[gamegpu] Dragon Age Inquisition performance

[skipsneeky2]

Yeah, it is hard to know what you'll get with resolutions below 1080p. They don't test those res's anymore.

It just drives me nuts, according to steam 768p is the second most widely used resolution as of October of this year outside of 1080p.

Guessing every respectable pc gamer who has Origin and this game has to also have steam so those numbers have to mean something even with some margins of error.

Sure you could drop some settings on your 750ti but i doubt your going full out at 22 fps average without wanting to punch a hole in your monitor.There isn't even performance numbers for different settings,its just here's your suck ass 22fps on your crap ass card,enjoy.Guru,GameGpu and even Techspot have done this and well techspot if i recall did a incredible job on the BF4 review....

 

[poohbear]

Can a single gtx 970 run this game at about 50 fps with everything maxed out but AA off? Thinking of going that route & ditching my GTX 670s SLI. Sick & tired of all the stutter & issues with SLI in new games. Nvidia is really neglecting SLI users.

 

[Red Hawk]

Are they using some major form of AA that is tanking frame rates?

They use a kind of post-process antialiasing, unclear which one specifically but probably FXAA, and they use MSAA. Since DAI uses the Frostbite engine and its deferred lighting system, MSAA is pretty performance heavy. If you can tolerate barely perceptible blur, MSAA is the first setting you should nudge down in order to get extra frames in DAI.

I was pretty satisfied with the lowly HD 7770 in my desktop also, but I am feeling its weakness in DA:I. I think a big part of it is the lack of vram. Honestly, the graphics are very good, but certainly don't seem exceptional for the performance demands. I thought Frostbyte would scale better with lower end hardware. Certainly those who were crying for games to demand d better hardware are being answered. Whether the game play and graphics are proportionately improved however seems highly debatable. And mantle gives no improvement at all in my system.

That said, I do like the game a lot, just disappointed in the performance a bit.

What resolution and settings are you trying to play on? Dragon Age Inquisition was released on PS4/Xbox One, so its highest graphics settings are going to at least make use of the hardware in those consoles. From a pure hardware perspective, the PS4 is close to if not a bit higher than the Radeon 7850/265 (a bit hard to match, since the PS4 has more stream processors but a lower clock speed) and the Xbox One virtually the same as the Radeon R7-260, with a somewhat lower clock speed. All of which are better than the 7770 (which has the same chip as the 250). Twice the geometry power, more texture units, more stream processors, and in the case of the PS4, much higher memory bandwidth as it uses a 256 bit memory bus and GDDR5 memory.

If you don't think it's worth it to spend big bucks on the premium, high-end graphics cards, that's understandable. But increasingly, games are going to be tailored to the capabilities of the PS4 and Xbox One. If you want to keep parity with that, I would recommend upgrading to something from the R7-260 line (for parity with the Xbox One) or the R9-270 line (for parity with the PS4).

I haven't had the chance to actually play the game yet, but from what I've seen, the performance requirements are worth it. The art and detail is much better than Dragon Age 2.

 

[bystander36]

They use a kind of post-process antialiasing, unclear which one specifically but probably FXAA, and they use MSAA. Since DAI uses the Frostbite engine and its deferred lighting system, MSAA is pretty performance heavy. If you can tolerate barely perceptible blur, MSAA is the first setting you should nudge down in order to get extra frames in DAI.

I tried all their AA settings, and found the best solution was to use downsampling. I just set up a custom resolution for 1440p@85hz (on a 1080p 120hz monitor), and and turn off the in game AA. It seems to be the best compromise.

 

[Red Hawk]

I tried all their AA settings, and found the best solution was to use downsampling. I just set up a custom resolution for 1440p@85hz (on a 1080p 120hz monitor), and and turn off the in game AA. It seems to be the best compromise.

Yeah well a 270X ain't gonna be downsampling this game at 1080p.

 

[Erenhardt]

If you don't think it's worth it to spend big bucks on the premium, high-end graphics cards, that's understandable. But increasingly, games are going to be tailored to the capabilities of the PS4 and Xbox One. If you want to keep parity with that, I would recommend upgrading to something from the R7-260 line (for parity with the Xbox One) or the R9-270 line (for parity with the PS4).
.

Any card with less than 4GB VRAM will not cut it no matter how powerful the core is.

