Cyn!c

First of all... u r a moron if u kill antivirus-soft... Second... windows updates doesnt download those updates all the time. Usually those updates are published on tuesdays. Most often first (or second) tuesday on each month. Unless u have just installed windows u dont have concern those Third... spybot running backround all the time ? Moron... Started game from .exe ? WOW !!! u must be a hacker ! It doesnt have northing to do "fluid" gaming if u start game from .exe or from steam. Today/yesterday there has been several thousands people who has been downloading those steam free games etc. That's one of reasons why your steam / CPU is "stuttering" or simply ur CPU is so crap that it cant handle few program. Go buy new one. And this same thing for everybody who's whining that this is "hard game for CPU"... this really is NOT ! Wow so much rage. I was only posting that info to help others who might be having the same issues. Whatever you claim to think you know, I have had unexplainable issues with performance at times. You really are a human **** it seems, and have as much of a brain as one too. Please go frack yourself.

Okay, not sure which one of these helped, but we played for about 2 hours straight through a lot of intense fights tonight and experienced no problems. Here's what I did: Terminated my anti virus process tree. Turned off windows updates. Exited spybot. Started the game from the exe. I've also noticed steam is taking a very very long time to log in to my user account, starting the game via the exe seemed to make this a lot faster. I didn't lower the process affinity at all.

Hey Volourn, anyone who thinks that DA2 is as good as DA1 is flat out wrong. See what I did there? Pretty sure even the polls over at Bioware's OWN FORUMS support this. r00sh!tz!

The only thing DA2 had was its graphics. Everything else was a step back from DA1. I dunno, the graphics engine itself might not have been terrible, but the art direction surely was. DS3 has 1000 times better art direction than DA2 with power rangers for Dark Spawn and Ogres wearing samurai armour for some reason. Also Volourn, bashing the DS3 demo when DA2's demo was an abysmal mess is pretty r00fles worthy.

Are you sure? DA2's scores were so clearly bought, from the PC gamer proclamation of "RPG of the decade" (in 2011 no doubt) to Gamespot's almost entirely negative review (which scored it an 8!) the game had almost no redeeming features about it save for it being the sequel to one of the best modern RPGs. The combat was a lazy, rushed thrown together mess of terrible ideas focused on the "everytime you push a button something awesome has to happen" mantra. The story was pretty terrible, the environments were bland and constantly recycled. The whole damn game took place in one city which never, ever changed it's appearance over 10 freaking years.

you win teh interwebz x infinity

Interesting that there is a huge disparity between the big gaming sites and the smaller independent/european ones. What could it mean...

Agree about loot for host (my gf is getting pissed off that her loot is not as good as mine, this does not bode well for me IRL!), also agree about the camera. I was quite disappointed when I realized that the camera was not zoomable AT ALL during local co op. It needs to pan out a lot further so we can see what the hell is going on. Totally support DLC, haven't finished the game yet but already want it to go for ages!

I wonder if the client's communications with the server are causing this. I'm going to try playing in offline mode to see if that fixes it.

I don't know why I think this, but for some reason I feel that the steam client is the culprit. When I quit the game after this happens, my CPU is incredibly choppy and spiking. When I end the steam client's process, it fixes itself very fast.

This sort of helped...maybe. Just played for about an hour before getting the crazy CPU usage spikes as soon as I entered the fight with Gunderic. What's weird is the CPU usage spikes continue even after I've exited the game for about 2 minutes. Then everything is fine again.

Those little gnomes that make your computer work are being lazy today Seriously though, hard to say. I only experienced memory leak/huge fps drops when I had Windows updates running on the background. HMMM I didn't think about the Windows updates! I'll try disabling them and see if that helps.

Hmm so you're on an NVIDIA...I heard that the game was optimized for multi core processors...I have an i7 but still getting the same issue.

Yep, I've been experiencing this as well, what are your specs?

I find all of these arguments very interesting. I was pretty angry at Bioware for DA2, so I've been on the other side of the fence as well. I see some key differences between the situations, an IP purchase by Square Enix and a new developer in the form of Obsidian being two of them. I will say, that anyone who states DA2 is a better game than DS3 is just wrong. Opinions and Internet lulz aside, there comes a point where you just have to face the fact that there's something funny in the water. Obsidian have succeeded in making me interested in a very generic mundane world simply due to their art direction and strength of writing. I'm not close to finishing the game, but I've been enthralled by the lore and dialogues with Odo and The Radiant. The soundtrack so far has been brilliant, melancholy, moody and immersive. Not standard fantasy fare which is so refreshing. The combat mechanics are addictive and well thought out. On hardcore, managing stances and working out strategies for tough fights is essential. There are tons of ways to build a character, that people aren't seeing this complexity is very weird to me. I also don't get the complaints about loot. I've been excited every time I've opened a chest, hoping to see that green or blue text to pop up, and then quickly rummaging to find out what I got. The engine has it's issues, the multiplayer with 4 chars is, most likely, a mess. But the game underneath these issues is very nice. This is not 9/10 or 10/10 material. It's a solid 8 or 7 at the least. In my opinion anything lower than this is simply a reflection on the reviewer not taking the time to actual appreciate what the game is.

I'm also using MotionInJoy and it's working great. Just install the drivers, then make sure you choose to emulate the 360 controller. Don't forget to click "Enable" the guy is a great programmer, but a terrible UI designer, what you have to do is sometimes not so clear.

