Dragon age 2 performance?

So I'm European and very excited about this game alas i cant get it till the 11th so thought id ask you lucky Americans,How does it perform on your M15x?

Id like to know from anyone with a 5850m and possibly a i5 540 but really any set up I'm interested to hear about OH! and is dx11 playable..I mean in Metro 2033 I found dx11 crippled performance thought dirt 2 with dx11 is fine.

 

Just installed the game on my m15x...only played a few minutes though, so far seems to run very smooth in dx11 mode, settings at HIGH. 4x AF and 4x AA. Getting around 60fps in cutscenes, dips to 40-50 in combat.

I tried running on Very High settings, with everything maxed, and it's just a little too choppy during the battle sequences for me to enjoy. May not be too much of a bother for some, but I don't like seeing 30fps or lower in any game I play on the PC.

It seems bioware did a nice job making sure each level of detail looks pretty good, but it really shines in dx11 Very High, with the downloadable high-res texture pack. Though I wouldn't recommend that unless you have a nice gaming desktop rig.

 

Thanks for letting me know, I'm a little more excited now. bit worried about my i5 though i seen on steam it recommend quad core :S

 

Graphics wise this seems weaker than Two Worlds 2... Does anyone have the DAO2 with high rez and TW2 to compare?

I am curious to hear some non-bias opinions of DA02 because the demo just didn't turn me on at all.

BW, StevenX

 

Apparently the actual game has better graphics than the demo but I only heard that from a friend.

 

I only played the demo but the graphics don't seem too much of a problem for the M15X

 

On very high, was flucuating between 15 and 35fps.
On high between 45-60fps.
The only real difference between high and very high is tesselation.

 

@Drk - if you enable very high and then disable tesselation in CCC or use a load program like Radeon Pro to disable it how many frames do you get? Also I think CCC has an option like AMD optimized Tessellation.

StevenX

 

this is all sounding great.On another forum desktop owners are struggling with very high so i was worried about our laptops holding up,Though i think they are using the hight texture mod too.
I'm sure this game will look great on hight i cant wait to see it now!

 

AMD Optimized was already enabled for the results above. I disabled tesselation via CCC and it was between 25-35fps. It was closer to the 25fps most of the time. In bigger battles it will go down to 10fps sometimes. High graphics settings with AA and AF turned off seems to be the performance sweet spot for me.

My desktop that has an i7 930 and HD 6850 runs the run flawlessly at 60fps with max settings. I have a feeling that the lower performance on my m15x has to due with the 5850 being first gen DX11 and not really optimized for it. Heres hoping that the m15x can use the new gen of ATI GPUs. I would like to see how the Nvidia 460 handles very high as nvidia typically has better DX11 performance.

Edit: I am downloading the high texture resolution patch and will be testing that.

 

Looking forward to hearing how the hight texture pack performs ..Just found out this game comes out on the 10th where i live.Dunno why we get it a day before the rest of Europe.

 

Also, if someone has comments with the High Texture Pack ( Choose Language | BioWare Social Network) and a GeForce GTX460M... I'll appreciate that!

 

I think the high texture pack will be asking too much of our machines.Hope I'm wrong.
I'll post my performance tomorrow when i get the game.

 

Just did some more testing now that I have the high res pack installed. It does not affect performance at all. It just requires 1gb of VRAM which the 5850 has. I will give a more detailed explaination of performance.

Very High with 8x AA and 16x AF all settings enabled= 15fps battles 25fps walking around.
Very High with no AA or AF but all settings enabled = 15fps battles and 30fps walking around.
High with 8x AA and 16x AF all settings enabled = 40fps battles and 55 fps walking around
High with no AA or AF but all settings enabled = 45 fps battles and 60 fps walking around.

Disabling Tesselation via CCC doesn't work. Probably will be a fix for that soon from AMD. Game doesn't look much different between very high and high aside from the tesselation. On very high, you do get diffusion depth of field and high quality blur but enabling those does not affect visuals without looking extremely hard to find the differences.

