I need help! I just bought this game off of Origin last night but I cant play due to extremely poor performance. Basically when I boot up the game the menu is extremely laggy. Pushing any button on the menu takes at least 5 seconds to respond and the two rows of soldiers and mages walking stutter like crazy. It's basically completely unplayable. Is anyone else having this issue? I've looked online everywhere and none of the solutions have worked for me. I shouldn't really be having these problems to begin with considering I more than meet recommenced requirements: 8gb of ram, intel i5 3.10, GTX 970. I did just install the 970 yesterday but I don't think that's the issue because I am able to run Ground Zeroes and NBA 2k15 with all settings maxed and locked in at 60fps.

I never experienced a problem with a game like this so I am at a loss for words. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm going crazy over here .

Could you list everything you have tried?

I'd make sure you aren't using any Beta drivers for your NVIDIA card. Only use Beta drivers if the game recommends them as I have had far too many issues with them. Also make sure you're on the latest PhysX driver.

Turn off V-Sync if you aren't using dual monitors, try playing in Windowed mode if you are in full screen, or try turning off dual monitor support if you are using dual monitors.

Are you sure you are not in windowed mode becouse i have heard its real bad performance in windowed mode in that game.

I had to update my drivers before I could play inquisition but I was informed about the incapability. Maybe use their repair feature if you Havnt already, but it works fine for myself.

It sounds like you have file error problems or a virus on your computer. Format your HD and reinstall a clean version of windows, it only takes a half-hour anyways. Some people claim that it isn't necessary anymore (edit: if you take care of your computer and keep it in good shape), but I believe that you should format after every hardware upgrade or when your computer doesn't do what it should be doing. Since there are people with less hardware than you have that can run the game properly, I think that fits into my, "format... when your computer doesn't do what it should be doing," category.

I am a nerd who loves tinkering with PC's and even I have noticed a huge improvement when I formatted my PC a couple of months ago.

@xanadu: Not sure if there was ever a proper fix for the issue but http://answers.ea.com/t5/Dragon-Age-Inquisition/Menu-Freezing-Solution-Quad-Core/m-p/4001333

Problem seemed to sort itself out for me and haven't had an issue since.

Did you make sure to turn off the origin overlay?

Alt tab out and check Resource Monitor to make sure it isn't something else killing your computer (having Firefox open in the background killed my Inquisition performance, turned out to be a dodgy Flash Player driver).

Uninstall all GPU drivers completely (also whichever drivers you had for the card you were using before) and install the latest stable driver.

Reinstall game.

Roll back your drivers to a previous version. The latest 2 (including the beta driver) reduce performance on Nvidia GPUs.

Disabled Origin overlay. Disabled V-sync in game menu. Disable V-sync through NVIDIA control panel global settings. Disabled V-sync in game menu and enabled v-sync/tripple buffer/Thread Optimization through NVIDIA control panel program settings. Turned down all graphics to low. Tried multiple resolutions. Tried Fullscreen, Window, and Windowed Fullscreen mode. Re-rolled the driver back 344.75. Tried the repair game feature. And lastly I tried disabling cores through task manager like @i_stay_puft mentioned but it only seemed to make it worse. Maybe I tried more? Kinda hard to remember since I've tried literally everything I can think of. Im just gonna go lay down for awhile...I'll probably end trying to get a refund for the game.

Are any other games having problems? Try to completely uninstall all Nvidia drivers and download fresh ones. Might be some conflicting stuff due to installing a new graphics card.

I had issues with a new 970 but it ended up being a general issue. Try stressing the card with 3D Mark and see if things run OK.

@slickdasani: No I've tried plenty of other games and they are wall working fine. The discrepancy between DA and other games is so huge that it'd hard to believe its not a hardware issue. But a lot of other people seem to be running the game fine on lower hardware than me, so who knows...

DA runs fine on my 970. I have a similar CPU(i5-4570 @3.2Ghz) and the same amount of RAM. I'm running on high for most settings apart from Textures which are Fade Touched and Tessellation which is ultra. No MSAA though, it reduces the frame rate significantly. I don't need to run with Overlay off either.

The only times I seem to get response delay is when I have few too many programs running.

I'm not really sure what the problem you are having is but I hope this helps.

Say what you want about EA but that 24 hour grace period is sometimes a god send.

And this is why I hate PC gaming sometimes. I have a fierce rig I've built, it can play games like Alien: Isolation ultra no problem, Crysis 3 etc etc (input high graphic fidelity game here). BUT then there's a game that you spend money on that just is broken like Far Cry 4, (I know a lot of people say it's fine but trust me It's not on my rig). It ran great in nature with ultra settings, but if I where to look at *gasp* a COTTAGE! or some kind of structure "10 fps" and it didn't mattered which graphics settings I had it on, it was always <10. I then updated my graphics drivers that which was not beta mind you and it made the game run at 20 fps all the time no matter what graphics settings I had it on. That's why I own a console as well...

But yeah dude update / role back your graphics drivers or check for a fix with the CPU.

Inquisition is kinda busted on the PC even after they fixed a lot of the launch problems, the only way it runs playable for me is to use the recommended settings and then turn most of the stuff that I don't care about like water reflections and shadows down farther. And even then it still hard crashes or breaks my video drivers from time to time.

There are a lot of little PC specific problems with DA:I that all come off as someone at EA said "Meh its good enough".

Though admittedly I am playing on a 4 year old system at this point using a 6860.

I was having problems when I first installed the game a couple of days ago, and I just want to emphasise what a difference turning off the Origin overlay made to my performance! I easily received a 10-20FPS gain overall. Now, I typically get 50-60FPS in smaller or less vegetated areas, and about 30FPS in The Hinterlands, on a custom setting between High/Ultra & v-synced. Not bad for a system I built/upgraded back in January 2013 for not too much cash! I'm running an i5-3750k / 16GB RAM / GTX 660 OC.

Also, if anyone else is having the Direct X "GetDeviceRemovedReason" crash on Nvidia cards (usually at the War Table, or during big cutscenes), try this: drill down into the Display menu of Options, and switch from Fullscreen to Windowed Fullscreen and apply the setting. I reset this setting every time I start the game, and I haven't had it crash since.

... I still make a save just before I go near the War Table though, just in case.

Sadly I almost feel like bookmarking such threads for whenever I get into an argument with someone over this exact issue. PC gaming is amazing, except when it flat out doesn't work like in this case, and the guy spent money on a game he can't even get to play because of some ethereal reason no one can diagnose. It is the worst part of PC gaming and it happens semi frequently, at random, and can completely sour a game for you. I know personally, even after having gotten whichever game I was struggling with going, I sometimes didn't even feel like playing it anymore.

@humanity: To Origins credit, they did issue me a full refund for the game. That said, I would have preferred to wait it out and see if the next patch fixed this issue but I couldn't justify basically throwing away money on the off chance they never fix it.

And also just so everyone is clear about my problem, here is a video showing my exact issue:

It's not that my frame rate was low is that it literally froze for awhile every 5 seconds, totally unplayable.