Hmm for instance, I can run Dragon Age 2 or Dragon Age Origins at close max at pretty high frame rates...for basically ever. Like I said, the heaviest app running is explorer...well Spybot is taking up some. I'll try disabling that and see what happens. But seriously...what I don't get is the inconsistency. Why did the game run so nicely yesterday, then today...it has this issue??

Okay, after updating the drivers for my graphics card (I'm on CCC 11.6 now) and having the game run VERY smoothly for some periods of time, today I am getting heaps of unexplained memory leaks. It just doesn't make sense. I've attached an image of what the load on my CPU looks like when this happens. This was taken after I quit the game. The CPU usage was constantly spiking and dipping. Basically the game bugs out incredibly, frame rates grind to a crawl and sound stutters and slaps all around. If I put up with it for a while, sometimes it just fixes itself. The weirdest part about this, is that I played for about 4 hours yesterday, no issues whatsoever. Ran like a dream during tons of hectic encounters etc., now suddenly today...this happens again. If anyone can offer some advice I'd really appreciate it. FYI I'm not running any memory heavy processes, the highest load process other than steam is explorer. Just in case anyone missed my previous post, my specs are as follows: CPU: Core i7 740QM GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5730 (latest drivers) RAM: 8BG OS: Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

Dude, it was stated from the outset that this was a reboot. Get over it seriously. The game has great combat mechanics, a rich graphical engine and a well written story line. It's a different game sure, but unlike DA2, it was not created by some marketing focus group. Obsidian has tried hard to put hardcore stat driven gameplay in with a story driven semi cinematic experience, and I think they've pulled off the middle ground quite well. Really hope the scores don't hurt it so much that it doesn't get an expansion or DLC. That would suck because I'll be wanting more for sure.

That was pretty harsh review. It's pretty stupid how he goes on about how the controls aren't fine for PC, but I didn't see him mention once how you can use a bloody controller on the PC as well and the controls will be just as fine as on consoles. Maybe if Dungeon Siege 3 lasted 50 hours (20 of those using same maps over and over again) the game would have gotten a better score. Both reviews are sad. They show how out of touch Gamespot and IGN are giving horrible games like Dragon Age 2 8's and above, while giving this very solid, well written game with excellent combat mechanics, 6.5 and under. It seems like the expectations for an ARPG are so set in stone, and if they don't get what they want, ie. Diablo style multi player, then it's just not good. Well this game is something different, but it's still very good and it's sad to see the major sites ignore this. Worse still, this will hurt sales in North America badly. I would have loved to see it get an 8 from both these sites, because imo, that's what it deserves. Dragon Age 2 on the other hand...5 or 6 would have been more appropriate.

I started a quick solo game with Reinhart and he is seriously awesome fun to play as. Once you get used to his time bomb / ranged attack technique, you'll be having heaps of fun.

Ouch, these are very harsh scores from Gamespot & IGN. I understand the PC version getting a lower score than the consoles, but honestly I feel 6.5 and 6.0 are far too low. I would never, ever give this score a lower rating than Dragon Age 2. Quite shocked by these actually. I am loving the game so far, playing with my girlfriend and we haven't had this much fun playing a game since Dark Alliance 2. The game is not without it's problems, too frequent enemy respawning and poor camera controls being the major ones for me so far, but all in all it is a very fun adventure through gorgeous environments peppered with interesting dialogue and good writing. Honestly, compare it to DA2, how can you possibly say it is worse?!

Alright, after much pain and suffering, I've fixed everything driver wise and while I haven't confirmed that the memory leaks are completely fixed, I have a feeling it will be okay now. I squarely blame ATI for my problems so far, and I think there will be others who could get these issues due to their overly complex driver updating process. Not to mention that their site has WRONG links and files on it. I'm going to write a guide as to what I did here. Mods you might want to sticky this just in case anyone else has the same issue. First off I will post my specs again: Processor: Core i7 740QM Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 RAM: 8GB OS: Windows 7 Professional The main problem is that the AMD website provides a number of download options for their various products. It could never be as simple as, here is your driver - download it could it? Anyway just forget about going to their site at all, it didn't help me in the slightest. Their software suite prompted to download the incorrect file, and the CCC download on their page did not include the display driver for 11.6 (you'll notice the file it links to does not have "dd" in its name). So I followed the guide here: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/mobility-rad...-06-2011-a.html but I downloaded the driver from here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=346152 because it was much faster. Make sure you get the MOBILITY driver if you're on a laptop. I've just done all of this, and booted the game and voila, beautiful smooth frame rates. I'll play more later on today to confirm if the memory leaks are happening or not.

I think installing the driver through Windows was causing some problems. I've since uninimstalled all ATI stuff an reinstalled 11-5, I'm going to do the same for a fresh 11-6 install now and see how it goes. What I find strange is that the game seemed to run better with the 8.3 drivers, but then got memory leaks (which were happening before I tried updating any drivers). Perhaps there has been some sort of driver conflict lurking in there. I'm growing to hate ATI, among this crap was a bug that prevents their control center from launching in Windows 7. It's a known bug and has been happening since the OS was released, but short of deleting assembly tokens, there is NO solution available for this. I've deleted the tokens and got it working again but that is really poor effort from a tech company at this level.

Yes. To re-iterate my previous post : have you tried downloading the drivers put out by the laptop's publisher? I know mine doesn't like ATI's driver. It's a Dell Studio XPS 1645...the latest driver they have on their page was released in February 2010. Good stuff Dell!