Dragon Age - Tech Support

[Harry]

I finally spent a better part of an evening with DA tonight and everything went well at first. I got through the "origins" tale [with a new character this time]. During the big finale fight & cut scenes, I started getting "screen artifacts". Major ones. Seems DA is killing my video card. I opened it up in a window all its own to do some surfing, and that caused my whole PC to lock up. Did it twice, because it kicked me out again while typing this post. This second time, I was able to move my mouse but my monitor was black with "twinkle stars".

I'm sure this means my video card is toast. I bought it four years ago to play NWNII of all things, and it handled that just fine. The PC itself is not much older. Running Vista, dual core....I believe the card is an ATI T200.

What can I do to tweak the game so's not to have to buy a new card? Or is the card not the problem?

[obryn]

It does, indeed, sound like a graphics card problem. Specifically, though, it sounds like a thermal graphics card problem. Does your card have a fan? If so, make sure it's working properly. If that's fine, can you direct more airflow over it? (My case has a fan dedicated to blowing on the graphics card, for example.)

Just being too complicated for your graphics card to easily handle shouldn't result in the whole PC crashing, if the card is functioning properly. It would just give you slow framerates.

Personally, it sounds to me like the card is in the process of dying - especially with the sparkles you're mentioning - and getting hot from DA:O may have just been the final straw. 4 years is about a graphics card's lifespan, IME.

-O

[Harry]

I opened up the side of the case while all this was going on last night, and the poor thing still seemed to wheeze. It's not acting up now, but then right now I don't have the game running.

Any recommendations on a suitable card, at a practical price?

I don't play a lot of games, but good lord, it seems like whenever I pick one up I have to grab a new card. Like I said, I got this one for NWNII and after installing it I had to run back out and grab a new power supply. And I never even got halfway through NWNII's OC.

[obryn]

What price point are you looking for?

-O

[Andreas]

I have a Gforce 8800GT, should be reasonable cheap now (got mine a year ago or so) and can play Dragonage on high details with moderate fps (feels like 40-60 to me -> all good).

[Harry]

What price point are you looking for?

-O

I went to Best Buy and it looks like the higher end stuff they carry tops out at $179 for the best and latest ATI, so that's well within my reach. I thought my power supply would be the issue, but I just opened the case and it's good to 500W, so the higher end stuff isn't a problem.

[obryn]

I went to Best Buy and it looks like the higher end stuff they carry tops out at $179 for the best and latest ATI, so that's well within my reach. I thought my power supply would be the issue, but I just opened the case and it's good to 500W, so the higher end stuff isn't a problem.
Go with newegg or another online retailer. Best Buy marks up their graphics cards way too high.

-O

[Name Lips]

And find some way to be sure it's your graphics card before you splurge... I know it's fun to get a new card, but if you still have problems afterwards you feel kind of stupid being $200 poorer.

[Harry]

And find some way to be sure it's your graphics card before you splurge... I know it's fun to get a new card, but if you still have problems afterwards you feel kind of stupid being $200 poorer.

..... :grey: .....

[Harry]

Fuck Best Buy.

Really, I should know this by now, but seriously - FUCK Best Buy. Up the ass. With a rusty chainsaw.

[Harry]

I went to the dentist today. Remember me saying something in Redallias' nice little "manly man" discussion last week about almost being decapitated by a steel cable and breaking a tooth the same day? Yeah. Well, I went to the dentist today. Honest to god, I had a decayed and broken tooth sawed off today right across the fucking nerve and got out of the dentist's office in less time, with less to-do and less pain than I got out of Best Buy.

Five fucking vists. Each time, another dimwit told me a different tale. Each time. And each time I found myself with a card that either needed more power cables that my power supply could give, or needing more power period, or not even fitting in the damned slot, until I finally got home a little while ago with this new Nvidia card. Don't know why I ever even went with ATI anyways, except that's what I was replacing. Up until this dearly departed card, I'd always used Nvidia.

Btw, fuck Best Buy.

[Name Lips]

..... :grey: .....

I can't be expected to read the entire thread before I post, can I? :tongue: sorry.


Anyway, did it fix it?

[Harry]

I'm scared to death to even start up DA and try. Now I seem to recall why I never got very deep into NWNII. The water, man, the shiny, shiny water.... This video card that got fried by Dragon Age is the very same "top of the line" card I bought to play NWNII, which had fried the card which preceded it. Which was bought to play NWN which fried the card which preceded it, which was bought to play Baldurs Gate. That card was bought to replace the one which came with my old Compaq Presario, which was light years better than the Commodore which preceded it, which had no video card being hooked up to an old 9" or so black and white TV.

I think I should just go ahead and break out my old Squad Leader box and play games against myself.

[Freedom Canadian]

For the most part, I said goodbye to PC gaming. It was just too expensive and too much hassle. The only PC games I still play are strategy games, mostly older ones or modern but not graphic-intensive ones.

