Dragon Age Origins - Severe Conversation Lag

[Neshira]

In certain conversations during the game I encounter severe lag. Usually it halts the game completely and I end up using the control panel to close it out of frustration. The audio plays just fine but the graphics stop altogether and occasionally stutter a bit to a new image. The choices for response come up very slowly and when I click on one it takes a while before the game seems to register it. Here are some of the conversations that I've noticed ALWAYS have this issue:

Talking to Mouse at the end of the Fade portion of the mage origin.

First conversation with Leliana after fighting Logain's Men in the lothering tavern

Conversation with Jowan when he's encountered in the redcliffe castle dungeon.

Conversation with Logain after defeating him in battle after landsmeet.

There are more but none that I can think of off the top of my head. 

Here are my specs:

Dragon Age Ultimate edition via Origin (Which means I have all the DLC installed) Patched to 1.05 (Whatever the newest is)

Windows 7 64bit

Intel core2 quad CPU Q6600- 2.40 GHZ 2.40 GHz

4 GB ddr2 RAM

NVidia Geforce GTX550 ti - With the newest available drivers

DirectX 11 (It won't let me install 9 for some reason)

I do have some mods however I have had this issue since I was playing vanilla from a disc copy. 

As stated I have before had a disc copy of the game that experienced the same issues but the computer I was playing on back then was not nearly as good as this one. 

I have uninstalled and re-installed the game with no mods but the issue persisted.

I have disabled persistant gore (Which is a shame, I like the gore)

I have tried playing at lower graphics settings 

I have tried to install DX9 but it always says "You have a newer version of DirectX installed, you dont' need this one" and quits on me. 

I'd rather not uninstall DX11 since some other games I have (ME2/3) like it. 

None of those solutions have worked so if anyone has a suggestion, please shoot it at me. At this point I'm willing to try anything short of buying another new PC. 

OH and as for the mods I had installed they are the following:

Winter Forge 

Skip the Fade

The rest were weapon, armour, and CC mods, no gameplay changes at all. 

[EA_Spectre]

Have you already tried to play the game in compatibility mode (Windows XP) or in windowed mode?

[ARKRedeemer]

I also have this problem even with the 1.05 patch applied. People say install Directx 9 but like with yours it won't let me and it worked fine for over a year with Windows 8 and Directx 11 installed before this lag suddenlly appeared. Does anyone know how to fix this patch!?

[lonori]

I googled a bit on the topic and while I could't find a solution (except for installing DX9 which you couldn't for some reason, which by the way is really weird). However, I found some who claimed that this is due to a memory leak and they worked around it by aborting converstaion, saving and relaunching the game.

I know it's not a prefect, not even good, solution but it might be better than just living with it. Anyhow, I hope someone else can come up with something better.