 

thats great news about the hight texture pack and thanks for all the info +rep.Still I hope my i5 isn't a problem.
Going from what you said I'll definitely be gaming at hight maybe with AA and AF will have to see if it makes a big difference to visuals, I have no problem with 40fps in this kind of game or most any games actually

 

@drkfire - try radeon pro. It "should" allow you to run the game with very high and tessellation disabled. ATI has a weird way of storing gpu settings and this software over-rides the CCC settings as long as you dont open CCC after making adjustments. Seriously. Imaging running dx11 without all the Tess mess. Select very high in game, with all the usual settings. Then go to radeon pro and select tess and set it at 0. It "should" over-ride the in game settings. Good Luck, Steven Owens
RadeonPro: Radeon Games Profiles Automation Tool

Fine Print - This software is not support by Notebookreview. It is used at your own risk. Please scan software accordingly for malware.

 

im running maxed out on 1600x900 and its smooth to me; i dont know the exact FPS but its not choppy at all.
Im running the newest AMD drivers.

 

If you don't have it download fraps from here Download Fraps 3.3.1 free version it's free,small,wont effect performance,simple to use and will record your frame rates in games once opened.Then if you feel kind could you post the results
I think its a must have application :O

 

1600X900
Very High 8x AA Play in Full-Screen Direct X 11 Verticle Sync Off,

i get 33-40FPS in town walking around not fighting

during big battles it gets no less than 28-30FPS almost like it doesnt even affect it
System Specs:
1GB GDDR5 5850 on newest AMD Drivers
i7 -740qm
6GB DDR3
500GB 7200RPM Drive

All stock clocks no overclock.

 

Radeon Pro did allow disabling tesselation but it caused instability. Got some crashing in Kirkwall when looking around.
FPS did go up to a 45 fps in city and 35fps in battle.

Have been doing some addition testing on settings in Very High. Vsync cause zero fps drops or gains. High Quality blur causes zero fps drops/gains. Diffusion depth of field causes a 6 fps drop. AF/AA at 16x/8x only cause a 2 fps drop which is astounding. It is still playable on very high, but for smooth gameplay high should be what you are at.

I still want to here some people with the 460m chime in because Nvidia has a better track record with tesselation.

 

@ffdaines.Thanks for recording your fps
Well i have the game now playing it 1080p with no OC on my 5850m im playing on high with 4xAA 0AF and im getting upto 70fps max around town 40-50ish and battles 35-40.But in some cut scenes when there is action i seen the frame rates go as low as 12 :S.
Anyway that only happened once and the game is running good enough for me.
I'm gonna put AA/AF on max now and use vsync too see what its like, oh and OC my card ^^

 

Are u on very high? I am starting to wonder if the lower clock speed of my 740qm is affecting more then I think? Throttlestop says it is uses all my threads, but if you are very high that might mean this game prefers pure clock speed of a core over more threads unlike the last dragon age.

 

wow that's great. with my i5 540m / 460m combo I can barely play Dragon Age Origins (original game) on high/medium at 1080p.

 

I got DA2 at midnight Monday night, but haven't done much but install it yet. I realized I was about 5-8 hours left in DA1 and never loaded up DA:Awakening yet =\

My understanding is if DA1 works well on your system, DA2 should work similarly well. It's the same engine. My M15x runs DA1 at 1080p with all settings on High and 16xAF. Haven't tried AA yet, but honestly don't fee the game needs it with 1080p on a 15" screen.

 

@drkfire07 i am only on high not very high and i get great performance all game except sometimes in cut scenes as I've played more I've noticed it doesn't matter whats happening in the scene but my frames will sometimes drop to 12 ish.
@Seph-VII I never played origins on my M15x so im not sure if thats normal performance for that game,maybe it was badly coded or something :S but at least you can see you will run DA2 nicely.
And Matt Woller definitely finish DA1 you can import your save files to number 2 so the history of the game is how you made it xD

 

Yeah I'm working on it as we speak. I'm so happy - I have DA1 and DAO:A to finish, then DA2, then I remembered today I never finished Mass Effect, then I have MA2. So many amazing Bioware games to play.

 

Are you sure Stealth Mode isn't on? Also, are AA/AF on? AF isn't really a performance hit these days (back in the day though, it could drop frames 25% - remember the good old days heh), but AA still takes somewhat of a hit.

Not sure if it's the Core i5? My Core2Duo 2.26 (and 2.53) ran DA on Medium-High IIRC, and the Core i5 should be faster yet. That being said, I never notice how fast the humble 1.73Ghz Core i7 is until I use the girlfriend's 2.53Ghz Core i5 Samsung...

 

No stealth mode isn't on

It is infact a very CPU intensive game and its the i5 540m that's holding me back as DAO is optimized for quad-core CPUs.

The i5 540m is faster the than the i7 720/740m btw.

 

Its not significantly faster in gaming... diference would be almost negligible.

 

After looking around. I have concluded that the i7 720qm will perform at the same speed as the i5 520m when in dual core mode. Both have a speed of 2.66GHz. And the 540m is the same speed as the 740qm whilst in dual core mode (2.8). The i7's however do have a bigger cache so may help but not much.

 

@Seph - Clarify yourself please. You say the I5-540 is faster than the I7. In what aspect? If you find apps that use only 2 cores and only run those then yes, it probably has a higher multiplier for 2. Any more cores and the I7 will be faster.

 

damn u guys r all lucky bein able to play it on atleast high. i tried playin it on high 1920 x 1080 and i get frames from like 10-20 and its really hard to play. i drop it down to medium and i get frames from 30-60
got i7 720 and gtx 460m

 

u sure you're not in stealth mode?

 

positive. first thing i always check for. its really weird tho cuz my fps drops from around 30 to 10 sometimes and i have to go to pause menu and then go back to game to have it go back up

 

@karupt. I get strange drops in frames during cut scenes only as low as 1fps lol :S During game play its totally fine though. Your frame rates should be a lot higher, try on hight again but turn screen space ambient occlusion off,This totally kills performance for me,does anyone play the game with it on?

 

Ya i experience exactly the same thing. I play at 1600x900, High with 2xAA, in DirectX11 mode. I usually get framerates around 50s. But during cut scenes it has a drastic drop, then goes back to normal.

 

wow that screen space ambient really does drop it alot. why is that??

 

Not too sure why i notice a lot more shadows when its on and a quick Google of it tells it was first used in Crysis, anything to do with that game ruins performance Anyway is your performance ok without it?

 

yea its back to atleast 30fps

 

Hi res mod, 460m, high + AF + AA on high like a 40 fps in first battle. But in very high with off or on AA + AF I have only 10-15 fps. I dont see any difference in graphic, but why so low fps? Maybe there be some path for Dragon Age or new drivers for Nvidia?

 

@metalocalypse there are beta drivers out from nvidia that increase dragon age 2 performance but im pretty sure its just for desktop GPU's.If Nvidia drivers work for both desktop and laptop i'll send you the link

 

Thx, what do u think this may help? I think this problem with game, not with perfomance.

 

It will help the game run smoother but i think your performance seems correct to me. I don't think we're going to be able to max this game out, I'd play on hight and enjoy a great game.

 

Bump, mine is running poorly in comparison to even the guys who also have the GTX 460m. i7-740QM, 8 GB DDR3.

These are my FPS readings when walking around Hightown

Medium with AA and AF maxed, 32-37 FPS
High with AA and AF maxed, 22-27 FPS
Very High with AA and AF maxed, 17-21 FPs

Stealth Mode is off, I have the newest nVidia drivers. Something doesn't seem right.

Edit: My CPU clock speeds drop when I'm playing DA2. The speeds are steady around 2600-2700 MHz when DA2 is not open. When I run the game the speeds steady around 1800 MHz.

 

As more cores go active, the maximum amount of turbo boost decreases which means your CPU multiplier and total MHz will decrease too.

 

UncleWebb is absolutely right. I posted a similar response with a link to INTEL specs for the 740QM on another thread. You might try Throttlestop - it would allow you to see exactly what is going on. You may have a heat problem that could be helped by cleaning and repasting..

Joe