[PC] Ongoing investigation - poor performance, crashes, resource allocation.

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@middlefngrsalute wrote:

BASIC BEHIND THE SCENES INFO -- WHAT IS HAPPENING INSIDE THE GAME

I have been in contact with Tier 2 Support (EA), and they say (BIOWARE) is aware of,

and investigating the draw distance issues.

People that are crashing or having high system resource usage, may be affected by this "bug/glitch"

where render distances are abnormally high, or conversly, abnormally low. 

 

The way that this was explaned to me...,

the game is rendering things at some astronomically long distance or extremely close if not negative

distances, which is causing the resource usage to skyrocket, and hence, causing crashes, stuttering,

poor performance, lock ups, freezes, etc., regardless of what people have thier settings at.

 

It is being investigated, from what I have been told.

I am hopeful that a working patch will be implemented soon.

 

I have several issues that have been escelated to the studio, 

And several that are being researched by tier 3 support, before being forwarded on, to the studio.

 

I will re-post as soon as I have any more information.

 

_UPDATE_    

The game is currently misallocating the system resources, cpu, gpu, ram, pagefile and vram.

this is due to bugs in the coding for Speed Tree, and draw distances.

this is what is causing high usage spikes across all (random access and temporary) storage

and processing media, which in turn causes the stuttering, lags, crashes, etc. (Including SSDs? - unverified at this time)

 

Best case scenario... a few patches....

Worst case scenario... game pulled, and reworked from the ground up.

 

All of the issues that everyone is facing, regardless of platform, cannot be fixed, player-side.

(However, there are some things that can be done to reduce stuttering, and extend play time between crashes.)

IT IS A CODING ISSUE within the game, that BioWare will have to address.

Now please do not take offense, or take this the wrong way.

I have tried many of the fixes in this forum, myself, with little to no improvement, however,

my system does seem to be more stable overall.

 

Many of the suggestions are really good, and do benefit stability, and longer game play between

crashes (with Nvidia cards) and slightly less jittery performance with AMD and Mantle api.

 

I have tried both Nvidia, and AMD graphics cards, and I am most stable with AMD using the Mantle API.

 

this does not mean go out and buy amd graphics cards, just to play this game.

what it means is that the game needs an overhaul of a great degree, to be more Nvidia GPU friendly, and more stable overall.

 

Lastly, from the response I received earlier today, (12-16-14) from the tier 2 reps is that the studio is actively addressing this issue.

And we should be seeing a patch/update in the very near future, unfortunately they could not give me a specific date.

I am expecting another call back fom them early next week. I will report again, when I have more information.

 

-Additional notes on what is happening inside the game-

DirextX Errors and Crashes

Because of the misallocation of resources, it is suspected that the crashes (with nvidia gpus) is being caused by timeouts.

Basically what is happening is that the Origin App and the Windows Operating system, are arguing with eachother,

over who is in control of the game, and this is what causes  the dxgi_device hung_    error...

and why the graphics card drivers are re-enabled by windows once you get out of the game and close it down.

Complete Shutdowns and Restarts 

complete powerdowns or system restarts are usually caused by over taxing your PSU... drawing too many amps.

just double check that the wattage and amperage rating for you GPUS and cpu, do not over draw your PSU.

for instance, I need to upgrade my PSU, though I have not powered off or down during game play, but here are my stats...

psu antec 900w 80% + Bronze certified.

I have 4 +12v rails at 40 Amps each across 850Watts

@my AMD dual R9720 DCUII OC 2GB each draw 500 watts @ 38Amps

@and my AMD FX-8350 8-core @ 4Ghz draws 125w

so technically I should upgrade my PSU just due to power consumption of my GPUs alone...

Another cause for shutdowns is overheating.

Lack of airflow across major components like gfx cards, motherboard, heatsyncs, radiator(s), etc.

make sure that your fans and heatsyncs are as dust free as possible.

if you are running into over heating issues, and have a side access panel, take it off,

or remove the outer shell, and run a small window or non-oscillating fan into the case.

for dust build-up, blow the heatsyncs off with compressed air (low pressure 10-25 psi)

this can be accomplished in several ways...

that emergency tire pump in the back of your car or truck.....

an airbrush pump (for those artists out there)

or just go to a Target store, Office Max, Office Depot, or other electronics store and by

"canned air" "air in a can".... (and make sure you use the plastic straw that's taped to the side of the can!)

and follow the directions on the can, to keep it from freezzing up in your hand, and leaking onto your components!

