So I just recently got ME:A on the Origin Sale, but I've been having issues with getting an in-game appearance that I like but still being able to run the game. My laptop is a little older than most, about 3 or so years. I've attached a pic with my PC specs, hopefully someone who knows a little more about this could help? It would be lovely!
Also added a pic of my Sarah (Niamh) so you can see what I'm seeing. Would love to have some more detail on her?
Honestly....with a laptop, and listed R5 graphics card/chip, you are pretty low on the running scale, maybe even sub-min specs. So if it runs decent at any graphics level, then that is basically were you are stuck. There are some things you can turn off, but you will really have to play and see how each setting effects your game. If you really want to play new games, you need a new laptop or better yet, a good desktop.....or move to xbox/console.
Hello, @fillykat
I think marketing glamour might have tricked you in the same way it did me back when I procured one of the A6 APUs a couple of years ago.
Gaming was not on my mind as I was building a supposedly performance-oriented workstation for a friend of mine, but still, I learned a lesson:
AMD APU integrated graphics chips are not equal counterparts to discrete Radeon GPUs despite the similarity in names!
Even today, looking at specification sheets on the official AMD site, one would say that the integrated R5 chip must be better than the discrete one (847MHz and DX12 support vs 625MHz and DX11 support respectively).
The secret is in the memory lanes. On the APU, both CPU and GPU are sharing communication bandwidth with the RAM and that causes a lot of problems when playing games.
Back in the day, AMD engineers claimed they had taken that potential issue into account and added special instructions to counteract it.
Well that does not seem to be true in practice because my friend recently told me that he feels a substantial drop in productivity from the APU not more than three years down the road.
Apparently, sometimes even basic office applications start to stutter when he's been working for a couple of hours and opened a lot of windows.
Now, I built that fella' a desktop configuration so I can't really speak for a notebook 'cause I don't have the necessary experience.
But if I am to guess based on things I've read and heard, I'd say yours might also be affected by thermal throttling considering the system is a lot more compact (think packed hardware, smaller fans and exhausts etc.) and those APUs tend to get VERY hot.
I am afraid I can't give a desirable answer to your question. I don't think there are any graphics settings that will solve your problem.
Even with unobtrusive anti-aliasing, shader and texture settings combined with performance-oriented profiles for power and application execution, that chip simply can't push/receive data to/from the RAM as fast as needed for you to get those sweet pretty lifelike faces you want.
Stopping absolutely all non-essential applications and processes running in the background and leaving only MEA might help a bit, but don't hold your breath.
P.S.: I am NOT a die-hard intel fan. On the contrary - been building AMD rigs since 2003 for me and all my friends and relatives.
Only recently, did I put together my first intel configuration in 13 years and I did it out of desperation.
I got an ASUS Radeon HD7970 GHz die on me and I simply couldn't find a replacement. Also, at that moment AMD was at its worst for the last couple of years, so I really didn't see any point in scrounging for spare parts just to build a sub-par PC only to support them.
Seeing recent developments though, I think they're back in the game and stronger than ever. I'll wait for them to polish those new CPUs, APUs and Radeon GPUs, then I'll make up to my friend. A couple of years down the line, if I have the money, I may even build a new AMD rig for myself to see what those guys have accomplished.
My sincere advise - if you can endure playing MEA at low settings, then do it. It's a great game no matter what many say and it can only get better from here on.
If not, then switch to a game that will make you happy with the hardware you have.
Either way, you can wait several months and, assuming you will be able to save up some cash during that time, get yourself a new machine with the new AMD APUs for Christmas.
I am willing to bet a hefty sum that the new line-up from AMD will be a pleasant surprise for all of us.
Before getting a proper rig I used to play on a laptop at about the same specs in graphics and maybe a bit more processor. For the most part I had to play on the bottom side of medium and just swapped to near lowest as it aged to prevent overheating. I always turned off settings like godrays, grass, water reflection. I played Elder Scrolls Online on that laptop if that gives you any type of graphics reference. I wouldn't have even tried a game like ME:A since it would look like playing on a old Xbox or worse.
