700 réponses à ce sujet

[capn233]

Was screwing around more with this, more specifically with Effects.  Not sure what is going on with those in game settings, but the drop from Ultra to High is pretty noticeable to me, but High to Low doesn't seem all that different.  I was testing in MP with AW and an electric staff on Elven Ruins / Threatening.

 

But here is what it looks like in the character select screen.  Most of the other graphics settings were from "Automatic," which set everything to High except Textures which went to Fade Touched.

 

Ultra

 

 

-Effect around the staff looks decent.

 

High

 

 

-Effect around staff looks like it is from 10 years ago.  Flame is hard to see because of button, but isn't horrible.

 

Low

 

 

-It looks like High.  I took this screenshot after running through some games changing settings on the fly, and I dropped Effects to Low to see what effect it would have on min fps when surrounded by enemies.  It turns out it wasn't much different than High, and it is hard for me to see much difference in game.

 

Is the Effect setting broken?  I notice a big jump from Ultra to High but then Low looks about the same.  Is this partly because of my antiquated resolution of 1680x1050?

 

edit:  Looking again more closely it seems the main difference between High and Low is that the latter lacks optical distortion effects (not sure what the technical term is).

[capn233]

Since I am talking to myself mostly, I noticed another thing that was odd with the effects turned down and the weapon enchantments.

 

My archer was using a bow with a lightning rune.  Effects were on High, and the lightning effect looked like the above High / Low pics of the staff above while the camera was at the normal distance.  However, panning the camera down so that it zoomed in towards the character, the effect became more crisp and actually looked decent.  It is strange that it is rendered so poorly at distance.

[Natashina]

If anyone is still reading this thread, I've got an odd experience to share with you.

 

So, back in April, I was playing DA:I.  I was using AMD CC in order to boost some graphics.  I was using 16x AF, 8x MS AA to go along with the in-game graphics.  Not a huge boost, but something my old video card could easily handle.  It was a AMD R9 290X.

 

Anyway,  I was doing War Table stuff when I got the Black Screen of Death.  My monitor shut off and the sound started to loop.  I had to force a cold shutdown.  My monitor, plugged into my vid card using HDMI, was working just fine again.  Thinking not much of it, I reduced my AA to 2x and moved on.  Within about 20 minutes, it happened again.  Only this time, a cold shutdown wouldn't do the trick.  I checked my temps, fan speed, cleaned my case and everything looked solid.  Also, to be safe, I ran CCcleaner, did a clean reinstall of my video card drivers via Guru3D, ran MalwareBites, AdAware and ran AdwCleaner.  I plugged my HDMI cable into my mobo, thinking my video card was dead.

 

About a month passes and I get a new shiny card.  EVGA GTX 970 (note: I hate AMD and I'll be happy when I can get my mobo/processor back to Intel.)  Things look great and I don't boost my graphics.  I figure everything is fine...until I decided to use Nvidia Inspector to boost my graphics for ME3.  I hit the second big mission and the same thing happened again.  I did a 10 hour Memtest and there was no errors found.  It was like my video card died, and it was brand spanking new.  It took a manual reinstall of the actual hardware to get it working again.  

 

Now, I know that program conflicts can cause the Black Screen of Death, but I have never heard of it requiring a full reinstall of the hardware before.  I've been looking too.  I haven't used Nvidia's CC or the Inspector to boost my graphics since the reisntall, and so far everything seems to be working okay.  Any ideas how this could have happened?

[OdanUrr]

So I decided to check a few things when running DA:I, namely the FPS across various settings. I decided to run the game benchmark on my PC and notebook and compare. My PC is running a GTX 460 SE whereas my notebook has a GTX 760m. Regardless, I came across some odd results.

 

PC benchmark:

• Low: 44.5 (Avg) / 38.6 (Min)
• Medium: 37.7 (Avg) / 32.9 (Min)
• High: 20.3 (Avg) / 16.4 (Min)
• Ultra: 13.6 (Avg) / 10.7 (Min)

On the other hand, these were the results for my notebook.