 

Drivers

-also- for those of you using nvidia gpus, roll your driver back to the 344.65 drivers. (have not tried new beta 347.09 as of yet)

do a custom clean install, and ONLY INSTALL the graphics driver and physx. (unless you need

audio for hdmi)(or the 3d drivers for 3d hardware) also do not install nvidia experience.

I found that GPU usage was nearly halved, when I did this.... from a pegged 100% to about 50-60% usage.

(and that was with dual GTX 760 DCUII OC 2GB in SLI + GTX460 (physx))

for AMD users update to the newest 14.12 drivers you should see similar results

ROLL BACK TO PREPATCH 

How to check for game version

C:\Program Files(x86)\Origin Games\Dragon Age Inquisition\_Installer
(or your game installation folder if on a different drive or in a different location)

file -> installerdata.xml

(5th line down from the top)
<gameVersion version="1.0.0.?"  />
1.0.0.2 patch
1.0.0.3 hotfix

-addendum-  origin does not seem to be stopping udates even if unchecked.

will advise Tier 2 tech support, 

Currently the Origin App is desgined to force update games to the latest version on the server,

regardless of whether or not you have updates turned off.... this setting only

applies to future updates to games you already have installed.

If you are doing a re-install, it will automatically update to the latest version on the server.

It currently does not support update roll backs. [GRUMBLE, GRUMBLE, ARRRGH!!!!):robotmad:

Also even with origin in game turned of, i am still getting achievement pop-ups...

will advise tier 2 of this issue as well. This has been escellated to the origin app team, as a bug report.

and they will be looking into it. It was suggested to update origin to the beta version, in the meantime,

and seeing if the issue persists. (if anyone cares to test this, it would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!)

Screen Resolution and Refresh Rates

A possible fix for flickering trees, landscape, and grass...

go to your ingame settings,

your screen settings ... make the refresh rate just below your screens native refresh rate.

(i.e. monitor native refresh 60HZ, change setting to 59.94HZ) [you may have to restart the game to get this to work]

this may or may not work for some. If it does not, it has also been corrected by disabling SLI / CROSSFIRE

The game is desgined to run off of your screen's/monitor's/TV's native resolution and refreshrate.

If you have more than one screen, the game is most stable when you run the game in Fullscreen mode, 

at its native resolution and refresh rate, for your main monitor. However, I have found that by running in

windowed fullscreen mode, it is easier to alt+tab out of the game, in case it crashes or hangs. And just

alt+tab to the directX window, and hitting enter to exit the game, rather than to the desktop, and using the task

manager to shut the game down. Also, this way, you can see if there actually is an error message before shutting

the game down. 

If you try to to lower your resolution (i.e. from 1920x1080 to 1600x900) you will see or have problems when running

AMD GPUs, with the manlte api in windowed fullscreen, and sometimes in fullscreen mode.

and may cause a device lost error similar to the direct x error, but for the mantle api.

if your game image changes to a black screen with a bunch of horizontal (or vertical) lines, hit CTRL+ ALT + DEL, but do not hit enter.

hit ESCAPE instead, you may have to hit escape several times for it to take you out of the garbbled screen.

this will also happen with windows media player as well.

Save Games

The game on PC currenlty caps the number of saves you can make.

It is curren'ty capped at 250 saves. This was done to keep from innundating the cloud save server.

I reached the cap at only level ten, on my first playthrough.

The workaround for this, is to make addtional folders in your saves folder.

I generaly make a new one with each new character, and name it the new characters name.

 

The game will slow down over time, because the more saves it has to read and load... obviously, the longer it will take.

 

So what I do is every 20,30, or 40 saves, is to take everything but the profile files, and the last few, most recent (1-5) saves and move

them into the current characters folder.

 

you will run into instances were file names are duplicated, when saving,

when you get the pop-up stating that you already have a file by this name,

put a checkmark in (do this for all conflicts) and select copy but keep both files,

by doing this it also allows you to back up your saves to a thumbdrive, hdd, SSD,

or other storage media, as well

CLOUD SAVES

This game is already resource intensive.

1.) I would suggest, turning off ALL overlay programs or functions that are coming from outside the game.

