Dear fellow PC Inquisitors,
Based on the success of a similar thread I started on the THIEF forums earlier this year, I have decided to make a collection of all of the tweaks and fixes currently available for PC, at least until BioWare decide to release some patches! I will constantly update this post, but in the meantime let's start with:
1. Make sure to install/repair ALL of the redistributables in the "Dragon Age Inquisition/_Installer" folder
While Origin should install all of the necessary redistributables by default after installing and running DA:I for the first time, it cannot hurt to manually check if all of the C++ and DirectX runtimes in the "_Installer" folder were installed correctly, especially since this has been shown to fix CTDs related to DirectX and, in some instances, poor performance.
BioWare themselves also recommend that everyone install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64), as a fix for receiving "Error 0xc000007b" when starting the game!
Finally, make sure you also have all of the previous DirectX runtime files installed in order to avoid errors concerning missing .dll files (e.g. D3DCOMPILER.DLL)!
2. Update your system's drivers to their latest available versions
The latest GPU drivers currently available for downloading are the Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.3 driver for AMD GPUs and the GeForce 368.81 WHQL driver for NVIDIA GPUs (Windows 10 version available here).
If your GPU driver installer wizard does not offer the option to do a clean install (i.e. uninstalling the current drivers before installing the latest ones), then please use Display Driver Uninstaller to remove your current driver, then reboot and install the latest one! This can save you a lot of frustration later on, since having multiple GPU driver iterations can cause unexplained performance issues!
Furthermore, check your motherboard manufacturer's webpage (i.e. ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.) for updated platform drivers (e.g. chipset, SATA, LAN, wireless, audio, etc.), as well as BIOS versions! If you do find driver and/or BIOS updates on your motherboard manufacturer's webpage, install them straight away, but NEVER use any driver updater software to do so, no matter how reliable they may appear or how many positive reviews they have! You ONLY want to install driver and BIOS updates that have been validated by your motherboard's official manufacturer!
Thanks for the tip, Kaligo!
3. Disable ALL of the overlays that you might be running (Origin In-Game, FRAPS, Riva Tuner, Afterbuner, Shadowplay, etc.)
Certain overlays have been found to significantly impact the game's performance by causing freezes and stuttering, so it is highly recommended that you disable the Origin In-Game overlay (don't worry, you can still earn achievements regardless!), as well as any other overlays that you might be running, including FRAPS, Riva Tuner, MSI Afterburner, NVIDIA Geforce Experience Shadowplay, etc.!
Should you wish to monitor your framerate, the in-game console is a much better alternative to FRAPS in this case, since it does not impact performance. This can be enabled by pressing the key to the left of "1" on your keyboard (i.e. "`" or "~") in-game and typing in:
PerfOverlay.DrawFps 1
Alternatively, you can open Notepad, paste in the same line and save the file as "user.cfg" in your game root folder (e.g. C:\\Program Files\Origin\Dragon Age Inquisition) so that it runs every time you start the game!
4. Fix freezing in the main menu and crashes related to DirectX or Mantle
A number of players have been experiencing freezing/crashing occurring after a few seconds since loading the main menu. Thanks to SpiritSharD93, I can now include the following possible fixes:
Disable auto-login from the in-game settings and/or start Origin in offline mode
or
Alt-tab from the game, go into Task Manager, right-click "dragonageinquisition.exe", select "Set Affinity" and disable one more cores. After loading the game, re-enable all of the cores using the same method!
Source: GiantBomb
Players have also reported that rolling back your GPU drivers a few versions (e.g. the 340.XY-series drivers for NVIDIA GPUs) can prevent the DirectX function "getdeviceremovedreason" failed with DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG error! Thanks for the tip, unclee!
EA themselves have also recommended the following fix:
Go to your "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age Inquisition\Save" folder and delete the file "ProfileOptions_profile" (or you could just move it somewhere else on your PC for safekeeping). This will also reset your key bindings, so you will need to redo them when you launch the game, but it will not delete your save games, so you can rest easy! Thanks go to blackbox11 for sharing this!