 

Notebook benchmark:

• Low: 20 (Avg) / 18.2 (Min)
• Medium: 17.9 (Avg) / 16 (Min)
• High: 12.4 (Avg) / 11.3 (Min)
• Ultra: 9.2 (Avg) / 8 (Min)

Perhaps I'm wrong here (and please correct me if that's so) but I do believe the numbers for the notebook should be higher than that, certainly on low settings. Is it possible that Dragon Age is running the benchmark using the Intel GPU instead of the NVIDIA one? If so, how can I fix this? I'm worried DA:I may be running entirely on the Intel GPU.

[Sunnie]

Laptop versions of GPUs are never (in my experience) as good as the full GPU card for desktops. You should always see lower numbers for them. That said, if you are using a hybrid GPU setting on your laptop, and for what ever reason the laptop is using the integrated intel gpu, those numbers will suffer even more. I would recommend that you completely disable the integrated graphics and run exclusively off the NVidia GPU.

[OdanUrr]

Laptop versions of GPUs are never (in my experience) as good as the full GPU card for desktops. You should always see lower numbers for them. That said, if you are using a hybrid GPU setting on your laptop, and for what ever reason the laptop is using the integrated intel gpu, those numbers will suffer even more. I would recommend that you completely disable the integrated graphics and run exclusively off the NVidia GPU.

 

Hmm... and how do I do that?

[Sunnie]

Do that in your BIOS settings. There should be an option to disable integrated graphics in there.

[GaijinNinja]

Hello all,

 

First I wanted to give a very loud shout out of thanks to Verrenus for starting this thread.

I’ve looked all around the web and this is by far the best source of information in getting the maximum performance out of the PC version of DAI.

(All other sources online have not been updated since the end of 2014 and don’t reflect the updates in patches, drivers, etc. since then).

 

I bought DAI on PS4 when it first launched and put about 40 hours into it but ultimately I became frustrated with the bugs (particularly the one causing banter not to fire) and my enthusiasm for the game waned while I waited for patches.

Now I’ve decided to get back into it with a new character on PC making use of the enhancements that the PC version offers (better framerate, mod support, and the ability to trigger banter using CheatEngine).

 

Now that I’ve got the game set up on PC, I have one simple question: have there been any more breakthroughs on squeezing the last bit of performance out of the game; as in, techniques that have been found more recently?

I’ve implemented suggestions found on all 27 pages of this thread and have very satisfactory performance but I’d like to see if I can get that last bit more.

(Typical PC gamer, right?)

 

My set up is as follows:

CPU - i7 4770K @ 3.5 GHz

GPU - GTX 970 (stock clocks), driver version 355.60

8GB DDR3-1333

Game installed on Samsung 850 EVO SSD

Windows 10 64-bit RTM Build 10525

 

Game graphics settings are all maxed out, except:

Textures: Ultra (not Fade-Touched thanks to this guide!)

Post-Processing Quality: Low (since I wanted the simplest implementation of Depth-of-Field)

No MSAA (FXAA looks good enough and I didn’t want the performance hit)

 

User.cfg is:

PerfOverlay.DrawFps 1

WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0

RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0

RenderDevice.VSyncEnable 0

 

Cutscene Framerate fix is implemented and I am forcing Triple Buffering and V-Sync on in the Nvidia Control Panel.

 

With the above I get about 85 - 90 fps (capped at 60 when v-sync is on) during the Frostback Mountain intro and Haven, and around 65 - 70 in most of the Hinterlands, dropping to 55 at the Crossroads and about 45 in the farm beyond the cave at the crossroads where the mages and templars are fighting (this is as low as it goes and only when there are a lot of enemies in the open area).

I’m pretty happy with the frame rates considering that I have all of the important settings at max, and I know I could just turn down some of the settings to up the frame rates but that feels like a waste seeing as the only time it drops below 60 (so far) is in crowded areas of the Hinterlands.

