Framerate and optimization

[HarmonicMinor]

Well, I'm not gonna ask the obvious question, "Can I run this?", but I am asking if anyone has had issues with fps that has a good system. I have:
GTX 760 2GB DDR5
6 GB RAM (I know I need more)
AMD A8-6600K APU w/ Radeon HD graphics 3.90 Ghz (quad-core)

The game runs fine, but when I encounter a lot of enemies like in the Recliffe attacks from the undead, my fps plummets to 25 or so. Is this becuase Bioware didn't optimize the game or does my updated hardware suck that bad? (Which doesn't make much sense to me.) Anyone else have this issue?

[Ultra-Keyblade]

6 GB of ram is alright. Very nice GPU and decent CPU. Dragon age caps around 3GB of ram so any more than 4 GB is fine for this game.

This game suffer from bad memory leaks which causes problems for everyone like fps dropping (but mostly game crashing often). Every time I exit out of the game after playing for a few hours it stops responding as soon as I quit it, and I have to force quit it. I'm maxing the game out at 1920 x 1080 and running sweetFX mod (so AA off but worth it).

About the optimization well dragon age wasn't design for quad-core or system running 64bit but it still runs fine for the most part (It was design for duel core).

Those who kept getting crashes lower their graphics a bit to set their cpu to one core by starting task manager, going to the processes tab then right clicking the DA:O process and setting the processor affinity to only 1 or 2 of the cores rather than all of them.


Luckly, I haven't gotten that many problems. During a test I did, I played for about 5 hours or so and no problems (I mostly seem to get issues when I use the internet browser on steam "Tab+Shift").

[Labargoth]

What's bad about 25fps?
I get about 20-30fps all the time playing Dragon Age on low.
Did you consider turning your graphics down a bit yet? Especially special effects hurt your fps.

[Amarae Morti]

Ya. A lot of your issues are related to the engine. Memory leaks, etc. Best thing is to play for an hour or whenever it starts to lag and restart the game. Also, check into the various mods which rework the AI/Tactical System and whatever else you can find. There are numerous bug fix mods which can save you a good deal of headaches.

On my next playthrough, I intend to turn off some things, ie. loot system and see how that goes.

[ACJCLIGHTNING]

Never had a problem with crashes or the game lagging more over time, so I can't comment on what these above posters are saying.

What I can say is that you have a pretty weak CPU, with even lower per core performance. While it may be a quad core, this game is older and doesn't use it so well.

This means that in big fights where your CPU does lots of work, you are being bottlenecked because its pretty low powered. even overclocked most i3's are better, and because of better single core performance they will have even better fps in this game then games that actually use 4 cores.

Now Im not really sure what you can do to solve it, since CPU bottlenecks are alot more tricky than GPU bottlenecks.

First off, trying lowering settings like AA. If you want, use an SMAA injector to keep the same AA quality with better performance, but first try without.

If FPS improves, then just turn down some settings, you were lucky.
If it doesn't, close background programs, clean up the PC, make sure your not overheating.
Not alot more you can do though.

[Amarae Morti]

but that's the issue with DAO. it is cpu intensive. so memory issues, bugs, etc. will only compound things. multi core support leaves much to be desired. in quad core system i would experiment with running on only various core combinations. dedicate it to one or two cores and see how it goes. the graphics end isn't such an issue, it's the cpu. to the extent that the cpu can deliver what the gpu needs anyway. if cpu can't perform, graphics will suffer also.

[Internet(s)]

well I played through the game on max settings on a much weaker setup. I found to keep the game playable in some areas turning off AA and lowering the shadows a bit helped a lot. The game just hits the cpu hard in spots.

[Toad]

NEVER EXPERIENCED ANY LAGS AND I RUN THIS GAME ON MY CRAPPY LAPTOP AND WITH 1 CPU CORE

[(￣ー￣)]

Even with a good video card the game crashes like crazy in some areas and has some ridiculous memory leaks..

The Fade is like Bioware was playing a very CRUEL joke on PC users..