Source: AnswerHQ
5. Fix absent party banter/music and prevent performance degradation over long periods of play
There have been a lot of players reporting absent party banter over abnormally large periods of play time. BioWare themselves have recommended some potential workaround, listed here below:
Switch up party members: There is a limitation on the amount of banter between characters, and it is possible to exhaust it over the course of a playthrough, especially with a static group of followers.
Explore on foot: Banter will not fire while the player is mounted or in combat, so stop to smell the roses (or pick the elfroot) from time to time.
Complete missions and talk to followers: some banter is tied to your progression through the main story (you wouldn’t want Sera spoiling the plot for you, would you?). Playing through the main story and learning more about your companions will unlock more banter.
Visit new places: Similar to party members, it’s possible to exhaust the banter for an area. It’s a great wide world out there, so go exploring.
Turn on subtitles: If you are concerned there might be something wrong with your sound system, turning on subtitles will help you identify if you’re hearing the banter as it occurs.
Source: BioWare
Several players have also discovered that checking off completed (and possibly also new) quests in your journal can lead to more frequent party banter, as well as prevent performance degradation over long periods of play (2-3 hours, especially on the bigger maps such as the Hinterlands)!
Source: DemGeth
6. Cap your overall framerate and uncap the cutscene framerate to match it (only AFTER creating your character!)
Capping your framerate using the in-game console can result in a much smoother gameplay experience, by minimising or altogether eliminating framerate drops, depending on the value of the cap and the capabilities of your current setup. Please note that using DA:I's built-in framerate limiter might result in excessive amounts of screen tearing for no apparent reason, so if that happens to you, you're probably better off capping your framerate using either the Frame Rate Limiter option in NVIDIA Inspector or Adaptive/Regular V-sync. To implement DA:I's built-in framerate limiter in Origin, right-click on the Dragon Age: Inquisition icon, select "Game Properties" and paste in the following line:
-GameTime.MaxVariableFps X
X is your desired overall framerate cap, such as 30, 60, etc. and is actually a floating number. Therefore, should you wish to cap your framerate to your monitor's refresh rate, then the X value would be best set to 0.01 frames less than your monitor's actual refresh rate, which is listed in the display settings in-game. For example:
If your monitor's refresh rate is listed as 60 Hz in the display menu, you would want to set GameTime.MaxVariableFps to "59.99". Similarly, if your monitor's refresh rate is listed as 59.95 Hz in the display menu, you would want to set GameTime.MaxVariableFps to "59.94".
Source: Battlelog
If you want to cap your framerate below your monitor's refresh rate, then to get the best results you should apply the same principle and set GameTime.MaxVariableFps to 0.01 frames less than your desired framerate cap. For instance, my personal monitor is shown to have a refresh rate of 119.98 Hz, but I would not gain anything from setting GameTime.MaxVariableFps to "119.97". Instead, I want to cap my frames at 60 FPS, so I just set GameTime.MaxVariableFps to "59.99". Similarly, I could have set it to "29.99" if I wanted to cap my framerate at 30 FPS!
The cutscene framerate fix involves pasting both of the following command lines:
-GameTime.MaxSimFps X -GameTime.ForceSimRate X+
into the "Game Properties" window in Origin, where X is your desired cutscene framerate. This will not work if you don't copy both lines!
Furthermore, the above fix for uncapping the cutscene framerate can be successfully implemented without having to cap your overall framerate as well! The idea behind capping both the cutscene and overall framerates to the same value is to make transitions from gameplay to cutscenes and back again as smooth as possible!
To this extent, X should match the floating value set for GameTime.MaxVariableFps if you want to cap your framerate to your monitor's refresh rate, or it should match the same integer value, should you want to cap your framerate to a value below your monitor's refresh rate. Here are some common examples which you can paste directly into your "Game Properties" window:
Example of a 30 FPS cap with matching cutscene framerate (60 Hz actual refresh rate):
-GameTime.MaxSimFps 29.99 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 29.99+ -GameTime.MaxVariableFps 29.99
Example of a 60 FPS cap with matching cutscene framerate (59.95 Hz actual refresh rate):
-GameTime.MaxSimFps 59.94 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 59.94+ -GameTime.MaxVariableFps 59.94
Example of a 60 FPS cap with matching cutscene framerate (119.98 Hz actual refresh rate):
-GameTime.MaxSimFps 59.99 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 59.99+ -GameTime.MaxVariableFps 59.99
Source: NeoGAF
Note, however, that uncapping the cutscene framerate will result in a serious glitch should you try it before first creating your character in singleplayer! Therefore, you should first create your character, go through all of the initial cutscenes and only when you step into actual gameplay should you save your game and then implement the cutscene fix!
The cutscene framerate fix also seems to negatively affect multiplayer at the moment, so please remove "-GameTime.MaxSimFps X -GameTime.ForceSimRate X+" from the Game Properties window whenever you wish to play multiplayer. Alternatively, you can create two shortcuts on your desktop: one for singleplayer - containing the cutscene fix and one for multiplayer - without the cutscene fix!
7. Disable motion blur, force VSync/Triple Buffering off to improve input latency and more using in-game console commands
Motion blur cannot be individually disabled through the in-game settings menu, but it can be disabled outside of the game without lowering any settings, by opening the in-game console (press "`" or "~") and typing in the following command, or by alternatively pasting it in your "user.cfg" file in the DA:I root folder:
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0
Source: Battlelog
Furthermore, you can try to force VSync and triple buffering off in order to reduce input latency, by also pasting in the following lines:
RenderDevice.VSyncEnable 0
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
Here is what one of the developers of the Frostbite 3 engine had to say about these tweaks and more when they were used in Battlefield 4, which shared the same graphics engine:
"We are starting to call this "cargo-cult configuring" at the office :-) But seriously, I think you should now what you are turning off before copy-pasting this cfg:
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0 and PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0: This would turn of motion blur and ambient occlusion post processes respectively. The other motion blur related settings is not affecting performance when motion blur is disabled and not needed. This is probably the settings that are making a difference for you.
WorldRender.SpotlightShadowmapEnable 0: This disables shadows from spotligts, like street lights and indoor lighting (but not the sun). WorldRender.SpotlightShadowmapResolution doesn't affect performance if they are turned off.
RenderDevice.RenderAheadLimit 0, 1, 2 or 3 and TripleBufferingEnable 0 or 1 both affect how many frames we render ahead. Should not reduce performance, but will increase input latency slightly and give you smoother mean framerate.
WorldRender.LightTileCsPathEnable 0: For certain GPUs this might affect performance. Test for yourself, you can toggle it yourself in the in-game console (~). Hint: Use PerfOverlay.DrawGraph 1 to monitor this.
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable, RenderDevice.Dx11Dot1Enable, RenderDevice.Dx11Dot1RuntimeEnable: We automatically detect GPU capabilities. If you have a Dx11 capable card you should have it enabled, especially 11.1 on Win8, since we use some of the features there to increase performance.
9. Fix stuttering and screen tearing during cutscenes, regardless of their framerate
Forcing VSync and Triple Buffering off using the above commands in your "user.cfg" file and forcing them back on via your GPU driver control panel can eliminate stuttering and screen tearing during cutscenes, without affecting input lag. Thanks go to Schwayk for this workaround!
If cutscenes continue to stutter after applying the first fix, try lowering your Terrain Quality setting down to "High"!
Source: Twitter
Alternatively, you can also try to mitigate cutscene stutter by setting your in-game mouse smoothing slider to 75%!
