Re: Graphics issues on Nvidia cards (DirectX 11)

Nodens_Tanthul · November 2014

@MonicaDien wrote:
I'm willing to do this, but, in general, kind of a scaredy-cat about rolling back for test purposes, especially with Inquisition right around the corner. Are there any potential problems I might have? And yeah, I don't know how to use the Inspector.

Edited to add that I'm not even sure I've ever had that driver on this laptop.

No you should have no problems by rolling back a driver. Follow the procedure here to uninstall current driver and install previous: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/327414-nvidia-drivers-avoid-problems.html

It simple and straightforward.

Regarding extracting the profile, this is how you do it. You download NVidia Inspector from here: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-inspector-download.html

1) Now Run Inspector, and look at the center of its window and to the right there's a button showing a screwdriver crossed with a wrench. If you mouse over it it says "Driver (256+) Profile Settings". Clck that and a new window will open.

2) On this new window use the drop down menu called "Profiles" on the top left to find the profile named "Dragon Age 2".

3) Now find the little icon to the right of the Profiles drop down menu, that shows an upward green arrow. If you mouseover it it will say "Export user defined profiles".

4) Press that button and select "Export current selected profile only" and save the file on your desktop as DA2.nip. Then click the little button again but this time select "Export all driver profiles (Nvidia Test Format) and save the file on your desktop as Profiles.txt

5) Now upload these 2 files somewhere like dropbox or whatever and send me the link If you don't have anywhere to upload them to, then use pastebin.com. Open them both with notepad and copy paste the contents to pastebin.com. Send me the generated pastebin links

6) Go back to the latest driver

bcooper18 · November 2014

344.75 - driver is out now anyone want test it for DA2 or is it same problems?

bcooper18 · November 2014

.... So this driver is even worse now the menus wont even work for me it keeps glitching up ill click right it will go left or is this the game never had it in old driver fucken Nvidia.

Going full amd.

neofit · November 2014

@Fred_vdp wrote:
Nvidia's more recent graphics drivers are incompatible with Dragon Age II and cause all kinds of glitches in the DX11 renderer.

The last compatible driver version is 340.52 ( 32 bit | 64 bit ). If you encounter any graphical glitches, I suggest you install this driver version.

Hmm, what was the first compatible one then, and what glitches?

I decided to play DA2 before Inquisition, installed it yesterday, and I'm seeing the game freeze for about 1 sec every 10 seconds or so (i7-920, GTX-780, 8 GB RAM, W7/64, no overclocking), during fights, or just looking around, or during cutscenes. Both in DX11 and DX9, on a SATA3 drive or an SSD.This does qualify as a "glitch" to me, Arma3 is way smoother than this.

Good thing is (arguably), is that I don't even have to roll back my driver, I'm still on 335.23 (lazy, I know, but why fix things that are not broken?). So technically since I am on a driver that is 3-4 months older than the last known good one, I should be OK, right? Or do I have to switch to the 340.52?

Nodens_Tanthul · November 2014

@bcooper18 wrote:
.... So this driver is even worse now the menus wont even work for me it keeps glitching up ill click right it will go left or is this the game never had it in old driver fucken Nvidia.

Going full amd.

Actually this latest driver 344.75 seems to have fixed the issue for me. I've been playing for an hour now on very high and there's no sign of the invisible models or the shadow issues. Previously the issues would manifest in a couple of minutes.

Nodens_Tanthul · November 2014

neofit wrote

Hmm, what was the first compatible one then, and what glitches?

I decided to play DA2 before Inquisition, installed it yesterday, and I'm seeing the game freeze for about 1 sec every 10 seconds or so (i7-920, GTX-780, 8 GB RAM, W7/64, no overclocking), during fights, or just looking around, or during cutscenes. Both in DX11 and DX9, on a SATA3 drive or an SSD.This does qualify as a "glitch" to me, Arma3 is way smoother than this.
Good thing is (arguably), is that I don't even have to roll back my driver, I'm still on 335.23 (lazy, I know, but why fix things that are not broken?). So technically since I am on a driver that is 3-4 months older than the last known good one, I should be OK, right? Or do I have to switch to the 340.52?

What you are describing sounds entirely unrelated to the graphics driver. In any case the glitches were invisible models (characters walking around with invisible bodies etc) and weird shadows.