That is just a beginning of VRAM requirements increase

 

[bystander36]

Any card with less than 4GB VRAM will not cut it no matter how powerful the core is.

That is just a beginning of VRAM requirements increase

I'm playing with 2GB cards. I'm playing the game quite well at high+ settings.

 

[Red Hawk]

Any card with less than 4GB VRAM will not cut it no matter how powerful the core is.

That is just a beginning of VRAM requirements increase

For parity with the PS4? The PS4 has a 8 GB of 5500 MHZ GDDR5 RAM. That gives you 176 GB/s of bandwidth over its 256 bit memory bus. Of that memory size and bandwidth, a good portion of it is going to be reserved for the operating system and CPU operations. Right now you're not really even going to to be able to make use of 4 GB if you're just using a 256 bit memory bus, not until something like GDDR6 finally releases.

Faster memory speeds and larger memory pools are going to be necessary to max out settings in PC games at higher resolutions, yes. But for parity with PS4 games, which generally play games at either 1080p or 900p, at 30 frames per second? 2 GB should be fine.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Any card with less than 4GB VRAM will not cut it no matter how powerful the core is.

That is just a beginning of VRAM requirements increase

I am actually looking forward to games pushing our hardware,if the pc ports are good anyway.

This one is Frostbite based but it looks beautiful,it gets a pass.I got faith in this title and how it scales with hardware is great.

Been some horrible ports this last year,i bought one of them sadly enough.

 

[escrow4]

For parity with the PS4? The PS4 has a 8 GB of 5500 MHZ GDDR5 RAM. That gives you 176 GB/s of bandwidth over its 256 bit memory bus. Of that memory size and bandwidth, a good portion of it is going to be reserved for the operating system and CPU operations. Right now you're not really even going to to be able to make use of 4 GB if you're just using a 256 bit memory bus, not until something like GDDR6 finally releases.

Faster memory speeds and larger memory pools are going to be necessary to max out settings in PC games at higher resolutions, yes. But for parity with PS4 games, which generally play games at either 1080p or 900p, at 30 frames per second? 2 GB should be fine.

Even if both consoles only have a 6GB shared pool that doesn't apply to PC. Inquisition can swallow 5GB RAM on my box with 3GB vRAM - already cracked 8GB. Now with these ports you need sheer grunt to overcome the optimisation. 2GB GPU's are dead in the water, dual cores are dead in the water, and I'd strongly put in 16GB RAM over 8GB anyday.

 

[bystander36]

Even if both consoles only have a 6GB shared pool that doesn't apply to PC. Inquisition can swallow 5GB RAM on my box with 3GB vRAM - already cracked 8GB. Now with these ports you need sheer grunt to overcome the optimisation. 2GB GPU's are dead in the water, dual cores are dead in the water, and I'd strongly put in 16GB RAM over 8GB anyday.

While I wouldn't put together a new system with just 6Gb and 2Gb GPU's, current games still play well on such systems from my experience.

 

[frozentundra123456]

They use a kind of post-process antialiasing, unclear which one specifically but probably FXAA, and they use MSAA. Since DAI uses the Frostbite engine and its deferred lighting system, MSAA is pretty performance heavy. If you can tolerate barely perceptible blur, MSAA is the first setting you should nudge down in order to get extra frames in DAI.



What resolution and settings are you trying to play on? Dragon Age Inquisition was released on PS4/Xbox One, so its highest graphics settings are going to at least make use of the hardware in those consoles. From a pure hardware perspective, the PS4 is close to if not a bit higher than the Radeon 7850/265 (a bit hard to match, since the PS4 has more stream processors but a lower clock speed) and the Xbox One virtually the same as the Radeon R7-260, with a somewhat lower clock speed. All of which are better than the 7770 (which has the same chip as the 250). Twice the geometry power, more texture units, more stream processors, and in the case of the PS4, much higher memory bandwidth as it uses a 256 bit memory bus and GDDR5 memory.

If you don't think it's worth it to spend big bucks on the premium, high-end graphics cards, that's understandable. But increasingly, games are going to be tailored to the capabilities of the PS4 and Xbox One. If you want to keep parity with that, I would recommend upgrading to something from the R7-260 line (for parity with the Xbox One) or the R9-270 line (for parity with the PS4).

I haven't had the chance to actually play the game yet, but from what I've seen, the performance requirements are worth it. The art and detail is much better than Dragon Age 2.

