LAG and figuring out what's causing it...pls help

[godoman]

I've had to restart my campaign replaying as the dwarf.

 

The game goes well for awhile and then at certain parts the game goes unbearably laggy. I'm wondering if its scripts triggering and being incompatible with another thing that's causing it, as I must admit I've installed so many mods like Winter Forge, Dragon Age Extended, Combat Tweaks etc.

 

I'm fairly certain its not a memory leak thingy issue, although I cannot say for certain. The game actually runs smooth as a baby's ass until I reach a certain point where the frame-rate stutters to a point it freezes or as soon the last of the darkspawns we've encountered is dispatched.

 

Is there a way to find out where its all going tits up like a proper error log...

 

apologies if these all sound vague, nearly 4am and my mind is swirling...I will edit after a nice rest to hopefully make some sense... :blush:

[mcgoy]

My hardware meets the minimum requirements to play the game so I have some familiarity with lag :wink: There are some places that the game can lag after enough hours of play without any mods installed - the Denerim, Orzammar, and the Fade are the areas that I see lag without any mods installed. I see more lag when logged on to the Bioware servers so I haven't logged in to report progress while playing in years. I log on and don't play when I want to update characters.

 

The retexture mods tend to add a LOT of lag. The more mods that are installed that impact core resources tend to cause lag. Mods that do constant 'flag checking' can cause lag. If you have installed 'a lot of mods', it can tend to cause lag as they all compete with the base game for resources (even if the only resource that they are directly competing for is 'time').

 

Note that I used the word 'tend' several times. I expect that your lag (if you have the most recent DAO patch installed) is caused by all the mods that you have installed. My suggestion - because I had to do this - is to delete those mods that you don't really use since they won't be any great loss and you won't miss them that much anyway. Then I would remove the known resource pigs - I've seen the most complaints about mods that retexture the whole game (i.e. retexturing an armor or 5 isn't going to cause lag, retexturing the ground, walls, buildings, all furniture, etc probably is).

[godoman]

Much appreciate the reply and it did well to encourage me to not take the lazy way and instead Re-install everything...well except the base game.

 

Dreading it all the way I must admit it was a worthwhile endeavour as I ended up finding mod incompatibilities and at some points the way NMM was not properly installing the mods in the proper place.

 

With the retextures I actually used optimization tools like DDSopt and Skyrims Texture Optimizer and they have helped along with LAA (Large Address Aware) tool.

 

In the end it was as you said, of which I knew from the outset was true, but I was actually dreading redoing everything...

 

Luckily I was off work so I spent the rest of the day sorting out which was good and which one isn't. I avoided using NMM to install instead using DA Modmanager, creating override files, etc.

 

Though the missus is a tad miffed I spent all the day sorting out DA:O the game functions as I desire. I may even upload all the settings/overrides so it may help other Noobs to experience the game without causing marital discomfort. (And so I can go back to it in the future without having to work it all out again. :geek: )

[mcgoy]

The best reason is probably to go back to it in the future :D although I would be interested in seeing what you come up with.

 

Glad I could help :smile: