Have you, like me, against all odds, actually found yourself enjoying DA:I?
Are you avoiding that other thread because you know it contains many evils, much hatred, many spoilers and just way too much talk about all the various homosexual relationship combinations available in the game (but don't care at all about that kind of thing)?
Do you find yourself almost as interested in getting the game to run well on your rig as playing the game itself?
Then this is the thread for you. Welcome.
Here we're going to talk mostly about the technical aspects of DA:I. We may talk a little about the gameplay itself, not indulging too much (for we know the game is mostly for fags and we don't want to out ourselves TOO much as BioFags or popamolers). Some light discussion about the characters, the story, character builds, etc. may be touched upon as well. Who knows?
For me personally, I am very surprised at myself that I even own this game. Many of you may remember, possibly quite vividly, the nuclear white-hot rage I felt towards DA2. So horrible was its design, so lazy, so uninspired, so offensive to us homophobes, that I swore I would never buy another BioWhore game again. Just the thought of another Dragon Age game made me scoff with disgust. But I got curious. I had been hearing little peeps of praise for the game that I further laughed off with incredulity. But I just wanted to see for myself. So I looked. I watched a few gameplay videos. I read a few reviews. And I have to admit, it looked good. I got more than a little curious. I got hard. Sorry, I mean I went out and bought the game at my local GameStop. What a dirty whore I am.
But as stated, this thread is mostly going to be about the technical aspects of the game, since it is a real bear to run with all its details turned up to maximum, being a true Direct X 11 game; and besides, what else could we hope to cover here that hasn't already been discussed! to death in that other behemoth of a thread? We are above them. Or they are, rather, beneath our fists.
So I run the game at 1920x1200 with most settings maxed out, or on Ultra, rather.
My system specs are as follows:
- i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz
- 2 x EVGA GTX 760 4GB SLI
- 16GB Mushkin DDR3 2133MHz
- Crucial M4 SSD
- Windows 7 Home Prem 64
With MSAA off (more on that later), I can pull 60fps about 80% of the time. The game will start to chug pretty badly in areas with lots of NPC's, which is what most people are talking about when it comes to performance-tuning the game, and another aspect that seems to really drag the frames down is the infamous DX11 smoke / particles. I actually searched for a way to force the game into DX9 mode but it appears as if that will never be an option. The game's engine, Frostbite, which is the same engine that other games like Battlefield 4 and Need For Speed Rivals run, dropped support for Direct X 9 several versions ago, forcing users to accept the new, and in my opinion still horribly unoptimized, DX11 API. ATI users are happily reporting good performance boosts from using Mantle instead of Direct X, but we all know only gay people and girly boys use ATI so we won't go into that.
The graphics options in the game that I have found that have the greatest impact on performance are as follows:
- Multisample Antialiasing. This one, even only set at the 2X setting, has a dramatic effect, cutting into my fps by at least 30-40%. I turned it completely off, preferring to either force antialiasing in the Nvidia Control Panel or just not enabling any AA at all. The game looks fine without it, and at a high enough resolution it's barely noticeable. It would be nice to see other options available such as even some basic FXAA. I would bet in a future path less impactful AA options will be made available.
- Tessellation: Another Direct X 11-only feature, tessellation still hasn't found its way into my heart. Sure it makes things look smoother but at its higher levels it's still a performance-killer. I turned this from High down to Medium and enjoyed a 2-3 fps boost, which is understandable. I couldn't tell any difference in the graphics quality so I left it there.
- Shadows: Dropping this from Ultra to High netted me another 2-3 fps, and again I couldn't tell much of a difference in the quality of the image at all. I'm not really sure what's going on with the Ultra setting, but I suspect it may have to do with objects farther off in the distance. Fuck you; if my character's shadow looks crisp(y), I'm good. Leaving it at High. Medium looks too washed out to me, despite its further gains of another 2-3 fps.
All the rest of the options in Graphics meant nothing to my frames when dropped from Ultra to High or from High to Medium, depending. I could have performed further testing with every option dropped down to Medium or lower, but I wasn't interested. I always shoot for the highest graphical fidelity I can while maintaining as close to 60fps as possible. I always use Vsync, and you should, too. Screen tearing is the devil.
So there are my initial impressions behind the game's performance. Again I do believe things will get better, hopefully much better, with the first big patch. No, I don't know when that'll be. I suspect soon™, as many are clamoring about bugs, crashes, general instability and, of course, performance issues. By the way, it appears as if, at least on a quality gaming rig, DA:I is outperforming its console competition, the evil things. So take heart, even if the game does crash every five minutes, that we of The Master Race still reign supreme. PC Gaming Forevar.
*hides his PS4 in the corner*
I'll continue to post more impressions of the game itself and of any news I hear of patches here. Please do me and fellow readers the courtesy of not posting any story spoilers here and keep your shitposting to a minimum. I'd appreciate it.
By the way, the rumors about the game trashing SSD's are completely false. No truth to them whatsoever. Nope. None. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. I swear. Really.
