36 réponses à ce sujet

[AshParadox]

I get a slow framerate, but also a lot of chopping and flickering in cutscenes, not helped at all by settings changes (If i disable vsync, the chopping will go away for a while, whereupon I can remedy by re-enablign vsync. The effect is also achieved by alt-tabbing out of the game, though the game sometimes crashes if I do that...). Will try an updated gfx driver, though I hold little hope. =/



GeForce 8600GT 256MB, 3GB RAM, Amd Athlon x2 4600+, XP Pro 32bit, PC-DVD collectors ed.

[AshParadox]

I get a slow framerate, but also a lot of chopping and flickering in cutscenes, not helped at all by settings changes (If i disable vsync, the chopping will go away for a while, whereupon I can remedy by re-enablign vsync. The effect is also achieved by alt-tabbing out of the game, though the game sometimes crashes if I do that...). Will try an updated gfx driver, though I hold little hope. =/



GeForce 8600GT 256MB, 3GB RAM, Amd Athlon x2 4600+, XP Pro 32bit, PC-DVD collectors ed.

[Leo2kP]

I have a 9800GTX and a Core i7 at 3.4GHz and will be installing the game and patch tonight. I have the downloaded version of the game. I'll let you know if I run in to a similar issue.



I guess I'm a little upset that there are so many issues with 8/9xxx series cards. I'd love to upgrade (especially with the CPU I have) but I don't want to be forced to upgrade the card or wait for a game or driver update to play either.

[Bohicakf]

I do apologize for the double posts.... i submitted my reply but it wouldn't show up....

[TMLWinston]

its quad core. this developer has long had issues

[adamaant]

It seems to be a heating issue on the cpu. I ran to best buy, bought a bottle of duster and opened my machine. After completely cleaning the dust around the cpu and the gpu fans I closed it up and tuned it back on. After starting Dragon Age again, I was thrilled to find that it ran smoothly! I have played for at least 10 hours and haven't had one stutter. For those with quad core machines maybe one or more of the cores is getting hot due to the fan not running well. It worked for me. Any experts have a bit better idea why this worked?

[SparkyRich]

I updated my sound drivers and my stuttering issue cleared up.

[Melzas]

So far nothing has helped, I still have to restart the game every hour or so, more if I get into alot of combat.



It really sucks.

[Outlaaz]

Yep, my game slows down significantly after some time, roughly 40 mins or less if I see a lot of combat. I keep having to restart the game which is pretty frustrating.

[moda1]

EDIT: Problem solved (for myself), see my post two below for solution. I am apparently a noob, after all.

I'm trying to hunt down the solution to this problem on my end as well; I'm posting this in multiple locations as it seems the discussion is a bit fragmented.

The unusual thing about this problem is that it initially emerged when I was nearly done playing Dragon Age: Origins, I believe following a patch. Before then, the game ran smoothly on my machine. Since then, Origins, Awakening, and sadly Dragon Age II have all been affected.

Symptoms are: smooth running for ~30 seconds after start, then heavy stuttering, typically when a conversation starts. Frame rate plummets and sound comes with heavy "crackling" sounds.

My platform is a Dell Precision 6400M, which I use for algorithm development & simulation.
Intel Core2 Quad CPU, Q9100 @ 2.26GHz
8.00GB RAM
Vista x64
"Windows Experience Index": 5.9


For context, I am an experienced developer; I've been treating this as a debugging problem. I've updated all drivers, run with a wide variety of settings (graphics quality is irrelevant; sound enabled/disabled is irrelevant; disabled antivirus, disabled steam overlay, disabled all services I could).

What I've found so far:

1. Setting core affinity to 1 core appears to slightly improve the problem
2. Setting "minimum processor state" to 5% *significantly* improves the problem
3. Running the game on all 4 cores leads to a CPU usage of ~76%, or a full three cores.
4. Kernel times appear to spike when this lag happens, but is hard to quantify.

Running the game on 1 core with 100% minimum processor state leads to 25% (one full core) usage.
Running the game on 1 core with 5% minimum processor state leads to a CPU usage of ~21-24%.

Without these settings, particularly #2, accessing the character stats menu is extremely laggy, and within ~1 minute of starting the game, the sound crackling problems start.

The reduced CPU settings seem to suppress the periodic sound-crackling/frame-rate disaster, at the occasional cost of some occasional lag when the game engine has to page in new data (e.g., as I run around an area).

Theories:

1. There are some idling threads that do not have appropriate "Sleep" statements, and as a result they are consuming as much CPU as they can. It would explain why I can run the game just fine on 1 core - you guys have some threads that are doing nothing.

2. These idling threads may potentially be polling the Windows API for something? This could help explain the kernel times; potentially, these threads could be causing competition for common a common resource.

There appears to be a connection with the sound (i.e. dialog being spooled up?), regardless of whether or not sound is enabled; there also is a connection with the user interface (specifically the character stats menu). I observed this in Dragon Age: Origins & Awakening as well.

I'm going to run CodeAnalyst and see if it gets me any further information on what's going on. I'd also love to have a developer investigate this threading question, because I'm honestly curious at this point.

Modifié par moda1, 07 avril 2011 - 06:04 .

[MicahSJ]

Hello folks,

I tried a little experiment with my AMD Phenom II x2 CPU on Win7 x64. I did have the other 2 cores unlocked, but I decided to go back to 2 cores and see how DAO performs. Well, there was a lot of stuttering, hardly playable. So I went back and unlocked the other 2 cores again and DAO performs well without any stuttering ever. So what I recommend for those folks with dual core CPUs and Win7 x64 is to see if your motherboard will unlock the other two cores on your AMD or Intel CPU. If it does try it. If you need some help with that let me know by sending me a message with the name of your motherboard. I would suggest first, though, getting yourself a quad core cooler and heatsink for your CPU.  Another alternative, and if you have the money, is get yourself a quad core CPU, especially if using Win7 x64. I hope this maybe helps some folks. If I think of anything else I post it here in the thread.

Here are my apecs:

AMD Phenom II x2 CPU with the other 2 cores unlocked
Win7 x64 Ultimate
Asus M4N98TD EVO motherboard
2 Nvidia 9800 GTs in SLI using version 191.07 drivers
Creative X-Fi Titanium using the latest drivers from Creative's website
4 gig DDR3 1600 memory

Good luck,
Micah

Modifié par MicahSJ, 06 avril 2011 - 05:40 .

[moda1]

Problem solved. Holy cow, do I feel like a noob.

To any other laptop users experiencing the stuttering/lag issues I described: CLEAN YOUR FANS OUT! :-). I initially saw somebody else recommend this solution, but I didn't think it would explain the behavior I was observing. It does, in fact, explain it very nicely.

(Laptop users: hold a paper clip to the fan to prevent the blade from getting damaged by spinning too quickly, and blow compressed air into the vent. Pick out the large clods of dust that will pop up).

Undoubtedly this will not solve the problem for everybody, but for me the problem was overheating which was causing the system to throttle CPU down (this will happen regardless of your power settings - I only caught it because I was running Perfmon on the same screen, and I noticed that when the problems happened, this coincided with a drop to 70% max CPU frequency. Now everything appears to run smooth as butter, once again.