If I had to make an educated guess I'd say you're dealing with somekind of timeout. I suggest checking your event viewer for logs that pertain to timeouts or possibly TDR errors.

neofit · November 2014

@Nodens_Tanthul wrote:
neofit wrote
Hmm, what was the first compatible one then, and what glitches?
I decided to play DA2 before Inquisition, installed it yesterday, and I'm seeing the game freeze for about 1 sec every 10 seconds or so (i7-920, GTX-780, 8 GB RAM, W7/64, no overclocking), during fights, or just looking around, or during cutscenes. Both in DX11 and DX9, on a SATA3 drive or an SSD.This does qualify as a "glitch" to me, Arma3 is way smoother than this.
Good thing is (arguably), is that I don't even have to roll back my driver, I'm still on 335.23 (lazy, I know, but why fix things that are not broken?). So technically since I am on a driver that is 3-4 months older than the last known good one, I should be OK, right? Or do I have to switch to the 340.52?
What you are describing sounds entirely unrelated to the graphics driver. In any case the glitches were invisible models (characters walking around with invisible bodies etc) and weird shadows.

If I had to make an educated guess I'd say you're dealing with somekind of timeout. I suggest checking your event viewer for logs that pertain to timeouts or possibly TDR errors.

I do not have any CPU spikes when this happens (I have a Logitech G19 display so I can monitor it in real-time). Event logs don't have anything. From the other games that I currently have installed, ressource hungry ones like Skyrim and Styx don't do this freezing thingy. So I presumed it's DA2's fault.

neofit · November 2014

@neofit wrote:
@Nodens_Tanthul wrote:
neofit wrote
Hmm, what was the first compatible one then, and what glitches?
I decided to play DA2 before Inquisition, installed it yesterday, and I'm seeing the game freeze for about 1 sec every 10 seconds or so (i7-920, GTX-780, 8 GB RAM, W7/64, no overclocking), during fights, or just looking around, or during cutscenes. Both in DX11 and DX9, on a SATA3 drive or an SSD.This does qualify as a "glitch" to me, Arma3 is way smoother than this.
Good thing is (arguably), is that I don't even have to roll back my driver, I'm still on 335.23 (lazy, I know, but why fix things that are not broken?). So technically since I am on a driver that is 3-4 months older than the last known good one, I should be OK, right? Or do I have to switch to the 340.52?
What you are describing sounds entirely unrelated to the graphics driver. In any case the glitches were invisible models (characters walking around with invisible bodies etc) and weird shadows.

If I had to make an educated guess I'd say you're dealing with somekind of timeout. I suggest checking your event viewer for logs that pertain to timeouts or possibly TDR errors.
I do not have any CPU spikes when this happens (I have a Logitech G19 display so I can monitor it in real-time). Event logs don't have anything. From the other games that I currently have installed, ressource hungry ones like Skyrim and Styx don't do this freezing thingy. So I presumed it's DA2's fault.

I can confidently say that my stuttering/freezing problem is gone.

I tried fiddling with Hyperthreading, C1E and other BIOS settings that I had problems in the past with in other games, to no avail. In case I was having networking issues, tried playing disconnected from the Bioware site.

Then made a clean install of 340.52 and bam, smooth as a baby's as silk. So it looks like 340.52 is not "the last good driver", it's "THE good driver". Or maybe "the one 2014 driver for DA2".

Edit: All of the above is wrong. I forgot to re-renable something after reinstalling the driver: Shadowplay. If I enable it in the 340.52 drivers, the freezing is back. Even though I am using an SSD to save and as temp, and I never had this in any other game, like Arma 2-3 or Styx or any other. Anyway, sorry for all this rambling.

Nodens_Tanthul · November 2014

No worries glad you sorted it out. Seems like there's an issue with shadowplay, your system and DA2 or a combination of those. The last driver 344.75 btw is working absolutely fine for me. No glitches.

kevoftheyear · November 2014

New DA2 player here. I'm running a GTX 680 with 4GB of video card memory and I've tried four different drivers at this point. Started with a driver from 2013 (hadn't updated in a while), upgraded over the past weekend to the then-newest version, tried 344.75 and even tried reverting back to the older driver (340.52) mentioned above. Cranking all settings ingame to max, 1920x1200, with the texture pack drags me down to around 40-45 FPS. Based on my rig, I really don't think it should be doing this poorly with a game this old. Does anyone have any other ideas? I really want to play this as pretty as I can get it with a buttery smooth frame rate.

(Edited for clarity)

Re: Graphics issues on Nvidia cards (DirectX 11)

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