Well my computer is way worse 64bit Windows 10, AMD A8-5500 quad 3.2GHz, 16GB Ram, Radeon 7870 2GB video card.
It's like a give/ take thing, up some settings while lower other stuff for balance. I used this guide which kinda explains what impacts what:
But this is the best i could pull off for quality and keep performance going pretty smooth at the same time
Yeah but it still cannot handle the game. My pc is from 2012. I Always used nVidia and i regret switching to Radeon. 🤔
Even so, when i started playing Andromeda, i was like "OOPS" my computer cannot handle this game. 15-20 fps is never a good sign LOL
Was pretty bad and got worse every time i turned or looked around, game would freeze or drop to 2-5 fps. Unplayable.
I ended up tweaking settings like crazy and was able to get to 30-40 fps. But even now, game still staggers, its not smooth, fps still drops to 10-15 specially inside Tempest.
And i also like some better image quality, which i Can't get... or i won't be able to play it.
Oh I hear you on that. I was able to upgrade my pc this year so I've got an i7 7700K 4.3Ghz CPU, GTX1070 GPU and 16GB RAM and I use SSD hard drives.
It's certainly not a super machine but it's pretty good and I run the game at 1440p at the moment. I actually tweaked the graphics settings a bit and the game really looks good I have to say. Still, with upgrades also including a new motherboard it set me back over 1000 bucks total.
When I see that they are going to run 4k graphics on the new Xbox for 499 bucks, I have to admit I feel taken the * out of a bit as a PC gamer. I really would like one of these Xbox One X machines that I can play my PC games on with mouse and keyboard....hell, for 499 it's a steal really for 4k graphics. I still have to upgrade to a better graphics card to run 4k graphics on my PC and that graphics card alone costs more than the new Xbox.
Still, I'm sure PC's will still be able to get the edge on it but man, for 499 bucks it's an amazing deal. I just never did like those controllers much.
It's rough time though I think for PC gamers. The hardware is not cheap at the moment and the transition to 4k is especially expensive. I'm lucky where I can afford a bit more perhaps but I know most people aren't that lucky. I suppose that's why I was a little surprised at BioWare's focus on higher resolutions in this game. ME:A with some graphics power (and after some patches) really does look the part. I was playing it earlier as I said and the game does deliver on the graphics for me now.
They just need to give me mission tracking for multiple quests and really the big thing that ME:A still needs is a variety of audio fixes but the game really is shaping up. It does seem though that you need to run at least 1920x1080p with high settings to really start seeing the beauty of the game, at least that's my experience now.
WOW that's fabulous! I badly need a new one too. I can't play smoothly at all on most of recent games. I'm still shopping around and deciding lol
I kind of liked this Ready Gaming Desktop PC with Intel i7-7700 3.6GHz CPU, 8GB DDR4, NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB, 64-Bit at $1.100.
But your processor is waaaay better. Not familiar with GTX though.
I'm not familiar with the Xbox One X u mention. I never used Xbox, only PC. I'll have to google that, because it sounds worthy just by the way u describe it. That's a good info u posted there. Thanks for that !
And yes these graphic transitions become a bump, i'm running ME:A at 1920x1080 ... but.... lol .... barely. All i could do for smooth play is trade between graphic settings. :eahigh_file:
Guys, believe me, even the latest and greatest hardware cannot cope with last year's games.
IMHO there's something misunderstood or misinterpreted in contemporary graphics engines, I mean from developer point of view.
Most games that come out get their first performance optimization tweaks 6 to 9 months after release.
During that time we are all sitting on time bombs. Some games even push hardware to such limits that they break it.
The fault in that great GPU I used to have, mentioned in an earlier post, is exactly one such case.
I installed a System Shock 2 demo that was available briefly some time in late 2016. It took it 20 min of gameplay to fry the graphics chip.