I am using the default settings, a mixture of medium and high. I get in the 30 to 40 FPS range, but I am using 90% scaling from 1080p. I tried high preset and it runs just below 30FPS. It crashes a lot too. I have been trying mantle, but I think I will go back to DX, since there does not seem to be any performance difference. Now I wish I hadnt downloaded the beta driver in order to use mantle. The game is decently playable, but not exactly smooth. If I go to medium, the game runs nicely, but the character textures look terrible, very shiny and plasticky.

 

[Erenhardt]

For parity with the PS4? The PS4 has a 8 GB of 5500 MHZ GDDR5 RAM. That gives you 176 GB/s of bandwidth over its 256 bit memory bus. Of that memory size and bandwidth, a good portion of it is going to be reserved for the operating system and CPU operations. Right now you're not really even going to to be able to make use of 4 GB if you're just using a 256 bit memory bus, not until something like GDDR6 finally releases.

Faster memory speeds and larger memory pools are going to be necessary to max out settings in PC games at higher resolutions, yes. But for parity with PS4 games, which generally play games at either 1080p or 900p, at 30 frames per second? 2 GB should be fine.

I have 2GB card aswell.. And I can't have console parity with recent titles. I need to lower texture quality if I don't want to have stuttterfest.

 

[toyota]

For parity with the PS4? The PS4 has a 8 GB of 5500 MHZ GDDR5 RAM. That gives you 176 GB/s of bandwidth over its 256 bit memory bus. Of that memory size and bandwidth, a good portion of it is going to be reserved for the operating system and CPU operations. Right now you're not really even going to to be able to make use of 4 GB if you're just using a 256 bit memory bus, not until something like GDDR6 finally releases.

Faster memory speeds and larger memory pools are going to be necessary to max out settings in PC games at higher resolutions, yes. But for parity with PS4 games, which generally play games at either 1080p or 900p, at 30 frames per second? 2 GB should be fine.

memory bus is nearly irrelevant to high res textures which can eat vram up.

 

[Red Hawk]

Even if both consoles only have a 6GB shared pool that doesn't apply to PC. Inquisition can swallow 5GB RAM on my box with 3GB vRAM - already cracked 8GB. Now with these ports you need sheer grunt to overcome the optimisation. 2GB GPU's are dead in the water, dual cores are dead in the water, and I'd strongly put in 16GB RAM over 8GB anyday.

At what resolution and frame rate? Techspot's benchmarks had the 270X running at 30 frames per second at 1080p -- parity with consoles in performance, while having many effects running that exceed the consoles' visual specifications, including performance and memory heavy MSAA 2x. Whatever amount of graphics memory the game is technically asking the system for, that's the practical result when you run the game on a 2 GB graphics card. Just bumping up to a 3 GB graphics card doesn't really seem to solve the bottleneck. The 3 GB Radeon HD 7950 is barely better than the 270X and just falls short of the 2 GB 285. Other 2 GB graphics cards beat out 3 GB graphics cards in the benchmark, too.

Console optimization doesn't really seem to give consoles an advantage over 2 GB GPUs with comparable specifications, and games aren't quite to the point where 2 GB of VRAM will be the main bottleneck in your system.

I am using the default settings, a mixture of medium and high. I get in the 30 to 40 FPS range, but I am using 90% scaling from 1080p. I tried high preset and it runs just below 30FPS. It crashes a lot too. I have been trying mantle, but I think I will go back to DX, since there does not seem to be any performance difference. Now I wish I hadnt downloaded the beta driver in order to use mantle. The game is decently playable, but not exactly smooth. If I go to medium, the game runs nicely, but the character textures look terrible, very shiny and plasticky.

Eurogamer's Digital Foundry analysis of Dragon Age Inquisition found that the console settings for the game rested somewhere between the PC's high and medium presets. So even at that range, you're trying to use settings on a 7770 that were meant for 260-270 range graphics chips. DigitalFoundry recommends lowering tessellation, water, and shadows to improve performance, while leaving mesh quality on high.

 

[ramj70]

Can a single gtx 970 run this game at about 50 fps with everything maxed out but AA off? Thinking of going that route & ditching my GTX 670s SLI. Sick & tired of all the stutter & issues with SLI in new games. Nvidia is really neglecting SLI users.

