Virus Personal Edition


And, the Windows installation is for gaming only AND brandnew.

[yellodogue]

I am also experiencing slow loads after playing for a while. I do not however run into cpu maxing out (doesn't really mean anything in my experience - task manager can make it max). Still have memory left, cleaned out temp, deleted old saves, always try to make sure codex is "read" for all entries I have. The hard drive does not thrash er... work very hard at all...



I would suggest there may be a file loading up somewhere - possibly a cache issue? since reloading does seem to alleviate the issue. I generally take it as a hint I'm playing for too long.



this occurs as an fyi - on windows 7 as well as Vista and XP - running with plenty of memory, video resources and hard drive space etc. etc. - we're um.. in the business... :-)



thanks!

[basdoorn]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played)

I used a travel going from the circle tower to denerim to force the game to load a new city. I played 1 hours and 54 minutes before doing this and saved the game just before. I measured the travel time and loading time at the end of the travel with a stopwatch. Then I reload the save, switch to windowed mode and make the travel again. Then I reload the game and switch back to fullscreen for comparison. After this, I quit the game and load the save game I made, repeating my actions once more. This way, it is easy to see what my particular setup is capable of after a fresh start and how much it slows down after hours of play.
Below are the times I recorded.

After 1hours and 54minutes of play: 27 seconds travel + 23 seconds loading = 50 seconds total
After 1 hours and 54minutes of play reloaded save windowed: 13 seconds travel + 2 seconds loading = 15 seconds total
After 1 hours and 54minutes of play reloaded save full-screen: 12 seconds travel + 1 seconds loading = 13 seconds total
After quitting and restarting game full-screen: 12 seconds travel + 1 seconds loading = 13 seconds total


- amount of RAM you have on your system
8GB PC2-6400, Intel 2.66GHz Q9450 processor, Asus P5Q-E mainboard, 2x Ati 4850 1GB in crossfire running Vista x64 ultimate


After I loaded the savegame from before my original travel, both in full-screen and windowed mode I get a much faster travel, even without restarting the game. Restarting the game gave identical results in fact. In any case, the actual loading time dropping from 23 seconds down to 2 or 1 second is a very large difference. I did not have the time for a longer gaming session this evening, but I remember much longer loading time on this same computer, easily 2-3 minutes, maybe more, from weekends when I would play 6 hours in a row.


- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage.


I made a task manager screenshot sorted by memory, after hours of play. With 8GB I never get over 50% of total memory used however. As you can see it was 46% at the time of the screenshot. It's in Dutch, but I reckon you only need the numbers and processes listed anyway, let me know if you need more details and good luck debugging.


gallery.doornvd.com/DragonAgeWindowedTravelPlaying2h.jpg


- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
No, harddisk activity starts only at the very end of the loading "process"


- Do you have any custom mods installed?
No, game version 1.02 with only DLC: Wardens keep, Stone prisoner, Blood dragon armor and Collectors edition

Modifié par basdoorn, 14 janvier 2010 - 06:36 .

[Sloth Of Doom]

Ok, so I left the game running unpaused (ostagar battle zone) for 14 hours and attempted a load. The load time was 17 seconds, which is in keeping with standard load times that I get when not playing for a long time.

To me this is indicative of the problem coming from repeated zone loading rather than length of time the game is running, but draw your own conclusions.


EDIT :

I started the game and just repeatedy loaded various saves.    After 15 saves I was up to 4 mins and 32 seconds load time.   As reported above, the memory usage of the game did not change outside of its normal range, nor did the harddrive light stay active.

Modifié par Sloth Of Doom, 14 janvier 2010 - 04:41 .

[stribies]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few
hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with
a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single
time you play?
Yes, I'm usually forced to reboot my computer after about 2hours of playing.

It gets very bad after several hours. After 1 hour, 30mins, the load screen is at around 1min. 4 Hours is well over 5mins and the game is nearly unplayable. Everything in the game is slowed down quite a bit, from opening your inventory to simple things like activating an aura.