 

So, does anyone know of anything that can be done to eke out any more frames? (looking through this thread it seems as though any other user.cfg settings were more or less debunked as having no impact)

Next step will probably be to try to overclock my graphics card to see what I can get out of it but I figured I would ask just in case!

 

Thanks very much in advance to anyone who has any input, and again thanks to everyone on the thread for getting me this far!

 

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS

 

For anyone who is interested, here is what I discovered through a lot of trial and error:

 

-For me, the cutscene fix worked BETTER pegged at 60 frames rather than -0.01 of monitor refresh as mentioned in this thread (which would be 59.93 in my case). Your mileage may vary, but I still had a lot of frame tearing only during cutscenes until I set the fix to an even 60 frames. With the cutscene fix at 60 and v-sync (adaptive or otherwise) on, I’ve been able to get a very smooth framerate in cutscenes for the most part. When I do get stuttering, it appears to be caused by inherent frame timing issues within the animation system of the game itself and nothing that we can fix on the user end. 

 

-Using the built-in frame limiter caused too much screen tear to be useful in my case (which seems to be the case for many others as well).

 

- I noticed no difference between enabling v-sync in-game and forcing it in the Nvidia Control Panel. I ended up sticking with the latter as recommended just in case.

 

-Adaptive V-Sync worked quite well on my computer monitor (60Hz LCD), but caused uneven screen tears when below 60 fps when I connected my PC to my TV. Have to use regular v-sync in that case. Looks fine, though there are obviously noticeable framerate jumps when below a solid 60 fps.

 

-Maximum pre-rendered frames are set to 4 in the Control Panel. Don’t know how much it helps but just in case. Haven’t noticed any input lag.

 

-I toggled back and forth between PC and PS4 on the same TV and it’s amazing how much better the game feels with the higher framerate! It’s a whole new experience.

[DragonAgeLegend]

 

 

My set up is as follows:

CPU - i7 4770K @ 3.5 GHz

GPU - GTX 970 (stock clocks), driver version 355.60

8GB DDR3-1333

Game installed on Samsung 850 EVO SSD

Windows 10 64-bit RTM Build 10525

 

 

 

Hello, personally, I had a 970 before and turning off MSAA, while also turning off Tessellation gave me 60FPS instantly. Reading that you also have W10 means that you should pretty much be good to go. 

 

I now run 970s on SLI and that performance is perfect, I can run everything maxed, even 4xMSAA. If you have the money I would definitely do this. 

[GaijinNinja]

Thanks for the suggestions, DragonAgeLegend.

 

I've continued to fiddle with things over the past few days and I think I've got it about as good as it's going to get.

 

DAI was getting unstable (sometimes crashing to desktop with a DirectX error) so I went ahead and re-installed Windows 10 RTM without applying the Insider build update. This should keep things as clean as possible.

I will note that the newest GeForce driver gave me a good 3-4 fps increase over the driver that is installed by Windows Update, so good to know that there are still some driver-related performance increases to be had.

 

I did a mildover clock on my GTX 970 (+150 MHz core and +300 MHz memory) which gave me another 2-3 fps, so now I'm at about 56-57 at the Crossroads in the Hinterlands and on the West Road, with lows at 45-48 when fighting 6 or 7 mages/templars at once (almost all due to effects, including the fire in that area).

Unfortunately mid-50s FPS gives the most hitching with V-Sync enabled but I can't help it since I really want to play the game on my TV and I can't stand frame tear.

 

Here are some more findings:

-As previously mentioned on this thread, switching from HBAO Full to SSAO gave a MAJOR improvement to frame rate (15 fps or so) - full solid locked 60 fps no matter what I threw at it including full battles on the West Road. However, the image quality drop was too much for me to bear (it just looked so "flat" with the reduction in a "three-dimensional" quality that HBAO Full gives) so I had to switch back.