That particular card had such a good cooling solution that I never heard any throttling before it was too late.
By the time fan noise became audible the poor thing had been boiling for too long.
Two things to take away from that experience:
1) Always monitor system hardware statistics when running a new piece of software for the first time (heck, for the second and third time too, as well as after patches)!
2) Radeon HD 7XXX series graphics cards are one of the best GPUs made in the last two decades. And this comes from a person who has worked as a PC assembler for quite some time.
There are two circulating theories about this - either members of the dev community need more time to fully grasp the potential and intricacies of contemporary technologies to be able to tweak their games to perfection OR software is given to the public in a raw state on purpose so that hardware can be stressed in such a way that eventually forced replacements occur.
I don't want to think too much about any of those possibilities. Just keeping my lessons learned in mind and thinking thrice before making decisions.
All that said, your GPU is great, man. Regardless of the hardware I have, I always play with shadows, terrain and vegetation quality set to Low; film grain, bloom and motion blur disabled.
I have never noticed an unbearable drop in visual appeal with those settings in place. Yet again I've played games so old that your eyes would bleed if you looked at them now.
So probably I am not too choosy in that respect. Anyway, don't give up on your Radeon yet. You might want to think about a CPU replacement though.
As I said in another thread, AMD's first wave of APUs showed poor performance and quick deterioration in practice despite what was written on paper and said in interviews at the time.
Also, the old APUs don't work well with discrete GPUs on the same mobo. I can only imagine the ordeals you've gone through to actually be able to play games.
Still, I am looking forward to the new APUs. Hopefully AMD will nail it this time. This is a great technology and it deserves to succeed and thrive.
@draqonin wrote:WOW that's fabulous! I badly need a new one too. I can't play smoothly at all on most of recent games. I'm still shopping around and deciding lol
I kind of liked this Ready Gaming Desktop PC with Intel i7-7700 3.6GHz CPU, 8GB DDR4, NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB, 64-Bit at $1.100.
But your processor is waaaay better. Not familiar with GTX though.
I'm not familiar with the Xbox One X u mention. I never used Xbox, only PC. I'll have to google that, because it sounds worthy just by the way u describe it. That's a good info u posted there. Thanks for that !
And yes these graphic transitions become a bump, i'm running ME:A at 1920x1080 ... but.... lol .... barely. All i could do for smooth play is trade between graphic settings. :eahigh_file:
The GTX1060 is not a bad card and will run your games in 1920x1080 quite smoothly, but if possible I'd upgrade that 8GB to 16GB RAM. Currently your PC will take up 3GB of your RAM without running a game. ME:A will take 4-5GB RAM easily and that means you already get into trouble with 8GB RAM. These numbers are based on my own PC and just checking the task manager but at this moment I just have the internet open and Origin in the background and the RAM usage is over 4.6GB. Admittedly Edge takes about a GB easy by itself but without internet being open it's already 3GB that my system uses baseline.
Also BioWare games are kinda known for taking up RAM especially because they have a history of sloppy coding causing memory leaks which can eat up your RAM as you play over longer periods of time. I haven't specifically tested it on ME:A but bottom line is that I prefer to have a bit more RAM. I might even go 32GB myself but 16GB seems to do the trick just fine.
I think that 1920x1080 at ultra settings is really the base settings for ME:A for having a good graphics experience. This may be a personal standard, but for me running it on 2556x1440 already made a big improvement that I quite enjoy at the moment but for that resolution the GTX1070 is a better card.
And of course for 4k a better card is needed still like the GTX1080Ti. The reason I haven't gone to full 4k gaming yet is that it is a pricey card but also because I'm not convinced yet that current games will all run smoothly in 4k graphics yet at high settings. Another thing to consider is your power bill and the power supply. The GTX1060 requires 120W, the GTX1070 150W and the GTX1080Ti requires 250W. That's a lot of power and your power supply might not be able to handle that.
Anyways, this is just some advice from a dabbler. I'm no expert but I can look up specs and check numbers 🙂