- amount of RAM you have on your system
2gigs

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?
I usually play in windowed mode but it affects both.

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
It's always blinking, so I'm not entirely sure if it's abnormal to have it blinking during the load screens.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?
I have the respec mod installed but the problem has occured before I downloaded it.

-
a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on
your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage.
To get this screenshot:
I can't exactly get a screenshot at the moment so you'll just have to trust the information that I'm giving.

My memory usage of daorigins.exe is 680,256k.
Next highest is firefox at 69,004k.
Steam at 65,912k

Cpu Usage is nearly 100%

[Some Dude On The Internet]

Operating System     Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
DirectX                         DirectX 11.0 (Verified w/ DXDIAG)
CPU Type                    QuadCore Intel Core i7 Extreme 975, 3333 MHz (25 x 133)
Motherboard Name   MSI X58 Pro SLI (MS-7522)
System Memory         12279 MB  (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
Graphics                      Diamond ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5
Video Driver                 Catalyst Version 09.12

Drive is defragmented on a regular basis, and page file is kept on a separate hard drive from System / OS drive.


Numbers below start with fresh boot (full power-down cold boot)

Baseline Memory Usage            After 10 Minutes       After 30 Minutes
=====================        =============      ================
Total           12279        
Cached        2105                                        2320                         2412
Avail            10104                                        9001                         8917
Free               8276                                        6980                        6789
Physical          17%                                         26%                        27%

Loading saved Game 3 to 5 seconds consistently

Area transitions (within single location Mage Tower)
================
Beginning            6 secs                               11 secs               17 secs


Program Memory Use (DAORIGINS.EXE)
==================================
Begin                   711,928                               745,780                751,952


Dragon Age content installed:
=============================
All Official DLC's, PCGamer "Tale of Orzammar" standalone content
No user / toolkit mods
Current patch (via Steam)



If I remember correctly, the long loads seem to happen after 60-70 minutes or so - will try and grab some statistics when I play later.

[Sakura_Kira]

Ok i got directed here.
I have random slowdown of loadtimes. Appearently longer than 2Minutes (getting worse).It starts at special places like orzammar and kind of jams the loading until the game is restarted.

- amount of RAM you have on your system
4GB and variable Pagefile
- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?
window and fullscreen
- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
nope just random flash ... no loading (since my pc is supersilent i can't tell if hdd is doing anything)
- Do you have any custom mods installed?
yes, but only DLC from Bioware (the ones from the package)

Ram Usage seems no Problem, System rarely is over 3GB with Background tasks.DA taking up to 1,7 GB
Random stutterst occur but can be cleared by reloading/restarting. Vsync is on since i get ~140fps normally and thatswhy i have tearing.Frameratedrops do not depend on heavy load in areas and can NOT be cleared by changing res and such.
My Rig:
i7 860 (SMT+Turbo enabled) ... same with SMT off
4GB Ram (GSkill)
Sapphire Radeon 5870 (Catalyst 9.12)
Win7 x64 Pro @ Intel SSD (X25-M)
Game on Hitachi 1TB Data (AAM on ... should not post a problem, 'cause before it also had this issiue)
Game @1680x1050 with 8x Adaptive MSAA (changing AA or turning it off doesn't make any difference).

Edit:Framedrops can be seen in Fraps. I tried several times and frames drop by 20-40fps.How I did it? made a savegame and fired up fraps. Looked at the frames (not moving my char or anything).Played a while and reloaded the savegame without exiting the game (around 20+ fps less).Restarted Game and the fps are back to normal. Normally it's not noticable because fps are constant higher than 80fps, but when playing longer than the 50min (oder better said 5-6 Loadscreens) it might hurt into performance (like it looked at the ending fight after 5-6 hours of gameplay, i got even a stutter wich seems less than 25fps, reloaded DA and everything was back normal).