Note that I did not try regular HBAO due to the pixelation artifact issues mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

-I know that Tesselation is a major resource hog so I turned it down from "Ultra" to "High." The performance improvement is highly dependent on the scene being rendered (and hence, the number of tessellated objects in the scene); that being said, since a lot of the framerate drops are in areas with high NPC actor counts and lots of objects being rendered into the distance, I would say that the drop to "High" tessellation does give an average of 2-3 FPS in areas with framerate dips, meaning I am able to achieve 60 FPS in the Crossroads this way. Thanks to this thread, I know that the image quality difference is only very minor from "High" to "Ultra" so I will likely stick with this setting change.

 

For my next (and hopefully, final) step I will try disabling FXAA (post-process AA) in the game and try adding SMAA on top with a post-process injector. It's a bit daunting as I have to find an injector that will work with 64-bit DX11 in Windows 10, but I'll see what I can do.

 

Thanks again to everyone for the support!

[DragonAgeLegend]

*snip*

Post Process has little to no impact for your game. No need in disabling it IMO. I also got drops in the Crossroads when I played with one 970. I still get drops near a particular hut in Redcliffe Village though, I think there's some sort of bug there. Funnily enough the West Road quest was the final straw for me in regards to the FPS drops. It's what made me go SLI lol. 

[PorcelynDoll]

Is there a way to change the printscreen binding?

[Sunnie]

Is there a way to change the printscreen binding?

I don't believe so. I don't use it anyway since I use Bandicam for screen caps.

[PorcelynDoll]

Is that better then fraps? I found fraps made my loading times too long but I really dislike using the prt scr button. It's in an inconvenient place.

[Sunnie]

Ya, it is better. Fraps hasnt seen an update in forever, Bandicam is currently supported.

[Jenaimarre]

I'm running a GTX 970, 8GB of RAM and I have an i7-2600. I had no issues running the game at launch but right now i'm experiencing slight audio stuttering. Any ideas?

[Silith]

I'm running a GTX 970, 8GB of RAM and I have an i7-2600. I had no issues running the game at launch but right now i'm experiencing slight audio stuttering. Any ideas?

 

Have you checked if maybe your options did reset in the meantime? One of the newer patches reset mine so I had to redo all tweaks, maybe that's what's causing the stuttering for you (due to low FPS maybe)? ETA: On further consideration, maybe it's not low fps with your rig, lol. I'd still check if the options did reset and see if you can/have to redo the tweaks from the first post in this thread.

 

I have issues since I came back too - I have insane loading times now even though the game runs on my SSD and was fine before. I'm going to reinstall and hope that fixes it; I have the game installed since before any patch came out so maybe a clean install will fix things. Does anyone know what files I need to backup so that I don't have to tweak all settings again afterwards?

[Sunnie]

It should not mess with your saves, but it will overwrite your saved options.

Backup these 2 files in "C:\Users\<your user name>\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age Inquisition\Save\":

ProfileOptions

ProfileOptions_profile

 

If for some reason you cant sync back from the Origin cloud, you can manually copy them back to your save folder.

[Ulithium_Dragon]

If anyone is still reading this thread, I've got an odd experience to share with you.

 

So, back in April, I was playing DA:I.  I was using AMD CC in order to boost some graphics.  I was using 16x AF, 8x MS AA to go along with the in-game graphics.  Not a huge boost, but something my old video card could easily handle.  It was a AMD R9 290X.

 

Anyway,  I was doing War Table stuff when I got the Black Screen of Death.  My monitor shut off and the sound started to loop.  I had to force a cold shutdown.  My monitor, plugged into my vid card using HDMI, was working just fine again.  Thinking not much of it, I reduced my AA to 2x and moved on.  Within about 20 minutes, it happened again.  Only this time, a cold shutdown wouldn't do the trick.  I checked my temps, fan speed, cleaned my case and everything looked solid.  Also, to be safe, I ran CCcleaner, did a clean reinstall of my video card drivers via Guru3D, ran MalwareBites, AdAware and ran AdwCleaner.  I plugged my HDMI cable into my mobo, thinking my video card was dead.

