I have a Phenom II X4 945 and a Radeon 4870 from 2009. I bought it for Dragon Age Origins - and it still does the job.
For me a user.cfg file, disabling some graphic options made the trick of getting the CPU down to playable. To me it seems obvious that 4 cores running 100% all the time is unneccesary - but I do understand that programmers with a deadline don't have time to optimize code to reduce CPU, and that games that use 100% CPU most of the time helps selling new and faster CPUs and GPUs.
From this forum I get the impression that human value can be measured in GHz, and that pepole with old systems are not really to be taken seriosly. If you refuse to post your vital measurements, you should feel ashamed, it's like not taking off your shoes in a american airport security control.
lemastertrole has my sympathies, most of all for not giving up after 2 months, but also for keeping an old system alive. Still, if you are below the minimum requirements, I am afraid your case is lost. If you are just above (like me) there is hope, but you have to look around this and other forums for tricks and tweaks to reduce CPU. If your CPU peaks, your GPU may be working on old and illegal data.
Bioware is a great studio, making unforgettable games. I was however happy with the graphics of Baldurs Gate - 2 that would be, 1 was too buggy at first - and I wish for any future DA 4 to keep up with good storytelling without frying "old" computers by forcing everyone to calculate how individual high quality leaves move in the turbulence of wind.
Read my specs above, and tell me that it's normal to have 8fps only in 1 direction and 60fps on the 3 other directions. I have freeking 8fps on low and ultra settings, low or high resolution.
It's easy to come in and blame the PC's who are below the requirements, while you ignore all the PC's above the requirements as if they didn't suffer these terrbily ridiculus problems aswell.
@Vodnik93 wrote:Read my specs above, and tell me that it's normal to have 8fps only in 1 direction and 60fps on the 3 other directions. I have freeking 8fps on low and ultra settings, low or high resolution.
It's easy to come in and blame the PC's who are below the requirements, while you ignore all the PC's above the requirements as if they didn't suffer these terrbily ridiculus problems aswell.
It's obvious you don't know much about CPU's.
The new i7 'Quad Cores' 3GHz can cream the three year old versions that run at the SAME frequency.
You are in the 5XXX generation
Last year's 4XXX generation is PLENTY fast for this game (I own a 4790K 4GHZ)
3XXX i7s will BARELY cut it, they are as slow if not slower than the consoles (3770K or faster only).
Anything older belongs in the trash.
2x 980GTX
512GB Samsung 850 SSD
16GB Corsair DDR3
i7 4790K
Win8.1 x64
@60 FPS Cutscenes & Gameplay Ultra/Fade-Touched Settings @ 2560x1440. Currently dealing with sporadic white fog (SLI) in snowy areas.
Then how come i got around 60fps if i look north, west, south but i get 8fps if i look east?
Changing resolution or settings not absolutly zero effect.
So please, don't blame my system. As it's capable of running Shadow of Mordor, ultra modded skyrim, Rome 2 just fine. And it runs Dragon Age: Inqusition just fine except if i look to the east.
My 5 year old AMD Phenom II X4 945, scoring 3,749 on PassMark is able to make this game work. PassMark does not tell the whole truth, but it is a good indication. I can not think of any reason why a better performing Intel CPU should not be able to do the same - unless there is a software problem. The problem may be in windows with some background process using just enugh CPU for the game to tip 100%, or it may be a bug in the resource allocation in the game.
The CPU frequency tells how many operations that can possibly be done each second for each core, but a different CPU architecture may require a different amount of operation to do one instruction, and how load is distributed on the cores really matters. DA:I is excelent at distributing load (on my system) - but is not good at limiting CPU use.
I guess this game was made for people with new PCs, making sure the game is perfect for them, but telling people their computers are too old if they are above the minimum requirement I consider snobbery.