© Copyright 2014 Extra Crispy Productions, a subsidiary of Dark Underlord Empire, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Are you avoiding that other thread because you know it contains many evils, much hatred, many spoilers and just way too much talk about all the various homosexual relationship combinations available in the game (but don't care at all about that kind of thing)?
Do you find yourself almost as interested in getting the game to run well on your rig as playing the game itself?
Then this is the thread for you. Welcome.
Here we're going to talk mostly about the technical aspects of DA:I. We may talk a little about the gameplay itself, not indulging too much (for we know the game is mostly for fags and we don't want to out ourselves TOO much as BioFags or popamolers). Some light discussion about the characters, the story, character builds, etc. may be touched upon as well. Who knows?
For me personally, I am very surprised at myself that I even own this game. Many of you may remember, possibly quite vividly, the nuclear white-hot rage I felt towards DA2. So horrible was its design, so lazy, so uninspired, so offensive to us homophobes, that I swore I would never buy another BioWhore game again. Just the thought of another Dragon Age game made me scoff with disgust. But I got curious. I had been hearing little peeps of praise for the game that I further laughed off with incredulity. But I just wanted to see for myself. So I looked. I watched a few gameplay videos. I read a few reviews. And I have to admit, it looked good. I got more than a little curious. I got hard. Sorry, I mean I went out and bought the game at my local GameStop. What a dirty whore I am.
But as stated, this thread is mostly going to be about the technical aspects of the game, since it is a real bear to run with all its details turned up to maximum, being a true Direct X 11 game; and besides, what else could we hope to cover here that hasn't already been discussed! to death in that other behemoth of a thread? We are above them. Or they are, rather, beneath our fists.
So I run the game at 1920x1200 with most settings maxed out, or on Ultra, rather.
My system specs are as follows:
- i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz
- 2 x EVGA GTX 760 4GB SLI
- 16GB Mushkin DDR3 2133MHz
- Crucial M4 SSD
- Windows 7 Home Prem 64
With MSAA off (more on that later), I can pull 60fps about 80% of the time. The game will start to chug pretty badly in areas with lots of NPC's, which is what most people are talking about when it comes to performance-tuning the game, and another aspect that seems to really drag the frames down is the infamous DX11 smoke / particles. I actually searched for a way to force the game into DX9 mode but it appears as if that will never be an option. The game's engine, Frostbite, which is the same engine that other games like Battlefield 4 and Need For Speed Rivals run, dropped support for Direct X 9 several versions ago, forcing users to accept the new, and in my opinion still horribly unoptimized, DX11 API. ATI users are happily reporting good performance boosts from using Mantle instead of Direct X, but we all know only gay people and girly boys use ATI so we won't go into that.
The graphics options in the game that I have found that have the greatest impact on performance are as follows:
- Multisample Antialiasing. This one, even only set at the 2X setting, has a dramatic effect, cutting into my fps by at least 30-40%. I turned it completely off, preferring to either force antialiasing in the Nvidia Control Panel or just not enabling any AA at all. The game looks fine without it, and at a high enough resolution it's barely noticeable. It would be nice to see other options available such as even some basic FXAA. I would bet in a future path less impactful AA options will be made available.
- Tessellation: Another Direct X 11-only feature, tessellation still hasn't found its way into my heart. Sure it makes things look smoother but at its higher levels it's still a performance-killer. I turned this from High down to Medium and enjoyed a 2-3 fps boost, which is understandable. I couldn't tell any difference in the graphics quality so I left it there.
- Shadows: Dropping this from Ultra to High netted me another 2-3 fps, and again I couldn't tell much of a difference in the quality of the image at all. I'm not really sure what's going on with the Ultra setting, but I suspect it may have to do with objects farther off in the distance. Fuck you; if my character's shadow looks crisp(y), I'm good. Leaving it at High. Medium looks too washed out to me, despite its further gains of another 2-3 fps.
All the rest of the options in Graphics meant nothing to my frames when dropped from Ultra to High or from High to Medium, depending. I could have performed further testing with every option dropped down to Medium or lower, but I wasn't interested. I always shoot for the highest graphical fidelity I can while maintaining as close to 60fps as possible. I always use Vsync, and you should, too. Screen tearing is the devil.
So there are my initial impressions behind the game's performance. Again I do believe things will get better, hopefully much better, with the first big patch. No, I don't know when that'll be. I suspect soon™, as many are clamoring about bugs, crashes, general instability and, of course, performance issues. By the way, it appears as if, at least on a quality gaming rig, DA:I is outperforming its console competition, the evil things. So take heart, even if the game does crash every five minutes, that we of The Master Race still reign supreme. PC Gaming Forevar.
*hides his PS4 in the corner*
I'll continue to post more impressions of the game itself and of any news I hear of patches here. Please do me and fellow readers the courtesy of not posting any story spoilers here and keep your shitposting to a minimum. I'd appreciate it.
By the way, the rumors about the game trashing SSD's are completely false. No truth to them whatsoever. Nope. None. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. I swear. Really.
© Copyright 2014 Extra Crispy Productions, a subsidiary of Dark Underlord Empire, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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