 

About a month passes and I get a new shiny card.  EVGA GTX 970 (note: I hate AMD and I'll be happy when I can get my mobo/processor back to Intel.)  Things look great and I don't boost my graphics.  I figure everything is fine...until I decided to use Nvidia Inspector to boost my graphics for ME3.  I hit the second big mission and the same thing happened again.  I did a 10 hour Memtest and there was no errors found.  It was like my video card died, and it was brand spanking new.  It took a manual reinstall of the actual hardware to get it working again.  

 

Now, I know that program conflicts can cause the Black Screen of Death, but I have never heard of it requiring a full reinstall of the hardware before.  I've been looking too.  I haven't used Nvidia's CC or the Inspector to boost my graphics since the reisntall, and so far everything seems to be working okay.  Any ideas how this could have happened?

 

I have a monsterous gaming rig, and this was happening to me quite a bit back when DA:I first came out. I feared it was going to actually cause harm to my computer it was happening so much that I waited to play the game again until several patches in.

 

Not like we should be surprised the the PC port wasn't optimized very well, though - that's become the standard nowadays

[atlantico]

If anyone is still reading this thread, I've got an odd experience to share with you.

 

So, back in April, I was playing DA:I.  I was using AMD CC in order to boost some graphics.  I was using 16x AF, 8x MS AA to go along with the in-game graphics.  Not a huge boost, but something my old video card could easily handle.  It was a AMD R9 290X.

 

Anyway,  I was doing War Table stuff when I got the Black Screen of Death.  My monitor shut off and the sound started to loop.  I had to force a cold shutdown.  My monitor, plugged into my vid card using HDMI, was working just fine again.  Thinking not much of it, I reduced my AA to 2x and moved on.  Within about 20 minutes, it happened again.  Only this time, a cold shutdown wouldn't do the trick.  I checked my temps, fan speed, cleaned my case and everything looked solid.  Also, to be safe, I ran CCcleaner, did a clean reinstall of my video card drivers via Guru3D, ran MalwareBites, AdAware and ran AdwCleaner.  I plugged my HDMI cable into my mobo, thinking my video card was dead.

 

About a month passes and I get a new shiny card.  EVGA GTX 970 (note: I hate AMD and I'll be happy when I can get my mobo/processor back to Intel.)  Things look great and I don't boost my graphics.  I figure everything is fine...until I decided to use Nvidia Inspector to boost my graphics for ME3.  I hit the second big mission and the same thing happened again.  I did a 10 hour Memtest and there was no errors found.  It was like my video card died, and it was brand spanking new.  It took a manual reinstall of the actual hardware to get it working again.  

 

Now, I know that program conflicts can cause the Black Screen of Death, but I have never heard of it requiring a full reinstall of the hardware before.  I've been looking too.  I haven't used Nvidia's CC or the Inspector to boost my graphics since the reisntall, and so far everything seems to be working okay.  Any ideas how this could have happened?

Your mistake: downgrading from AMD to nvidia. Also EVGA? Going from bad to worse. Nothing shiny about EVGA. 

 

But seriously, a 970 is a downgrade from a 290X.

[Verrenus]

Hello all,

 

First I wanted to give a very loud shout out of thanks to Verrenus for starting this thread.

I’ve looked all around the web and this is by far the best source of information in getting the maximum performance out of the PC version of DAI.

(All other sources online have not been updated since the end of 2014 and don’t reflect the updates in patches, drivers, etc. since then).

 

Thank you very much for the kind words, my friend! I know it's been a while since I've posted in this thread, but I've been rather busy since the release of The Witcher 3, both with work and otherwise!

 

Rest assured in knowing, however, that I have been monitoring this thread as well whenever I could, silently updating the driver and SweetFX links most of the time.

 

Since I have not been playing DA:I for so long, I decided to leave the technical advice into the capable hands of the other PC Inquisitors in here, but I want to stress again that I have not abandoned this thread. Indeed, I will probably return to DA:I one day to play all of the DLC that got released in the meantime and finish my Inquisition's story. Until then, I wish you all many, many hours of happy, bug-free gaming!

[Shaffy]

Dumb question: what is the difference between forcing vsync off in the user.cfg file and turning it off in the game settings?