Source: NeoGAF
10. Try playing in Borderless Windowed mode
From what I've seen, this has a 50/50 chance of resulting in a better gameplay experience. It personally does nothing for my setup, but it doesn't hurt to try it for yourselves and see if it makes a difference, especially since this has been shown to have eliminated screen tearing.
11. Fix microstuttering while panning the camera around using mouse and keyboard
Are you plagued with constant microstutter even outside of cutscenes, while simply panning the camera around or moving through the world using your mouse and keyboard? Thanks to Skeevley, we now know that camera movement microstuttering can apparently be fixed by moving the Mouse Smoothing slider in the in-game settings menu a few notches to the RIGHT of the default setting, not the left!
GODzilla experimented a bit further with this setting and confirmed that moving the Mouse Smoothing slider three notches to the RIGHT of the default setting eliminated camera movement microstuttering:
"The camera-jumping only stopped when I set it THREE notches to the right from the default setting. One did nothing, two did nothing but the third notch did it for good."
Thanks a lot for sharing, GODzilla!
12. Force DA:I to always use the highest quality Anisotropic Filtering (AF)
In DA:I, the level of Anisotropic Filtering (AF) cannot be set manually since it is automatically determined by other graphical settings. However, AF can very noticeably improve the quality and sharpness of distant textures at an almost non-existent performance impact on today's systems, so it can safely be forced to its maximal value in DA:I in two ways:
Modifying your ProfileOptions_profile file
1) Navigate to your "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age Inquisition\Save" folder
2) Open the "ProfileOptions_profile" file with Notepad
3) Change the "GstRender.AnisotropicFilter" parameter to "4".
Forcing AF through your video driver control panel
Open the application profile for DA:I in either NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Catalyst Control Center, depending on your choice of GPU, and set AF to its maximum setting (x16) manually. Save the profile changes and you're done!
13. Disable/lower graphical options with little/no impact on image quality
The following settings can be lowered without any significant loss in image quality, in an attempt to reduce stuttering and free GPU usage in general:
Ambient Occlusion to "HBAO" instead of "HBAO Full"
Texture Quality to "Ultra" instead of "Fade-Touched"
This is especially relevant for the Texture Quality setting, since "Fade-Touched" only introduces a larger texture cache for Ultra textures on GPUs with a lot of VRAM!
Source: NeoGAF
Also check this other post by Andrew Burnes, writer of the official NVIDIA graphics performance tweaking guides:
"In my testing, put Mesh Quality on High to greatly improve the IQ of characters, put post process AA on Medium or High and only activate MSAA when everything else is cranked up and if you have perf to spare, drop Effects to High (minute difference between High and Ultra, but a huge perf difference), use HBAO instead of HBAO Full, and only use Fade Touched Textures on high VRAM cards.
In general, I found the Ultra options slightly better than High versions, but with a considerably higher perf cost. If you're like me and go looking you see the improvements and want all the sweet bells and whistles enabled, but if you really don't mind a near-imperceptible change in quality during gameplay, just drop everything but textures down one tick."
Tessellation also comes at a significant performance cost in DA:I, so consider turning it down a notch or two for a significant framerate boost! Thanks for the tip, DragonAgeLegend! Sola Gon_ was also kind enough to provide us with comparison images:
Notice how the ground does not get noticeably tessellated on "Low" and "Medium", which saves a lot of GPU time, so consider not having Tessellation Quality on "High" (~ 6 FPS hit) and "Ultra" (~ 15 FPS hit) if you want to gain quite a few extra frames!
However, Rubios noted that dropping Effects Quality below "Ultra" results in pixelated shaders, so try playing around with this setting to find out if the performance gain is worth the loss in fidelity!
14. Use ReShade to improve image quality at little to no performance cost
ReShade represents a means of improving the visual quality of almost every PC game by tweaking individual parameters such as contrast, antialiasing, HDR, bloom, texture sharpness and much, much more. Through the use of user-generated presets, one can tweak The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to match their own visual preference. In order to implement ReShade for Dragon Age: Inquisition, simply follow the instructions below to get it working in no time!
