Prior to today's patch, the hitching was annoying, but the game was playable. Now, the game randomly pauses for about 3 seconds every few seconds. It does this at the title screen, while playing, in conversation, even in menus. When the pause happens, it sounds like the fan on my video card stops or slows down. I tried other games, and none are exhibiting this behavior. The game is not even playable for me, in its current state.
@timinable wrote:OK, so after 4 hours with tech support on the phone and many many tests (thanks guys!) it is indeed a conflict between Inquisition and some other program on Windows, from what I can tell audio related.
I ran Task Manager (ctrl +shift+ esc) and went to process tab and the System (NT Kernel & System) started using processes when Inquisition booted up and at no other time. Task Manager isnt specific, and so I finally had to download a program from microsoft to monito all usage, and narrowed down an audio driver that was trying to be used, even though it shouldnt be.
In an effort to see if I could fix it I deleted my old audio drivers completely and lo and behold Inquisition is now working perfectly, and there is no freezing or stuttering.
Note: If you just delete your audio drivers, you will have no sound, unless you have a USB sound card just laying around like I did.
So in conclusion:
Check Task Manager for a non critical program conflict with DAI
If it is a critical program conflict (system), check your audio drivers.
I'm not sure about the audio problems maybe it was just you, but most tech savvy people already start their PC's with all unimportant services and startup programs already turned off.
it's very possibly an audio issue. you don't have to go farther than the title screen to see all the new stuttering and hear it accompanied by skipping audio.
Not an audio issue for me. And NVIDA has confirmed that the game is not optimized for several of their cards. They have escalated the issue but more people letting Bioware know wouldn't hurt.
did you test it?
Well KingChaos, I appreciate that you just insult my intelligence without asking for clarification first, and I do start with pretty much everything disabled.
I missed a very important word in my post (for which I am sorry), but that first line should be audio DRIVER related.
I ran Performance Monitor and Task Manager and looked for something that was using my CPU power. It was a file under my audio drivers that was trying to be used, but I did not have on my computer at all. I know another poster prior mentioned NCH audio, and I was skeptical personally because I dont use anything from that company, but I deleted my RealTek audio drivers, and when I booted up Inquisition with Task Manager open I maxxed out at 63% CPU usage.
Of course I had no sound at all, because I had just deleted my audio drivers, but my CPU was no longer maxxing out. And there was no way I would have known otherwise because it wasnt just an unecessary "thing" to flip off in task manager or otherwise.
So to reiterate. Running task manager and booting Dragon Age before: CPU maxxing at 100%, game freezing at menu, unable to do anything. Graphics switching made no difference.
After deleting audio drivers and booting up Dragon Age Inquisition: Max of 83% on load up, and a steady 55-63% CPU usage with game running on High graphics.
And here again I will reiterate, I only deleted my audio drivers because I had an external sound card just laying around and quite frankly it sounds a lot better than the onboard audio ever did.
Edited to add: English is a language that forget often. I do try, but sometimes one just doesnt get it right.
thank you kindly😕mileyhappy:
Ongoing investigation into high resource allocation/usage
Read the first post in this thread in orange txt (by me)
there is nothing that can be done from the player side to fix performance.
it is in the game code. "speed tree" and draw distance bugs/glitches are what are causing bad performance, crashing, lags, stuttering,
and high system resource allocation/usage.
the game is misallocating, resources, and causing spikes in cpu, gpu, ram, pagefile, and vram usage.
the game has to be patched. dot. period. end. (worst case senario - redesigned and coded from the ground up)
[I certainly hope this isn't the case, but....]
although there have been some very good suggestions, which will help improve performance and stabiltiy - (slightly), it is still a game design/coding flaw that Bioware will have to address themselves.
@middlefngrsalute wrote:Ongoing investigation into high resource allocation/usage
Read the second post in this thread in orange txt (by me)
there is nothing that can be done from the player side to fix performance.
it is in the game code. "speed tree" and draw distance bugs/glitches are what are causing bad performance, crashing, lags, stuttering,
and high system resource allocation/usage.
the game is misallocating, resources, and causing spikes in cpu, gpu, ram, pagefile, and vram usage.
the game has to be patched. dot. period. end. (worst case senario - redesigned and coded from the ground up)
[I certainly hope this isn't the case, but....]
although there have been some very good suggestions, which will help improve performance and stabiltiy - (slightly), it is still a game design/coding flaw that Bioware will have to address themselves.
You are the only person I've seen yet to post the problem on the poor performance, great job!
EDIT: Everyone should definitely check the link out if you're experiencing framerate drops looking into certain directions with population, tree's, and buildings.
Note to self. In future do not buy a game unless it is stable. The only reason companies put out sub standard products is because we allow them to by pre ordering etc. This is an unusual case in that their own patch made the game unplayable. But it is in a similar area.
It's the devs I feel sorry for. Imagine pouring your heart and soul for years into developing a game like this only for it to be rendered temporarily useless and for it to damage your reputation. So I fully support Bioware devs, hope they can get a working patch out to fix this mess and the suits or people who make the decisions to release should be ashamed of themselves.
Thank you to everyone here for their posts and to EA_David for the update. Also thanks to middlefngrsalute for his information. We will just have to wait for the next patch.