 

Do I need to turn it off in the game too, or should I leave it on?

[nightscrawl]

You should have it ON unless you are having major fps problems. And if you are having major fps problems, you should look into other ways to fix them than disabling vsync.

 

Vsync locks the refresh rate of the graphics card (that the game is using to render with) to your monitor's refresh rate. So if your monitor is 60hz, the game will render at 60 frames per second. The main reason you want it on is because when the two get out of sync it can cause screen tearing, which is not visually pleasant. For example, if you have an uber gaming rig that is rendering at 120fps, but your monitor is 60hz, your monitor can't update fast enough to show 120 frames, so there can be an overlap of a new frame with an old frame, and it looks bad.

 

Leave it on in the game settings. It's not necessary to add it to a cfg file. Also, if you have a gfx card control panel, like say for Nvidia, set that to "let the 3d application decide" (usually default), and it will follow the game setting.

 

Now, the main reason you might want to turn it off is because it can cause lag if your fps drops significantly below your monitor refresh rate. If your fps is tanking to the 40s, 30s or lower, you will see some lag. But again, I would suggest that you look into other ways to help out your fps than by turning off vsync because of the tearing. Of course, if you have an older graphics card that is already being pushed to the limit, there is probably nothing you can do other than lower the gfx settings and hope for the best. And in that scenario, if you are still getting lag with vsync on and are unable to play the game, then there is nothing left to do but turn it off and continue to hope for the best.

 

However, it's worth nothing that some areas of the game just suck and will always be a bit laggy. I can get 60fps almost everywhere except Hinterlands where I drop to the 40s or sometimes lower. I don't know what it is with that zone; the amount of npcs, the amount of quests, the sheer size... Whatever it is, it is the worst map -- PC performance-wise -- in the entire game.

[Shaffy]

You should have it ON unless you are having major fps problems. And if you are having major fps problems, you should look into other ways to fix them than disabling vsync.

 

Vsync locks the refresh rate of the graphics card (that the game is using to render with) to your monitor's refresh rate. So if your monitor is 60hz, the game will render at 60 frames per second. The main reason you want it on is because when the two get out of sync it can cause screen tearing, which is not visually pleasant. For example, if you have an uber gaming rig that is rendering at 120fps, but your monitor is 60hz, your monitor can't update fast enough to show 120 frames, so there can be an overlap of a new frame with an old frame, and it looks bad.

 

Leave it on in the game settings. It's not necessary to add it to a cfg file. Also, if you have a gfx card control panel, like say for Nvidia, set that to "let the 3d application decide" (usually default), and it will follow the game setting.

 

Now, the main reason you might want to turn it off is because it can cause lag if your fps drops significantly below your monitor refresh rate. If your fps is tanking to the 40s, 30s or lower, you will see some lag. But again, I would suggest that you look into other ways to help out your fps than by turning off vsync because of the tearing. Of course, if you have an older graphics card that is already being pushed to the limit, there is probably nothing you can do other than lower the gfx settings and hope for the best. And in that scenario, if you are still getting lag with vsync on and are unable to play the game, then there is nothing left to do but turn it off and continue to hope for the best.

 

However, it's worth nothing that some areas of the game just suck and will always be a bit laggy. I can get 60fps almost everywhere except Hinterlands where I drop to the 40s or sometimes lower. I don't know what it is with that zone; the amount of npcs, the amount of quests, the sheer size... Whatever it is, it is the worst map -- PC performance-wise -- in the entire game.

Maybe I should've calrified a bit... I'm using the vsync and triple buffering force off commands to improve latency, and nvidia control panel to fix the screen tearing, which works. I just wanted to know if there's a difference between disabling vsync in game and forcing it off via command.

[Shaffy]

I don't understand why I need to set the value in -GameTime.MaxSimFps X -GameTime.ForceSimRate X+ to 59.99 and not 60?

in this Reddit thread https://www.reddit.c...cene_framerate/ setting it to 60 seems to be working fine for everyone, so what's the difference?