Dragon Age: Inquisition Benchmarked

Third Installment. The second game focused on action and provided gamers immense enjoyment. Now BioWare is making the move to reconsolidate its Dragon Age fans. Our article will focus on the performance of the Frostbite 3 Engine. Will every gamer be able to joy the world of Inquisition?

Florian Glaser, ✓ Stefanie Voigt (translated by Vinay Pradhan), Published 12/02/2014 🇩🇪

For the original German article, see here.

Engine

As mentioned before, BioWare uses the Frostbite 3 Engine made by DICE for Dragon Age: Inquisition. This engine has proven itself in the past in Battlefield 4 and offers a multitude of modern features, such as, tessellation and HBAO, which is nice to have. The textures, shadows and even the lighting of the game are impressive. Tessellation creates a very plastic object structure. The water, vegetation and level details are all good. Many rooms indoors are decorates extensively and the package is rounded off with well-animated, engrossing characters.

The biggest highlight of this game would be the quality of its effects. If one were to zoom in and pausing while fighting, one would notice the unusually high quality light beams, sparks and explosions. Few RPGs can claim to have such amazing effects. The well-designed story and beautiful world are sure to enrapture the gamer.

The variety of options available is impressive. Bioware has really given the gamer the freedom to tailor the game performance to meet their needs. The graphics option offers more than 10 options and four presets ("Low", "Medium", "High" and "Ultra") which automatically set all the menu options. At max, the game activates 2x MSAA which smooths the edges significantly.

Owners of AMD GPUs are happy about the Mantle support (DirectX @Nvidia). While Mantle improves performance at high settings minimally (+4 % @Radeon R9 280X, +8 % @Radeon R9 M290X), it ensures that AMD GPUs can sprint ahead of otherwise faster Nvidia GPUs at low or medium settings (see table). However, in our experience, this boost comes in exchange for longer load times.

Dragon Age refuses to start with Intel GPUs. Thankfully, there is an easy fix: right-click on the desktop and choose the "Graphics Settings". In the graphics options, pick the "3D" menu, and there change the CMAA option from "Deactivate" to "Overwrite program settings". Once finished, the game should run but the problem remains that the Intel chips are far too weak to run this game. Neither the HD Graphics 3000 nor the HD Graphics 4000 or 4600 could provide more than an average of 25 fps. Furthermore, changing the settings will require a restart and the game is known to freeze with some settings.

Benchmark

The recording software, Fraps, does not run with Mantle mode so we were forced to use the internal benchmark, which is far from optimal. The duration of the benchmark depends on the system performance and the test runs very high quality scenes, which are not part of the usual gameplay. All-in-all, a result of 25+ fps on this relatively hard internal benchmark means that the game will run well on the laptop, particularly as Inquisition will be played from the third person camera and not an Ego shooter one. Tip: the Mantle results vary by a few percent so we let the benchmark run 2-3x on our AMD chips and took the best score. The performance is very consistent in DirectX mode.

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Results

Like many other engines (CryEngine 4, id Tech 5), the Frostbite 3 engine does scales little as settings are lowered. As such, even at minimum details, the game looks decent and should not overtax weaker laptops. For low settings, we recommend a middle-class graphics card: the GeForce GT 740M provides a good 35 fps with a resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels. A resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels and the "Medium" preset are much harder on the system and require a GeForce GT 750M and up to be on the safe side.

A powerful GPU is required for high details and the FHD resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. A GeForce GTX 860M or GTX 770M can run the game with these settings at 25 fps. Max settings are only recommended for high-end GPUs, like the Radeon R9 M290X or the GeForce GTX 870M/780M. The CPU is hardly a factor in these cases as the GPU is often the deciding factor how well a game runs.