NOTE: ReShade does not work well (if at all) with most other overlays including Origin's one, so please make sure that all overlays are disabled before trying to get any game to run correctly with ReShade!
To install ReShade:
a. Download the archive containing the latest ReShade version (i.e. 2.0.3f1) and unpack its contents in a separate folder of your choosing. The contents of the archive will be: ReShade folder, EULA.txt, REFERENCE.md, ReShade Assistant Preview.exe, ReShade Assistant.exe, ReShade Assistant.ini, ReShade.fx, ReShade32.dll and ReShade64.dll.
b. Open the ReShade Assistant interface by double-clicking on ReShade Assistant.exe, close the automatic EULA.txt pop-up window and navigate to the Assistant's "Profiles" tab by clicking on it. To create a new profile for Dragon Age: Inquisition, click on the "+" button above the "Default" profile, then navigate to your installation folder and select dragonageinquisition.exe. You will be presented with a choice of renderer .dll library files, so make sure the radio button next to "dxgi" is selected and then click on the "Confirm" button in the lower-right of the window. If prompted by the Assistant, an extra "Save" button can also appear in the "Confirm" button's place and that needs to be clicked as well for added confirmation.
c. Download your favourite preset from the SweetFX Settings Database page for Dragon Age: Inquisition to a location of your choosing (e.g. your Windows Desktop for extra convenience), then navigate to the Assistant's "Presets" tab, click on "+" button above the "Default" preset and give the new preset a name of your choosing (e.g. "DragonAgeInquisition").
d. With the newly-created Dragon Age: Inquisition preset selected within the "Presets" tab, navigate to the Assistant's "Shaders" tab where you will be presented with tick boxes for every available shader that can be injected into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Open the preset text file you downloaded from the SweetFX Settings Database side-by-side with the Assistant's "Shaders" tab and check which shaders have "1" (i.e. enabled) written next to them under the text file's "Choose Effects" section. In order to emulate the look given by the downloaded preset, you will first need to tick all of the boxes corresponding to the same shaders in the Assistant's "Shaders" tab (e.g. tick the box next to "SMAA - CeeJay" if "define USE_SMAA" was set to "1" under the preset file's "Choose Effects" section). As an added bonus for any game, not just Dragon Age: Inquisition, I would strongly suggest that you also always tick the box of the "Deband - JPulowski" shader in order to fix any potential shader banding artifacts. Furthermore, there's no need to mess with any of Deband's individual parameters, since its default values work perfectly fine without any further adjustment!
e. After ticking all of the boxes corresponding to the same shaders marked as "1" (i.e. enabled) in the preset text file, you will also have to right-click on each of the ticked shaders within the Assistant's "Shaders" tab and manually edit each of their individual parameters in the "Shader Settings" tab so as to match the ones contained within the preset text file (e.g. if the "SMAA - CeeJay" shader was ticked in the "Shaders" tab, make sure to input the same values for "#define SMAA_THRESHOLD", "#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS", "#define SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG" and so on found under the SMAA Anti Aliasing Settings section of the preset text file). After all of the individual parameter values have been copied over for each of the ticked shaders under the Assistant's "Shaders" tab, click the "Save" button in the lower-right corner of the window.
f. Make sure the profile and preset you just created for Dragon Age: Inquisition are associated with one another (i.e. both should appear highlighted within their separate Assistant tabs), then click the "Save" button in the lower-right corner of the window once more, close the ReShade Assistant altogether and run the game as you normally would. If ReShade was installed correctly, you will see a temporary text overlay as your game boots up, displaying the current version of ReShade and the names of some of the shaders that you have ticked for your newly-created Dragon Age: Inquisition preset. Furthermore, pressing the Scroll Lock (ScrLk) button on your keyboard will result in ReShade switching on and off, so that you might better see the difference it makes in-game!
g. Enjoy your flashy new game! 
