FPS stuck at 8-13 from the start. nothing changed anything

Using a bare-bones budget laptop for gaming can NEVER be expected to be anything but pure frustration.  Your tinker toy video is so bad, I'm surprised you get more than 8-10 FPS with it. 

Intel® Integrated Graphics

From the official Dragon Age website, the requirements are:

Minimum PC Specs

    OS: Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 64-bit
    CPU: AMD quad-core CPU @2.5 GHz / Intel quad-core CPU @2.0 GHz
    System RAM: 4 GB
    Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 4870 / NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
    Graphics Card Memory: 512 MB
    Hard Drive Space: 26 GB
    DirectX 10

Recommended PC Specs

    OS: WIndows 7, 8, or 8.1 64-bit
    CPU: AMD six-core CPU @ 3.2 GHz / Intel quad-core CPU @3.0 GHz
    System RAM: 8 GB
    Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 7870 or R9 270 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
    Graphics Card Memory: 3 GB
    Hard Drive Space 26 GB
    DirectX 11

For the same budget cost, a stationary machine could have been assembled with a Game Quality video device, by shopping around; not a great tall space-eating tower, just a sized-down mATX case & mainboard with desktop parts in it. 

the problem is i can run nearly every other game i can think of on at least medium settings at about 60fps, including farcry 3, skyrim and shadows of mordor. even assassins creed black flag can run pretty well, and it was a horrible PC port.

normally i might consider my low specs the problem except that after every single thing from day 1 vanilla to all these patches and workarounds there has been absolutely no change in the FPS. if i started at 10 and got up to 20 after everything then id say it was just me, but that hasnt been the case.

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@languedocpony wrote:

the problem is i can run nearly every other game i can think of on at least medium settings at about 60fps, including farcry 3, skyrim and shadows of mordor. even assassins creed black flag can run pretty well, and it was a horrible PC port.

normally i might consider my low specs the problem except that after every single thing from day 1 vanilla to all these patches and workarounds there has been absolutely no change in the FPS. if i started at 10 and got up to 20 after everything then id say it was just me, but that hasnt been the case.

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It's best not to compare your performance based on that of games running on different engines. Far Cry 3 and Skyrim are both last-gen games. Shadow of Mordor had system requirements made up by a pessimist. Even with my minimum spec hardware I managed to get 60fps on high settings.

Intel HD graphics are integrated in CPUs and are meant as the minimal graphical solution for those who don't have dedicated graphics cards. Your processor is also not a quadcore, but a dual core with hyperthreading, meaning both the GPU and CPU are below the system requirements. 4GB RAM is also the bare minimum. Finally, the storage unit is a 5400RPM HDD, which is very slow. I can imagine your load times would be very long on that machine.

I think that PC can serve for some light gaming (e.g. last-gen titles, Minecraft, League of Legends), but the Frostbite 3 engine is top of the line and requires a gaming PC.

so theres absolutely no work around i could use to improve perfromance at all? honestly i like this game enough to play it even at lower FPS but this is too much. 

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@languedocpony wrote:

so theres absolutely no work around i could use to improve perfromance at all? honestly i like this game enough to play it even at lower FPS but this is too much. 

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The game was designed to a higher standard, and an average (or, as appears to be your situation, no insult intended, a below average PC) can be expected to be useful for playing, sorry. 

I'm sorry OP, but you get what you pay for.  It seems you are extremely lucky that the other games you mentioned even can run on your laptop.  It may be a better investment to get this game for PS4 for around the price of your laptop, and have the equivalent of "high" graphics at a stable 30fps @ 1080p.

Otherwise, maybe it's an option to get a dedicated video chip for gaming, but I have a feeling that will be much more expensive.

Only a "stationary" PC can accept a dedicated GPU device as an upgrade.  Both the CPU and the GPU, if any, built into an assembled laptop are permanent.  External video consoles end up costing more than just replacing the laptop, and do not offer a convenient way to use the included screen in that laptop, requiring a separate display device, also. 

I used the term "stationary" because it is possible, as already commented, to use an mATX case & mATX mainboard to assemble a much more compact size of "desktop" without losing the access to the video add-on (PCIe-16) slot, as is the situation for the "slim" stationary systems from Dell and HP.