Dragon Age: Inquisition
1920x1080 Ultra Graphics Quality AA:2x MS 1920x1080 High Graphics Quality 1366x768 Medium Graphics Quality 1024x768 Low Graphics Quality
GeForce GTX 980, 3770K Desktop-PC	54.1 (43^min) fps ∼32% 72.6 (63^min) fps ∼42% 119 (98^min) fps ∼60% 126.8 (99^min) fps ∼46%
Radeon R9 280X, 3770K Desktop-PC	40.7 (37^min) fps ∼24% 64 (57^min) fps ∼37% 131.4 (105^min) fps ∼66% 141.6 (122^min) fps ∼51%
GeForce GTX 880M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	31 (24^min) fps ∼18% 44.4 (38^min) fps ∼26% 99.3 (81^min) fps ∼50% 118.6 (87^min) fps ∼43%
GeForce GTX 780M, 4700MQ Schenker W503	28.3 (22^min) fps ∼17% 40.4 (34^min) fps ∼23% 91.1 (73^min) fps ∼46% 113 (84^min) fps ∼41%
Radeon R9 M290X, 4700MQ Schenker W504	27.6 (23^min) fps ∼16% 42.4 (39^min) fps ∼24% 94.7 (85^min) fps ∼48% 132.1 (114^min) fps ∼48%
GeForce GTX 870M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	25.3 (20^min) fps ∼15% 37.2 (32^min) fps ∼21% 85.7 (68^min) fps ∼43% 110.3 (78^min) fps ∼40%
GeForce GTX 770M, 4700MQ Schenker W503	18.8 (14^min) fps ∼11% 27.8 (24^min) fps ∼16% 68 (55^min) fps ∼34% 93.9 (70^min) fps ∼34%
GeForce GTX 860M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	18.3 (14^min) fps ∼11% 27.4 (23^min) fps ∼16% 67.3 (52^min) fps ∼34% 92.6 (70^min) fps ∼34%
GeForce GTX 850M, 4340M Schenker M504	16 (13^min) fps ∼9% 23.2 (21^min) fps ∼13% 58.1 (48^min) fps ∼29% 75.2 (56^min) fps ∼27%
GeForce GTX 765M, 4700MQ Schenker W503	14.3 (11^min) fps ∼8% 21.6 (18^min) fps ∼12% 54.5 (44^min) fps ∼27% 77.8 (60^min) fps ∼28%
GeForce GT 750M, 4702MQ Schenker M503	8.5 (6^min) fps ∼5% 13.1 (11^min) fps ∼8% 34.6 (29^min) fps ∼17% 50.8 (40^min) fps ∼18%
Radeon R7 512 Cores (Kaveri Desktop), A10-7850K, Samsung SSD 470 Series MZ-5PA256/EU A10-7850K Asus A88-XM-PLUS	8 (6^min) fps ∼5% 12 (11^min) fps ∼7% 31 (28^min) fps ∼16% 47 (41^min) fps ∼17%
GeForce GT 740M, 4200M HP Envy 15-j011sg	5.5 (4^min) fps ∼3% 8.8 (7^min) fps ∼5% 23.2 (20^min) fps ∼12% 35 (29^min) fps ∼13%
GeForce GT 640M, 2637M, Lite-On LMT-256M3M Acer Aspire M3-581TG	26.5 (22.5^min) fps ∼13% 0 (0^min) fps ∼0%
GeForce GT 720M, 4200M, WDC Scorpio Blue WD10JPVX-22JC3T0 MSI CX61-i572M	6.8 (0^min) fps ∼4% 18.9 (0^min) fps ∼9% 29 (0^min) fps ∼11%
Radeon HD 8650G, A10-5750M, Samsung SSD 470 Series MZ-5PA256/EU Pumori Test Platform (A10-5750M)	16.6 (13.7^min) fps ∼8% 23.7 (18.6^min) fps ∼9%
HD Graphics 4600, 4700MQ Schenker W503	3.8 (3^min) fps ∼2% 5.8 (5^min) fps ∼3% 14.5 (11^min) fps ∼7% 22.1 (17^min) fps ∼8%
GeForce GT 630M, 3720QM, Seagate Momentus 7200.5 ST9750420AS Asus N56VM	17 (14^min) fps ∼9% 26 (20^min) fps ∼9%
Iris Graphics 5100, 4258U, Apple SSD SM0256F Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13 inch 2013-10	3.5 (2^min) fps ∼2% 6.3 (5^min) fps ∼4% 17.3 (13^min) fps ∼9% 24.3 (19^min) fps ∼9%

Test Systems

Four of our test models come from Schenker Technologies (mysn.de):

W504 (Core i7-4700MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 860M, GTX 870M, GTX 880M, Radeon R9 M290X)
W503 (Core i7-4700MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 765M, GTX 770M, GTX 780M)
M504 (Core i5-4340M, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 850M)
M503 (Core i7-4702MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 750M)

These notebooks have Windows 7 64 bit installed.

Nvidia provided a few test models as well:

HP Envy 15-j011sg (Core i5-4200M, 12 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 740M)
MSI CX61-i572M281BW7 (Core i5-4200M, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 720M)
Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3-581TG (Core i7-2637M, 4GB DDR3, Geforce GT 640M)

Intel added one more:

Schenker S413 (Core i7-4750HQ, 8 GB DDR3, Iris Pro Graphics 5200)

The desktop PCs use CPUs/APUs from Intel and AMD, SSDs from Micron, Intel and Samsung, Mainboards from Intel and Asus as well as graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD.

GPU drivers: Nvidia 344.75, AMD 14.11.2 Beta, Intel 10.18.10.3960

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Editor of the original article: Florian Glaser - Managing Editor Gaming Laptops - 655 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2009

I discovered my interest in computers in my childhood, growing up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. I was especially fascinated with computer games, even from an early age. From Monkey Island through Lands of Lore to Doom, I tried every game I could get my hands on. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2009 with my focus mostly being on high-performance gaming laptops.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Archive of our own reviews > Dragon Age: Inquisition Benchmarked

Florian Glaser, 2014-12- 2 (Update: 2024-08-15)

Legend
5	Stutters – This game is very likely to stutter and have poor frame rates. Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, average frame rates are expected to fall below 25fps
	May Stutter – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, stutters and poor frame rates are expected.
30	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 25fps
40	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 35fps
60	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 58fps
	May Run Fluently – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, fluent frame rates are expected.
?	Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.
	Uncertain – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game and no reliable interpolation can be made based on the performances of surrounding cards of the same class or family.
The value in the fields displays the average frame rate of all values in the database. Move your cursor over the value to see individual results.