Dragon Age - Sys Req Comments

I tripped over these comments on the Dragon Age forums by Lead Principal Programmer Ross Gardner about the performance on single core and low end systems. Although the specs seem reasonable to me, these comments a worth a look if you are running a modest system:

Speaking to the single core questions, the game actually runs OK on a single core depending on the clock speed. We change the threading model slightly to take that into account and Andreas is saying it is about 20% slower, with likely a few dips in a larger heated combat. The min-spec was actually supposed to be an Intel Core 2 (single core) although that is not very clear. If it was a single core though, I'd want to run at higher than 1.4Ghz.

To the older AMD questions I ran the game all through development on the following system:

AMD 64 X2 Dual 4400+ 2.21Ghz w/ 3 gigs of RAM which I assume is DDR 2 without pulling the box apart. I tried and it runs really well on 1.5 Gigs but I constantly had a crapload of other apps running so hence the 3.
The video card I had was a 256MB 7800GT.
OS was XP

I ran on medium settings and the game ran really well - 99% of the time about 20fps and usually between 25-40.

Most of our single core work was done on a similar system with 1 core disabled.

We did a lot of work to make it run on lower end PC's well and if you have the minimum you will have an OK gaming experience. If anything I'd recommend closer to a 2Ghz and above processor before upgrading to a dual core (or a quad) if you can do that cheaply. And before upgrading you should try the game - because it might just surprise you

More information.

He has almost an identical system to my old one which I had for 4 years. Since he has a 7800gt he probably has ddr ram since it seems like an older system.

Nice to see all the early clarifications … I feel this is going to run great on most people's systems!

I'm surprised, this might even run on my system.
Congrats to Bioware

My sysem is also very close to what he has. So it's an old system now? Time flies!

Well, I think the system requirment release was another Bioware marketing move.
They showed some confused info and created a huge discussion wave in the forums.
Then, after reaching maximum terror, they clarified the system specs are lower than waht expected……
And the fans mass is so happy!

Eh eh eh. Good strategy indeed.

Originally Posted by Gragnak
Well, I think the system requirment release was another Bioware marketing move.
They showed some confused info and created a huge discussion wave in the forums.
Then, after reaching maximum terror, they clarified the system specs are lower than waht expected……
And the fans mass is so happy!

Eh eh eh. Good strategy indeed.

I don't remember any maximum terror! From the start the engine did not look like it was going to be that demanding, then the system requirements came out and it was clear four year old computers would be able to run it, and now they've just clarified further that what they mean by minimum requirement is minimum playable, not runnable, so if you want to try it on something lesser it'll probably still work.

A few people here were pretty terrorized -- they clearly thought that minimum req meant minimum req to run, and the heavily compromised experience that follows from it. I don't blame them, really -- that's how it used to be until consoles leveled the spec.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
I don't blame them, really -- that's how it used to be until consoles leveled the spec.

It still is in many cases … look at Gothic 3 or Crysis or NWN2 or whatever …

True, that. Then again, none of these were released on consoles at launch -- and G3 and NWN2 didn't run particularly well on ANYTHING on release.

As much as I hate consolization, it *has* created a more meaningful definition of "minimum spec."

99% of the time about 20fps and usually between 25-40.

so i reckon "usually" is supposed to mean the remaining 1% ???
________
Jailbroken

"I reckon" there's a slip in the text -- "about" should read "above." The sentence makes more sense that way.