Forum Discussion

9 years ago

Solved

Poor Performance

Hello,

I just got Dragon Age: Inquisition after playing the console version a day or so ago. This seems to be an issue with both, but I thought purchasing would remedy the issue. Now I didn't buy just to see if it would fix the issue, I really wanted the game.

So here is the issue:

Loading screens are insanely long and once it finally loads into the game, it sits on a black screen for about three minutes before actually showing my character (note: it is finished with the loading screen by then).
Poor performance. I get 40-50FPS on a High-Ultra setup but it constantly freezes, glitches and drops down to 1-12FPS. It makes playing absolutely impossible. I tested on all LOW and the problem still occurs.

Here is my system setup:

http://i.imgur.com/xvDbArL.png

http://i.imgur.com/8vjLi2i.png

Now I had this problem with BF3/4 recently too, but turning off In Game Overlay (forget the exact name) and not playing certain maps "fixed" this issue for me. However, now it has returned for that game as well and none of the "fixes" from before works. Now I'm down three games in my library I cannot play. Note that I did Mod the game on my first try, but upon reinstalls I kept mods out of the game and the problem persists.

I can play my Steam and non-Steam games all perfectly fine, even games in alpha stages like Squad or Star Citizen. Here are the solutions I have tried:

Reinstalling. Tried it twice now, on my third
Verifying game
Turning off the Overlay
Turning it to lowest settings
Running as Admin
Uncapping FPS with the command
Play with internet turned off
Switching to Mantle
Switching from Mantle
Scanning PC for viruses
Updating Windows 7
Updating GPU and CPU drivers
Updating dependencies of game
Updating game (says it is up to date)
Checking temps (all are fine 40-60c)
Overclocking (this doesn't work at all; no FPS gain. Which is weird)
Install and play without any form of mods

Solutions I haven't tried yet:

Creating a new save (will try after this install finishes)
????
Quitting

Any help guys? I'd really love to start playing this game.

dragon age inquisition

Fred_vdp
9 years ago
Which graphics card do you have? Your dxdiag shows a series number, but not the actual model. There's a difference between the lowest and highest end of the spectrum. That said, the lowest R9 200 card is the R9 270, which should actually perform quite well in this game.

@Dorzalty wrote:

Updating GPU and CPU drivers

What do you mean when you updated CPU drivers? As far as I know, they don't have drivers (unless you mean you updated your BIOS). When you installed a new GPU driver, did you first remove your existing GPU driver? I recommend DDU to uninstall all remains of your graphics drivers.

In the control panel of your graphics card, you may want to toggle shader cache in the global game settings. If it's on, disable it, and vice versa.

You should probably also monitor your CPU and GPU temperatures with software like HWMonitor. It's possible your framerate drops because of high temperatures (though usually it would just crash the PC).

I've had issues with long load times myself, but that was only when using Mantle. Switching to DirectX fixed it for me, but since you tried that, you probably have a separate issue. My load times from the hub world to the Hinterlands are 18 seconds on DirectX (including the black screen), and over two minutes on Mantle. (specs: core i5 4690K, Radeon R9 390, 8GB DDR3, SSD)

Also, do you have the game installed to a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid state drive (SSD)? This game not only loads faster on an SSD (which is to be expected) but also runs significantly better because some of the game resources are loaded on the fly. I noticed significant performance improvements when switching to an SSD while still playing on a Radeon R9 270X. If you have it installed on a HDD, do you know the speed of the drive? 5400 RPM is considered slow, 7200 RPM is considered average.

7 Replies

Fred_vdp
Hero+
9 years ago
Which graphics card do you have? Your dxdiag shows a series number, but not the actual model. There's a difference between the lowest and highest end of the spectrum. That said, the lowest R9 200 card is the R9 270, which should actually perform quite well in this game.

@Dorzalty wrote:

Updating GPU and CPU drivers

What do you mean when you updated CPU drivers? As far as I know, they don't have drivers (unless you mean you updated your BIOS). When you installed a new GPU driver, did you first remove your existing GPU driver? I recommend DDU to uninstall all remains of your graphics drivers.

In the control panel of your graphics card, you may want to toggle shader cache in the global game settings. If it's on, disable it, and vice versa.

You should probably also monitor your CPU and GPU temperatures with software like HWMonitor. It's possible your framerate drops because of high temperatures (though usually it would just crash the PC).

