CPU 100% Usage on Dragon age Inquisition

Check to make sure your mobo is not got turbo boosts or other items applied -- that can definitely affect things as I found when it came to the CPU usage/resource allocation issues.

The game was optimized for consoles, not for PC.

The game will most likely not run properly on a computer that is running overclocked CPUs or overclocked GPUs.

Many people that have factory overclocked hardware, or have manually overclocked it, have been having issues.

The temporary solution is to underclock, or down clock your hardware to reference specs.

And to only run one video card, as the game is not optimized for multi-gpu systems.

The game, as I stated earlier, is optimized for consoles. Not for PC.

My system had 100% CPU all the time on all cores, even with low resolution and everything on low. For me the trick has been disabling some graphic functions using a user.cfg-file, and now the game is running flawlessly in full HD - allthough still on low.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Inquisition#Performance_Issues

RenderDevice.RenderAheadLimit 0 
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0 
RenderDevice.VsyncEnable 0 
PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0 
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapEnable 0 
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 4
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0 
WorldRender.LightTileCsPathEnable 0

Thanks a lot man!! The game worked perfectly for me for a long time, then suddenly started to go 100% CPU ALL THE TIME, even idling on the main menu. 

Have to admit I skeptically did as you suggested, not believing it would work, but it solved it and now everything runs smoothly.

Thanks again!

Well.. It worked perfectly until suddenly the issue came back again and now the .cfg file doesn't help :/

In your control panel, is your power saving mode set to balanced or high performance? The high performance plan has a minimum CPU state of 100%. I've noticed this rule isn't followed consistently, but it was an issue I had on an older CPU way back when.

As for DAI, I personally have a 100% CPU usage when the game is loading. Everywhere else it's in normal range. This is also true for other Frostbite 3 games. It's annoying, and I hope they fix this.

OK so what I managed to figure out is that from time to time (sporadically) the 100% max cpu usage issue will appears again when trying to play DA:I.

The solution is using the above user.cfg as mentioned, BUT it will reduce the graphics substantially. 

What seems work as a workaround is renaming user.cfg to user.cfg_temp (basically not using it) again, and then the graphics look fine and also no 100% cpu usage issue.

Seems like the user.cfg is resetting something that causes this bug, and then it's possible to get back to the original configuration.

At least for a while...

Hope this helps someone.

Game on!

This is so sporadic! played a few days, all was fine. Then came to play again, and 100% cpu from Main Menu. 

I try the user.cfg trick again, and it doesn't work!!! Does nothing! Still 100% cpu.

I tried renaming to user.cfg_temp and launch the game. 100% cpu. I change to user.cfg and launch again. 100% cpu.

ARGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!

Did anyone ever found a reliable solution to this thing?

You can try using Mantle instead of DirectX - one of the settings in DAI. This will reduce CPU usage. Made a difference for me, went from unplayable to playable.

http://www.hardwarepal.com/dragon-age-inquisition-benchmark-mantle-vs-directx/

I'm using G2120, 8G, HD 7700 and Windows 7.

For me Mantle has the unpleasant side effect of dramatically increasing load times (from 18 seconds to 2 minutes when loading the Hinterlands) and a less consistent framerate. This is on a Core i5 4690K and a Radeon R9 390 with a fresh driver installation.

I did notice, however, that the CPU usage has decreased somewhat in recent driver versions. I used to get 100% usage during loading screens, but that reduced to somewhere in the 90s. Not ideal, but my temperatures are okay now.