2.) Turn origin in game OFF for DA:I

3.) Play in offline mode (for single player campaign... obviously you have to have connection for MP)

4.)Only rely on local hard saves, as the ones from the cloud could be compromised, corrupted, not synced (and you lose a lot of game play)

and they aren't usually a secure as your PC.

this will eliminate any lag caused by communication between your system and the server.... (and if the server is ever down your buggered anyway)

so unless you are playing multiplayer, play in offline mode.

 

Possible conflicts with windows updates dated 10 Dec. 2014

Microsoft releases "Silver Bullet Patch"     <<<< open this in another tab or window, as it is an external link

Deleting Origin Cache files

completely close out of origin before doing this.

 

delete only the origin folder in each of these locations: 

c:\users\<your acount's user name>\appdata\local  (i.e.   c:\users\ fred\appdata\local) 

c:\users\<your account's user name\appdata\roaming 

c:\programdata 

 

if you can't find (or see) the appdata folder, then you need to go into your folder options, 

and make sure to put a check mark next to "show hidden files and folders" 

after you have finished deleting the cache folders,

EMPTY YOUR RECYCLE BIN

Now, restart origin, and let if reverify everything it needs to. Don't mess with it, don't do anthing!

Just let it run and do what it does. This WILL take a while, especially if you have a lot of origin games, like I do.

Tips to improve frame rate during game play

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/631230-dragon-age-inquisition/70597812    <<<<outside link, open in new tab

Kudos to @TM_Grinus for finding this info

Materializing in the fade

For those of you who materialize in the fade area, with the black steps,

more than likely you have a command line option for forcing frame rate,

either in your launch option in origin,

or in your Desktop shortcut...

remove it an relaunch the game. you should now materialize in the jail cell 

where you first meet Liliana and Cassandra.

Wired vs Wireless (especially for controllers and possibly for wireless mice) 

http://segmentnext.com/2014/11/18/dragon-age-inquisition     <<<<<open in new tab. external link 

While perusing the many different sites for answers, (yes, still stuck here and not able to enjoy this or any other game)

I came across an article that pertained to wireless devices (namely controllers).

The game by default will not recognize wireless devices. And it was suggested to use WIRED devices. (DUH!)

So in summation for both wireless controllers (and possibly wireless mice)

That the game may not recognize, or disconnect from said devices intermittantly,

causing the inablity to use said devices on occasion (hover over highlights,

inability to use said device for input, the UI switching between input modes, [i.e. keyboard/keypad input (numberd conversation options),

to using the mouse to hover over and highlight the option before clicking on it, to no option... just the text in the option being visible.]

so if your wireless device also has a wired connector option... USE IT.

or break out that old dusty coreded one you've got stuck in your junk drawer...(and we know everyone has one) lol

Visual C++ 2012 update 4

I have had some luck with this. My system does seem to be more stable.

For 32 bit OS users, update to the x86 version.

for 64 bit users update both the x86 and x64 versions.

Visual C++ 2012 Update 4     <<<<outside link. open in new tab

-Update Dec. 23, 2014-

I spoke again to a tier 2 (Tech Specialist) [EA]. We have gone over and through every single idea, that they have at thier disposal,

for troubleshooting, and work arounds. At the end of a very lengthy conversation, which took place over multiple calls, uploaded

logs, reports, and verbally conveyed personal gaming experience, the rep stated that we have exhausted everything that they and I

can think of to narrow these issues down to a root cause. And unfortunately, with the lack of information that we are receiving,

from the studio, and not having the same tools, or developement software, we cannot resolve your issues. If your game is working

"somewhat", there is nothing further that we in tech support can do for you, until the studio releases more information, a patch,

update, or hotfix.

I just want to be very clear about this. Tech support has been very accomodating, polite, understanding, and very helpful! (at least they were to me). I have no complaints as to thier expertise, or knowledge. They only lack information from the developement studio.

The tech specialists have assured me that they will escellate my issues to the studio. Now, as to when and if I get any feedback, that is an unknown. However, my issues will be investigated further, as to why I am experiencing the mis/overallocation of resources, crashes, lag, audio bugs mission glitches, and flickering terrain, trees and grass. 

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i had many of the same issues you mentioned .. what helped me so far was to switch to windowed full screen mode havent gotten a hung device since then .. most of my settings (graphic settings) are either medium or low and occasionally off