Hello Inquisitors,
After getting somewhat crappy performance on my PC to my sincere surprise, which I consider to be more or less mid-high range comp, I spent some time scouring the Internet and did some tweaking of DA:I to get it to run, like, normal (60fps more or less stable everywhere)
This has been done for Nvidia/Intel PC, but most of the stuff is pretty much true for AMD/ATi users
My PC specs that actually matter are:
- CPU Intel i5 4 cores
- GFX Nvidia Geforce 760
- Standard HDD (not even SSD)
It's a standard 2013-2015 gaming rig, non-junkie edition, total price around 1k USD.
I consider it mid-high-ish range PC somewhat.
When I feel like re-installing all my stuff, I will buy SSD hard drive, which is the only worthwhile upgrade to it.
To spell it out shortly for less computer-robust people:
Don't buy into performance-killer graphics options, made to bend your PC over and force you to buy that new shiny GFX card for tons of dollars.
Not worth it. It's just a marketing hoax to make you buy new hardware every year.
And developers who automatically enable these options for you in the game are... not very nice people.
Nonetheless, I managed to nail down a set of options to have that eye-candy game quality with steady performance - stable 60 frames/sec (FPS) everywhere with top effects (with dips to 40-55 in Crossroads/Redcliffe village, which are the most terribly coded areas of the entire game)
So, the real game's performance killers are only 4 options:
1) Ambient Occlusion OFF / SSAO / HBAO / HBAO Full
Ah, I love this one ever since it was released by Nvidia. Clever idea to make sales.
What they do is output miniscule shadow-like stuff under the grass, to, like, make it look a bit more real, while killing performance and your enjoyment completely. But fear not, you can buy brand new top-of-the-line graphics card for just 900 USD and it will run just fine! Ahaha..aa.. haha. OK.
So, when it is enabled in "Performance" mode (SSAO) or "Quality" (HBAO) it is actually making things worse, because this miniscule shadow-like stuff is flickering as you are moving, making it actually worse visually. It only starts showing somewhat of an OK visual result from "High Quality" mode (HBAO Full) - like, it stops flickering during movement at least, and the stuff looks a bit more real.. but at the cost of up to 50% performance??!
The funniest part is, if you disable this completely you gain insane performance boost back, and in time forget it was even there. Not bothering with it again. Ever.
Just turn it OFF.
2) Antialiasing - Post-Process Antialiasing and Multisample Antialiasing
This is somewhat needed thing to avoid jagged lines and edges everywhere, which makes eyes hurt.
Having stuff antialiased makes a real visual candy with smooth stuff but at the cost of performance.
The problem with the given game though, is that it is implemented so terribly, it basically kills your framerates no matter what you set up, Multisample one being the worst. It is just coded terribly.
And of course, do not turn those together - it will kill your performance. It is technically possible to run both, but in reality it is just terribly technically implemented in the game.
To cure that, lucky Nvidia users can simply disable both of these in game options and enable "FXAA - On" option in their Nvidia Control Panel profile for DA:I.
This will apply antialiasing and gets rid of jagged lines from the driver at videocard side, coded by Nvidia, apparently by less computer illiterate people compared to DA:I devs.
No idea how this is done for ATi cards, or if there is even an option in Catalyst drivers for that. Considering FXAA is Nvidia's baby, I doubt it. I guess they will have to stick with "Post-Process Antialiasing" option after all.
This will net you an awesome driver-side antialiasing, with no jaggies everywhere and at BETTER performance than the one used in the game (Post-Process Antialiasing).
So, turn OFF both Post-Process Antialiasing and Multisample Antialiasing in game options, and enable "FXAA" in your Nvidia Control Panel for DA:I profile (check the bottom of the post if you need step by step explanation how to do this).
Also make sure to have antialiasing and multisample options as "Application-controlled" in your Nvidia panel - those are either not working or drop your FPS to knees, simply because the game engine Frostbite3 was coded for FXAA together with Nvidia. What can you do, whoever paid for the girl will dance her, Nvidia/FXAA in this case.
