Dragon Age Inquisition disturbing FPS drops for no reason

[Balazs Hasprai]

Hello there fellas!
I bought Dragon Age Inquisition a few days ago. When I get into the game's world, the fps is around 50, minimum ~32-33, and after a few minutes, it just drops down to ~15-20, for no reason. It doesn't matter if I'm in combat, or not. And after it dropped, it stucks at this rate. My rig should be able to run it around high settings.
I didn't have this issue until i reached redcliffe village.
-AMD FX6300
-Nvidia Geforce GTX660 2gb
-16GB 1333Mhz Kingston HyperX Fury RAM
PS: I tried to set lower the settings, but it was the same.
Please, someone help me. I can't wait to play this game!

 

[manez]

it could be a CPU bottleneck, check your usage.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

I checked the CPU usage, it's aroun 86%. I didn't have this issue now in the forest near redcliffe village, the lowes fps was 25 in combat, but that's still too low. I have very low fps among npcs, i mean not a few npcs; like in a village. But I don't have this issue in Haven.

In redcliffe village, at the gryphon or whatever statue is that, the fps is around ~12-15.
And in The Gull and Lantern i got minimum 57.
But i chech teh usage with msi afterburner too. I don't really trust task manager..

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

Yeah, the max usage was 95% on the CPU, and the GPU is on 99.
Correct: in the inn, after i saved, it dropped down to 20.
And all the six cores were working on 100%

 

[manez]

It's a very cpu intensive game, assuming you have updated your graphics drivers, your best bet is just to experiment with different graphics settings.

Unless you want to upgrade your hardware there isn't a whole lot you can do. Since this game utilizes mantle quite well, an AMD gpu with mantle support would give you best bang for buck.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

I was planning to upgrade the cpu to fx8350. This or the amd gpu should be first? And which gpu do you suggest?
PS: I really like nvidia gpus, i think only for shadowplay. Is there some similiar software to amd gpus?
Thanks for your support.

 

[manez]

Depends what kind of games you play, Mantle games run really great on amd cards, but nvidia cards generally run better on the other games, at a higher price of course. If you have the funds, investing in an intel cpu would give you some great gains and a stronger base for future upgrades. What's your motherboard?
If it's a decent one, going for AMD 8-core would be a good choice but if it's not switching over to intel would make more sense.
In the end it all depends on your budget.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

I have an asrock 980de/u3s3 motherboard now.
I was thinking about an intel setup, but that means motherboard change. What intel motherboard and cpu do you suggest?

 

[manez]

That mobo should have support for the fx-8xxx.

An intel xeon v3-1231 v3 or similar would blow away anything AMD can offer at a decent price point, you can't OC it though but that means it doesn't need a fancy motherboard either.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

What about the fx8350 with a gtx970? Or 780

 

[manez]

I would suggest you go with an fx-8320 + 970 in that case.
The 8350 is just an overclocked version of the 8320, so if you bought an aftermarket cooler you could OC the 8320 beyond the 8350 stock speeds and save a couple of bucks.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

Will my motherboard bear the OC? I want to buy the cpu first.

 

[manez]

I couldn't find that much info on google but it's safe to say you will not reach any insane overclocks but still enough to make it a worthwhile purchase.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

These upgrades have to wait at least 4-5 months. Christmas comes and i have to buy presents for the family. And during finals i wont be able to work.
An idea came to my mind during physics class. What if I just lower the texture resolution, or whatever is the name of it ingame. Maybe that will improve the performance.

 

[manez]

Yea lowering graphics settings would help, though if the cpu bottleneck is too steep it might not have that a big of a difference, but no harm is trying.
Start with AA and shadows quality.

 

[Balazs Hasprai]

I've contaced EA Support, and they said to send them the msinfo and directx infos. I sent them, they replied, that maybe the gpu is the problem, and try it on low settings. I tried, it was running on smooth 80fps(with shitty graphics..), but after a few minutes, it dropped down to 35.

 

[Drazek]

it could be a CPU bottleneck, check your usage.

I don't know why but I read that as "check your sausage."

 

[Mersim85]

I may have a solution to your problem that worked for me. I have an AMD fx-8350 & PNY GTX 970 and the same thing was happening (at higher frames though). All I did was make the video card dedicated to Physx in the Nvidia control panel and presto, no more frame drops ever. Let me know if this works for you.

 

[Mersim85]

I forgot to mention, keep the graphics settings for everything else the same except for the Physx change. You should be able to enjoy the game quite a bit now.