Modifié par Sakura_Kira, 14 janvier 2010 - 12:48 .

[Offkorn]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play?

Time played is irrelevent (for me anyway). Number of (logo) loading screens traversed is what increases it.

Yes it happens every time.

- amount of RAM you have on your system

3GB originally (non 64-bit system), 8GB now. Issue persists with no noticeable difference.

Game RAM usage remains an essentially constant 1.2 GB.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?

Originally no. Now yes. Same behavior either way.

Modifié par Offkorn, 14 janvier 2010 - 04:46 .

[LadySeryn]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play? 

When I first load the game, all loading screens are about 5 to 6 seconds long.  They stay this way for about 2 hours, on average.  After 2 hours, they start getting longer and longer.

2 Hours --> 23 seconds
2 Hours 25 Minutes -> 40 seconds
2 Hours 35 Minutes -> 55 seconds
2 Hours 45 Minutes -> 70 seconds

I usually restart the game before I let the loading screens get any longer.  I know this thread is supposed to be for people experiencing the problem with loading times of well over a minute, but I am seeing the exact same behaviour they are describing, just to a lesser extent.  I will continue playing the game and see how long the loading screens get.

UPDATE: I noticed that when the loading screens start to slow down, the red blood droplets that move across the world map also slow down quite a bit, even before the "Loading" message appears.  Also, it's taking 4 or 5 seconds to load Bodahn's shop in the party camp, and it's taking 4 or 5 seconds to exit from dialog / cutscenes before the camera switches back to the normal view.

UPDATE 2: 3 Hours 30 Minutes, load times are up to 100 seconds and showing no sign of getting any better.

UPDATE 3: 3 Hours 55 Minutes, up to 125 seconds

- amount of RAM you have on your system

8 GB
Core 2 Quad Q6600
NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX
SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Playing the Steam version of Dragon Age.  Steam reports that the game cache files are not fragmented at all.

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?

Normally only play in fullscreen.  I will test with windowed mode and report back.

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?

No.  Hard drive light is off, though I can hear some small amount of hard drive activity.  (No more than usual).

UPDATE:  Indicator is still not constantly blinking, but I am hearing a bit more hard drive activity during load screens the more I play.

- Do you have any custom mods installed?

Just a mod to make the Ancient Elven Boots available in the party camp.  No other third-party mods.  I was experiencing similar behaviour before loading the mod, however.

- a screenshot of the task manager with a list of processes running on your system during a very long loading screen, sorted by memory usage. To get this screenshot:

After first loading the game and loading a save game:
img43.imageshack.us/img43/1148/daoafterloadinggame.png

After playing for 2 hours and 45 minutes:
img233.imageshack.us/img233/1687/daoslowloadingscreen2h4.png

After playing for 4 hours:
img191.imageshack.us/img191/6001/daoslowloadingscreen4h.png

I have several other columns visible besides the memory usage (I also do some development work).  I noticed that the handles in use have increased quite dramatically after playing for a long time.  I'm not sure if that is normal or not.

Will post more information in a bit.

Modifié par LadySeryn, 14 janvier 2010 - 06:00 .

[Darkinitiate]

- how long does a loading screen last after having played for a few hours (and how many hours you've played). Please measure the time with a stopwatch and don't use an estimate. Does this happen every single time you play?
The loading screen can last up to 2 minutes from anywhere to 10 minutes to an hour of playing and keeps getting worse until the game is restarted, large fights also seem to make the next load point very slow. This happens every time i play.

- amount of RAM you have on your system
3GB

- will the problem happen in windowed mode or fullscreen only?
Both

- During the super long load screen, is the hard drive indicator light constantly blinking?
No just a few flickers

Do you have any custom mods installed?
No

daorigins.exe 1,047,74... after going through a few loading screens


My system specs:
Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
AMD Phenom™ 9500 Quad-Core Processor 2.2GHz
3GB ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Modifié par Darkinitiate, 14 janvier 2010 - 05:28 .