3) Tesselation
The funniest part, nobody can even normally describe what the hell this is supposed to do. Not a single "testing" "review" or whatever website lol.
What this thing is "trying" to do is something that "mesh quality" is already supposed to be doing, just... worse and killing your performance completely. I mean, sometimes you can visually see a piece of mountain pop up, like, it was really needed not to have it there, but whatever.
It is coded terribly and killing your performance for something you will ever notice if you directly run into a rock and stare at it for half an hour.
Turn it OFF and forget it was there.
4) Shadows
Eh, nothing toxic to be said here, really.
Shadows are eye-candy AND performance killers in every game, as soon as you go over Medium settings for those, get ready for a performance hit under the belt. You have been warned.
Realistically, I am yet to see a difference between "Medium" and "High" shadow setting except "a little bit" of shadow detail on High, which I pretty much never even notice during exploration/fights/conversations. If you can clearly see the difference, you have my deepest condolences.
Set this to "Medium" on mid-high range PC, and lower it for low-range PC, notebooks etc..
Optional tweaks:
- Texture quality
Textures are materials put on top of 3d models you see in the game, they differ in quality, which can be seen if you stare at a wall, or your pretty Inquisitor butt intensely enough, and are terribly not optimized in this game, which sometimes drops even modern videocards to their knees simply because they run out of 2 GIGABYTES of memory to store them.
On Ultra setting they can easily overflow into 3Gb memory, which is available only on serious high-end cards.
So, in short: if you have a videocard with 1-2 Gb memory, set this to "High", because otherwise you will experience frequent performance hiccups as your videocard runs out of memory and flushes textures.
If you sold your kidney and are lucky owner of some space-destroyer videocard with 3Gb memory and more, set this to "Ultra".
But don't forget to also set "High Quality" in texture filtering options of Nvidia Control Panel for game profile, or you really sold it for nothing, because on default "Quality" setting it outputs same texture quality as for the above guys with cheaper videocards, which makes you look stupid and ruins the whole idea of having 3Gb card.
- Post-Process Quality
This one is responsible for making background stuff nicely blended during conversation cutscenes, as well as motion blur when you rotate your camera.
Unfortunately, the same curve-handed guy who was coding the above options, made this one too, so it ruins performance, while just looking bad.
I recommend setting this to "Low" and forget it was there, but set this to "Medium" if you really cannot live without motion blur. Motion is life.
EVERY OTHER OPTION IN THE GAME CAN BE SET TO "ULTRA"
Yes, you heard me right. Enjoy detailed characters, breathtaking views, lush vegetation, clean water, nice fire, smoke and fog effects and shiny spells. They make pretty much no impact on performance even on highest settings and can be set to "Ultra" unless your computer is really from Stone Age, in which case you may need to set those to "High" instead...
And some bonus for patient people who read to the end of it
1) A fix for stuttering cutscenes by Reddit junkies:
http://www.reddit.co...cene_framerate/
In short - you need to add a line "-GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+" (without quotes) into desktop or Origin launcher shortcut so the game is launched with special options to disable the framerate locks coded by not so nice developers.
Enjoy and thanks to Reddit guys.
2) An example of game settings:
"Display" tab:
Vertical Sync - On
"Graphics" tab:
Mesh Quality - Ultra
Tesselation Quality - Off
Texture Quality - High
Shadow Quality - Medium
Terrain Quality - Ultra
Vegetation Quality - Ultra
Water Quality - Ultra
Post-Process Quality - Low
Ambient Occlusion - Off
Effects Quality - Ultra
Post-Process Antialiasing - Off
Multisample Antialiasing - Off
Shader Quality - Ultra
FXAA - On
Right-click on your desktop -> select "Nvidia Control Panel" in the popup menu -> select "Manage 3D Settings" in links on the left panel -> select "Program Settings" tab in right panel and choose "Dragon Age: Inquisition" from the list (should be there if it is installed)
Set "FXAA" option to "On" and click "Apply".
Close the panel.
That gives stable 60FPS everywhere (with dips to 40-55 in Crossroads/Redcliffe village, which are the most terribly coded areas of the entire game)
Take care and have fun Inquisitors!
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