To uninstall ReShade:
Within the Assistant's "Presets" tab, simply select the profile you created for Dragon Age: Inquisition and click the "-" button. ReShade will then no longer apply for Dragon Age: Inquisition, but your created preset will still remain available to be selected to other games! .gif ";)")
15. Perform downsampling using the in-game console
If you have performance to spare, you can use downsampling to boost the visual quality of DA:I by having the game render all assets at a higher resolution and then scale it back so that it can be displayed on your monitor. This results in an overall significantly crisper image quality, but it also comes at a matching performance cost, since your GPU will be forced to do twice, thrice or even four times the work it does at your normal resolution, depending on the resolution that it's downsampling from!
With that being said, one can easily set up downsampling in DA:I by typing the following command in the in-game console or pasting the following line in their "user.cfg" file, so that it automatically registers each time one starts the game:
Render.ResolutionScale X
In this case, X is the downsampling multiplier applied to your original resolution and it can be 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, etc. Remember that the higher the downsampling resolution, the higher the stress on your GPU will be and the less FPS you are likely to get!
Furthermore, do not use downsampling values without the decimal point (e.g. 2, 3, etc.), as this will result in undue lagging or even crashing! Kudos go to texhnolyze for pointing this out!
16. Consider upgrading your OS to Windows 8.1 or newer
While certainly not an easy task to undertake without careful consideration, upgrading your OS from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 has been reported by a multitude of players to provide a significant performance boost to DA:I, due to the very latest versions of DirectX 11 and WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) only being present on Microsoft's latest OS.
Thanks to Scoobydooby, we now have an entire thread dedicated to the benefits of upgrading to Windows 8.1 for improving the quality of DA:I's PC port and the numbers look incredibly promising:
Windows 7 (x64)
Windows 8.1 (x64)
In Scoobydooby's own words:
"Windows 7
- Camera Movement is laggy and game overall has a faint stutter to it.. combination of lower framerate and just general hitching effect.
- Cutscenes lag and hitch, audio also hitches slightly during scenes and also when entering and leaving a cutscene.
- Textures "shimmer" when using SLI, Do not when not using SLI
- Framerate can vary wildly between 40-90 FPS.. could also be the reason for laggy visual experience.
Windows 8.1
- Camera Movement much smoother, most likely due to higher framerate, but less hitching also
- Cutscenes are FAR less laggy and hitchy.. audio does not hitch and overall is much smoother.. still not perfect, but best I have yet seen.
- Textures "shimmer" when using SLI, Do not when not using SLI
- Framerate is far more stable - varies between 75-85 usually.. makes for much smoother overall visual experience."
Many thanks for an excellent performance analysis, Scoobydooby! I have recently switched to Windows 8.1 Pro (x64) myself and, after a fresh install, I can confirm that I can now play at close to maximum settings with my framerate locked to 60 FPS 95% of the time and with almost none of the frame drops I was encountering in Windows 7 Professional (x64)! 
Do note that, if you are using an AMD GPU and Mantle as the renderer for DA:I, you might not see a performance benefit from upgrading to Windows 8.1, since it's only DirectX that has been improved between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1!
That's it for the moment! Please let me know if I missed anything or if I made a mistake somewhere and I will update this post as soon as possible! Thanks a lot and happy gaming everyone! 
Appendix
A list of all of the in-game console commands!
A performance tweaking guide, detailing the changes produced by every setting, complete with interactive image comparisons!
Unfortunately, the above guide is in German, but opening the link in Google Chrome automatically translates it into English, so please have a look. It's the closest technical article I've seen to NVIDIA's official performance tweaking guides (sadly, there isn't one for DA:I, since it's an AMD title)!
Finally, if anyone is an experienced Frostbite 3/Battlefield 4 tweaker or is simply willing to tinker with the above commands in their "user.cfg" file and then report back with the results, I will gladly add them to this post! Thank you very much for your time!
Retour en haut