Seriously, I haven't needed to upgrade a computer in the last five years. Before that, I upgraded every two years or so. :)

[Name Lips]

I love the heck out of "mouse-clicky strategy-sim games." Like Civ, simcity, and so on. That is to say... I'm addicted to the one genre of games that ports poorly to consoles.

Oh, and MMOs. Which require lots of typing.

[Harry]

I played a few hours tonight. No problems so far on the new card. Unless the new card can somehow be blamed for my character dying so much. Good lord, I never had to reload this much in NWN or BG. Every BBEG fight, my party is both outnumbered, overpowered, and they seem to "lose the initiative". So many things in this game I'm just not getting. But the story is cool. Real pity Bioware felt that they should abandon the D&D ruleset. Of course, they started down this path years before 4th Ed was announced, so I guess it was fortunate for them.

[obryn]

For the most part, I said goodbye to PC gaming. It was just too expensive and too much hassle. The only PC games I still play are strategy games, mostly older ones or modern but not graphic-intensive ones.

Seriously, I haven't needed to upgrade a computer in the last five years. Before that, I upgraded every two years or so. :)
I like building my own PCs, and since I use them for so much stuff other than gaming, I find the cost totally reasonable. Incremental upgrades make it so much moreso.

It's more expensive up-front than a console, but (1) it's good for lots of other stuff, and (2) the PC is an open platform. It's the latter that really appeals to me - for games like Oblivion and NWN2, it's the mods that make it really worthwhile.

My current PC was, all things told, less than $800 a year ago. It's going to last me for a few years yet, too. :) It runs Dragon Age flawlessly, and I expect it will do great for more games for the next few years, at least!

-O

[obryn]

I played a few hours tonight. No problems so far on the new card. Unless the new card can somehow be blamed for my character dying so much. Good lord, I never had to reload this much in NWN or BG. Every BBEG fight, my party is both outnumbered, overpowered, and they seem to "lose the initiative". So many things in this game I'm just not getting. But the story is cool. Real pity Bioware felt that they should abandon the D&D ruleset. Of course, they started down this path years before 4th Ed was announced, so I guess it was fortunate for them.
It's a VERY hard game on Normal difficulty. Once you get the strategies down, it can make things easier.

I disregarded my companions' Tactics skills early on, but now that I know how to "program" their tactics, I am no longer undervaluing it. Having an extra tactics slot to, say, tell Morrigan, "Cast that ice spell on anyone casting spells on us" is well worth it!

-O

[Freedom Canadian]

My current PC was, all things told, less than $800 a year ago. It's going to last me for a few years yet, too. :)

Yeah, that's what I mean - this is way more money than I am willing to invest in gaming.

Not to mention the investment in time to actually make it work. :)

If you do stuff besides gaming and web browsing/viewing videos/word processing on your PC, then of course it's going to be worth it.

[Hatter]

I love the heck out of "mouse-clicky strategy-sim games." Like Civ, simcity, and so on. That is to say... I'm addicted to the one genre of games that ports poorly to consoles.

Oh, and MMOs. Which require lots of typing.

Games I love that only really work on PCs: RTS, 4x, MMO, FPS, Sim.

Games that I'll probably only play on consoles: 3rd person adventure, sandbox, puzzle games, rhythm games, platformers, JRPG

Both offer RPGs of various colors and it really depends on each one and whether my rig can handle it as well as the console.

[obryn]

Last night, I found a few mods for Dragon Age, which I was able to install cleanly. Which is another reason I'm a PC gamer. :)

The biggest one is a texture replacement. It ups the graphics quality siginificantly, with almost no cost to gameplay unless your graphics card is starved for memory.

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15

It's a minor pain - and will continue to be so until he gets all of these into one file - but pretty darn stellar.

-O

[Harry]

Thanks for that link. I went searching two nights ago to see what was appearing on the net but didn't find much on a quick search, beyond the usual suspects, cheats and such.

Btw, another tech question... I bought the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine and it has a Dragon Age freebie on the disc [which is why I bought the mag], but following the instructions I haven't been able to insert it into the game. Any successfully do so, and possibly want to fill in this idiot on how it's done?

[Cat of Ulthar]

My friend is staying with us for two weeks and since she is a gamer, I wanted to introduce her to the wonders of Dragon Age: Origins. But our laptop though only three years old, couldn't play it due to insufficient video card (ATI Radeon X600, where the game says the minimum is X850). Is there any way to circumvent this, or do I just have to turn her onto WoW?

[Name Lips]

You can't try it anyway? It just refuses to run?

[Cat of Ulthar]

You can't try it anyway? It just refuses to run?

It says something like: [ Quit ]

Failed to detect a supported video card

[OK]

[Cat of Ulthar]

The game managed to fry the Cartographer's video card as well. He played the whole game through once with no problems, started again with a different character and immediately started having trouble; and now it's toast. Odd.:what:
My videocard is only a year old and was top of the range, so I hope it will be ok for a bit.