I've had issues with long load times myself, but that was only when using Mantle. Switching to DirectX fixed it for me, but since you tried that, you probably have a separate issue. My load times from the hub world to the Hinterlands are 18 seconds on DirectX (including the black screen), and over two minutes on Mantle. (specs: core i5 4690K, Radeon R9 390, 8GB DDR3, SSD)

Also, do you have the game installed to a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid state drive (SSD)? This game not only loads faster on an SSD (which is to be expected) but also runs significantly better because some of the game resources are loaded on the fly. I noticed significant performance improvements when switching to an SSD while still playing on a Radeon R9 270X. If you have it installed on a HDD, do you know the speed of the drive? 5400 RPM is considered slow, 7200 RPM is considered average.
Rhyagell
9 years ago
Hello,
I can't believe I forgot to include that. Jeez, I'm sorry. I have a Sapphire R9 280, with the latest drivers from here and yes, I uninstall previous drivers before installing the new ones. And I meant I installed the latest drivers for my CPU in case that might be a problem (it was mostly a test), which I downloaded here.
I monitored temps and it was all fine, no horrible temps or anything. I will try going into the Crimson software and toggling the shader cache off next (it is on) but to answer your question, no, I do not have an SSD. I know loading times are better on SSDs but I have never encountered loading like this before. It would be pretty crazy if a console had a better HDD (7200RPM) than I do, too. haha
Fred_vdp
Hero+
9 years ago
@Dorzalty wrote:

Hello,

I can't believe I forgot to include that. Jeez, I'm sorry. I have a Sapphire R9 280, with the latest drivers from here and yes, I uninstall previous drivers before installing the new ones. And I meant I installed the latest drivers for my CPU in case that might be a problem (it was mostly a test), which I downloaded here.

I monitored temps and it was all fine, no horrible temps or anything. I will try going into the Crimson software and toggling the shader cache off next (it is on) but to answer your question, no, I do not have an SSD. I know loading times are better on SSDs but I have never encountered loading like this before. It would be pretty crazy if a console had a better HDD (7200RPM) than I do, too. haha

Those CPU drivers you mentioned are actually graphics drivers. Intel processors have built-in graphics chipsets (for people without a graphics card), but since you have a dedicated graphics card, there's no need to install that. It might actually be interesting to find out if the game is running on the AMD GPU or on the Intel chipset. Normally that doesn't happen when you have an AMD GPU, but if for some reason the game is running on the Intel chipset, that would explain the symptoms. Make sure your monitor is plugged into the graphics card and not directly to the motherboard.

Concerning the hard drive, I'm just brainstorming ideas and it's probably not the cause of the issues you're having, especially because the current-gen consoles have pitiful 5400 RPM hard drives..
Rhyagell
9 years ago
Hello,
I thought the iGPU drivers could be called "CPU" drivers too. hehe my bad. My monitor is plugged into my GPU, and all of my games run off it as well. Just to be sure, I downloaded an emulator called Dolphin and checked to see if it was picking up my card, and it is.
Oh, yea, I know. That was mostly me just finding it funny if it turned out my HDD was the culprit and was worse than a console. I would have been so disappointed. 😞
I finished the changes in the software. I turned it off, ran my game and it didn't seemed to change anything. However, since you made it seem like turning it off or on could help, I decided to turn it back on. This time the first boot into the game happened with a few seconds! And then booting into my game takes only two minutes now! It didn't seem to fix the performance issues much at all, though it did stop the freezing (remained in low fps). So I googled and googled for any kind of solution, and found that someone said they fixed their problem by editing this file:
package.mft
In this location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Dragon Age Inquisition\Update\Patch
Mine was 12, so I changed it to 13, loaded game (problem still there), turned it off and then edited the file back so that it said "version 12" again. Saved it and reloaded....and viola! Performances fixed! Loading screens aren't unbearably long! Game is smooth at 40-50FPS at high-ultra settings!
Now I know this isn't important as I got my fix but may I ask what shader cache is and why it solved the problem? Also, do you think this fix might work with BF3/4 (I need to install them again to test)?
Thanks once again! :eahigh_file:
Fred_vdp
Hero+
9 years ago
I'm not sure what the shader cache is but it's supposed to make games load faster, except that doesn't always work. I only thought of it because someone suggested it to me once when I was having graphical issues, but it turned out to be a separate issue.

Battlefield 3 and 4 run on the same engine, so this fix may also work on those games.
Fred_vdp
Hero+
9 years ago
Yesterday I launched DAI and interestingly, I had the exact same issue with regards to long load times. Disabling the shader cache fixed it for me.

I will definitely report this to AMD.

Edit: I will not report this to AMD after all. When disabling the shader cache, I reduced my load times to the Hinterlands from too damn long to 30 seconds. Now I have done a clean installation of the 16.2.1 driver and with the shader cache enabled, I reduced it further to 20 seconds. It seems AMD drivers can get a bit random with DAI performance.
Rhyagell
9 years ago
Could it be a case by case issue? Just to be thorough, I am going to uninstall my drivers and jump back one or two. If the problem is gone, might be just the drivers that is the issue and turning and re-enabling the shader cache fixed something within it?
I'll edit or make a post with the outcome.