My 970 runs it fine for me. Everything on Ultra except for Shadow quality and Tessellation which is set to high, 2xMSAA.

My average FPS is 60.1 and low is 44.5. This is on a 1080 screen.

 

[poohbear]

My 970 runs it fine for me. Everything on Ultra except for Shadow quality and Tessellation which is set to high, 2xMSAA.

My average FPS is 60.1 and low is 44.5. This is on a 1080 screen.

How does it run with everything on ultra (and fade touch) with no AA? I read AA is the biggest hit on performance, for me @ 1440p i always turn it off as i dont need at this resolution. Why are using high with a gtx 970? It cant handle those settings at ultra?

 

[3DVagabond]

Even if both consoles only have a 6GB shared pool that doesn't apply to PC. Inquisition can swallow 5GB RAM on my box with 3GB vRAM - already cracked 8GB. Now with these ports you need sheer grunt to overcome the optimisation. 2GB GPU's are dead in the water, dual cores are dead in the water, and I'd strongly put in 16GB RAM over 8GB anyday.

Well said. :thumbsup:

Everyone assumed that because of the modest specs of the new consoles they would be able to run 2nd tier components on their PC and suffice. There are a couple of specs though that aren't so basic and they are stressing PC setups. (V)RAM and multi core CPU, and then there is typical console optimizations that are missing on the PC That's what Mantle and DX12 are going to help address. W/DX11 though the console is also capable of handling heaps more draw calls.

 

[Red Hawk]

Well said. :thumbsup:

Everyone assumed that because of the modest specs of the new consoles they would be able to run 2nd tier components on their PC and suffice. There are a couple of specs though that aren't so basic and they are stressing PC setups. (V)RAM and multi core CPU, and then there is typical console optimizations that are missing on the PC That's what Mantle and DX12 are going to help address. W/DX11 though the console is also capable of handling heaps more draw calls.

Except Mantle doesn't seem to have any tangible improvement over DX11 in Dragon Age.

 

[tential]

Well said. :thumbsup:

Everyone assumed that because of the modest specs of the new consoles they would be able to run 2nd tier components on their PC and suffice. There are a couple of specs though that aren't so basic and they are stressing PC setups. (V)RAM and multi core CPU, and then there is typical console optimizations that are missing on the PC That's what Mantle and DX12 are going to help address. W/DX11 though the console is also capable of handling heaps more draw calls.

Lets be real here. We're suffering from worse and worse console ports.
Games that are taking far more horsepower than Crysis 3 to run without any justification as to why.

 

[Spjut]

Except Mantle doesn't seem to have any tangible improvement over DX11 in Dragon Age.

It makes the difference between barely playable and fully playable when you use one of the weaker CPUs.
In PCgameshardware.de's test, even the i7 4970 got a noticeable improvement
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Dragon-Age-Inquisition-PC-236767/Specials/Mantle-Benchmarks-1143669/

 

[Red Hawk]

It makes the difference between barely playable and fully playable when you use one of the weaker CPUs.
In PCgameshardware.de's test, even the i7 4970 got a noticeable improvement
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Dragon-Age-Inquisition-PC-236767/Specials/Mantle-Benchmarks-1143669/

When you use weaker CPUs. So in other words, no benefit if you're using weaker GPUs.

 

[ramj70]

How does it run with everything on ultra (and fade touch) with no AA? I read AA is the biggest hit on performance, for me @ 1440p i always turn it off as i dont need at this resolution. Why are using high with a gtx 970? It cant handle those settings at ultra?

With everything on Ultra with 2Xmsaa I get a 44.5 average FPS and 36.8 low, with everything ultra and no msaa it's 50.8 and 40.1. I didn't see much of a difference with those two turned down to high so I kept it.

 

[Red Hawk]

You know, I've already downloaded and installed DAI, and I'm waiting to get my 270X to actually play it...but I could run the benchmark on the 5770 I have in my PC for kicks. But then, that could cause problems with DRM that Dragon Age Inquisition has been getting in trouble for, so better not.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I finally had to turn the settings down to medium. The performance was worse than I thought. I was getting in the 20s range. Even on med I am only getting around 30. With my system, as I said, mantle makes no difference at all, so I went back to DX. I agree with Tential that ports are getting worse instead of better as far as using resources are concerned. This game runs worse than Metro LL on my system, and I dont think it looks as good.