Dragon Age Origins low fps all the time?

I just installed and started playing Dragon Age - Origins for my laptop. It is so wierd. I am getting around 26fps all the time no matter what settings i put it to, low, medium high, vsync off, frame buffer effects off, i don't know what else to do to get my framerate back up!

Specs below

 

Are your power settings in performance? Any recent GPU drivers update?

 

When this happens, it's usually because you are CPU bound. Dragon Age likes fast CPUs, preferably with more than 2 cores. 26 FPS with a P7350 doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

 

if you change teh resolution, is your framerate changing?

 

I'd have to agree, DA pins my cpu most of the time.

 

DA being based on the UT3 engine usually takes 100% CPU time on a typical dual core processor. so its pretty much CPU bound.. so the usual methods on lowering resolution and effects etc won't help much as those are methods useful in GPU bound situations... best you can do is make sure all unnecessary services, processes and programs are off while playing to ensure all CPU power goes to the game...

 

Ever think about OC'ing you CPU a little? I have the P7350 in my laptop OC'ed to 2.5 and get 35ish FPS when i play with Vsync enabled. It seems that we have the same laptop except for the vid card.

 

nuhuh, from 1280x800 to 800x600 still slow. i mean its playable and still fun but it would be better if it were a bit faster

 

did you try it without undervolting your cpu?

 

the undervolting is not going to help with the game only going to help with temps and power consumption.

 

My 2.4Ghz duo can run Dragon Age on almost max settings, so i don't think that's the problem.

 

well, the p7350 is a good amount slower.

im wondering if im in a similar situation. i have to turn of aa, run about 1440x900, medium graphics or textures all the time when im outside, but inside i can do almost everything maximum.

it just seems like a very big discrepancy does it?

does anyone know exactly what it is that the cpu has to work on SO hard to reduce framerates anyway?

 

he undervolted his cpu to 1.0v read the sig!

 

& ur point is ....... ?

Undervolting never compromises performance ..... do some benchmarking UVed & not and u will see what im talking about

 

Undervolting is setting your CPU to the lowest possible voltage at which it will remain stable without compromising performance. If his UV was the problem, he'd be getting BSODs, not poor performance.

 

I agree it is not the CPU. With my i5 (duo processor 2.26 up to 2.53GHz) I can run it maxed and the majority of the slow downs are only in Denerim.

 

wait, he's serious about the undervolting? i thought he was joking, well, in that case that might be the problem

 

Yep, that is the logical step to follow: avoid using any anomaly set in the laptop. Maybe the undervolt is just too much for DAO, but not enough for BSODs.

 

non-sense
UV doesn't affect your CPU performance at all
I play the game without frame buffer, all high except AA and native 1280x800 res. I get around 28 fps on most of the time, and i have stock clocks. Even when i go under 20 sometimes (rare, but idk why), the game still feels smoothly.

 

I have little knowledge on undervolting, so I can't give any opinion on that topic. But from a general perspective if you have a problem the first step is to try to put 'normal' any abnormal parameters in the system (overclocking, undervolting, fraps recording, etc.). Once you've discarded such parameters then other options for the problem (say drivers) can be analyzed.

 

This is not necessarily true. Some of the programs used to undervolt have trouble dealing with CPUs that have half multipliers. If the P7350 was undervolted with one of these, the maximum clock speed would decrease from 2.00GHz to 1.87GHz. This is a 6.7% effect so it's not that bad, but the clock speed was quite low to begin with and this is not helping.

 

i'm monitoring my clock speeds using rmclock and pinnacle and my speeds are constantly at 2.0ghz when gaming undervolted

 

u just confirmed what I said .... it is not the UVing itself .... it is the speed reduction from the program inability to deal with half multipliers even though I don't think anyone won't notice that his clocks are lower than they should on full stress

check my sig I have a 20% voltage reduction & I never faced any performance drop & on my old T7200 I reached almost 35% voltage drop & that also never compromised performance & both processors come from diff. generations with diff. multipliers & clock speeds