Last week, EA released the new Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, on PC. Powered by the Frostbite Engine, it’s time to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 566.03, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.10.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
BioWare has added a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Lighting, Level of Detail, Terrain and more. The game also supports Ray Tracing, DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3.0 and Intel XeSS. You can find comparisons and benchmarks for them in this article. In general, these are among the best graphics settings we’ve seen in a PC game. Not only do you get a small window that describes what each setting does, but you can see the visual changes you make in real-time.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard does not have a built-in benchmark. As such, we’ve decided to use the first area you encounter in the game. From what we could see, this is one of the most demanding areas. Thus, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is one of the few games that can take advantage of more than eight CPU cores. Although our average framerates were similar with and without SMT (Hyper-Threading for our Intel fans), our minimum framerates were significantly better when we had SMT. Look also at the CPU core usage with and without SMT.
From what I could see, you’ll need at least six CPU cores to get a smooth gaming experience. When I simulated a quad-core CPU, I was getting major framepacing issues, even when I enabled SMT. This is of course on Ultra Settings at 1080p. By lowering the settings, you might be able to smooth things on less powerful CPUs.
At 1080p/Ultra Settings/No Ray Tracing, the game can run smoothly on a wide range of GPUs. Even our NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti was able to push framerates higher than 70FPS at all times.
At 1440p/Ultra Settings/No RT, you’ll need a GPU equivalent to the NVIDIA RTX 3080. The NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti was also able to provide a smooth gaming experience, provided you use a G-Sync monitor.
Finally, at Native 4K/Ultra Settings/No RT, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090 can push framerates higher than 60FPS at all times. You can also get a noticeable performance boost by lowering the settings (though, for some reason, High and Ultra performed similarly on our PC system).
Graphics-wise, Dragon Age: The Veilguard looks absolutely amazing. All of the characters are highly detailed and their hair is among the best I’ve seen in a video-game. The in-game characters look incredible and nowhere close to as “cartoon-ish” as with what I’ve seen in all the YT videos. I mean, look at the characters in the following screenshots. You may not like the art style, but in terms of graphics, they look awesome. The environments also look amazing, and BioWare has used a lot of high-quality textures. Players can also destroy a few objects, which is a nice touch. This is one of the best-looking games on PC, hands down.
It’s also worth noting that Dragon Age: The Veilguard does not suffer from any stuttering issues. Mouse movement is also great, and I did not experience any crashes during my extensive tests.
All in all, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is one of the most optimized PC games of 2024. The game runs smoothly on older PC systems. At the same time, it can also take advantage of more powerful PCs with the inclusion of Ray Tracing. And, even without RT, this is one of the best-looking PC games of 2024. Not only that but it does not suffer from any stutters or stability issues. Everything feels top-notch. This is a showcase for the Frostbite Engine, so kudos to the devs for offering such a polished product.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Glad to see the metrics John. It's pretty much matched my experience with the title. I've been having fun and even the aesthetic while not familiar isn't what I would consider bad. I just wish it was a bit better to look at on Steam Deck even at 30fps because Upscaling and Dynamic Resolution obliterate the image at times. I think it might become a Switch 2 launch title based on the way it scales down so smoothly though.
They got Witcher 3 running on Switch … this running on Switch 2 should be doable
I wish nintendo wouldn't infect their ecosystem with this pozzed game. But I'm not hopeful they won't.
the game looks really good but one the best looking games on pc?i can say that for characters only.those characters.
I dont know about looking great but for a modern AAA game … its pretty stable on release
Why do the characters seem to have a weird aura around them? Is that an oddity of the game's lighting?
Hero lighting?
nope just the regular "Incel lighting"
the aura is queerness.
All of this good work from programmers and artists has been wasted because of mental illness in the writing team.
I agree, it's an absolute shame how great technical expertise is being used on utter trash. I hope when bioware is finally shut down, the skillful programmers get together with other talented and creative minds that actually want to create video games and make a new company to bring us quality entertainment.
It's happens so many times.
All of this shall pass, they can't lose money forever. Programmers will land on their feet because their skills will grant them future job prospects and security, and all the parasites will join the 40%.
Not only in writing my friend, the character design & gameplay team deserve equal blame
at the 1st scene this game is hammering 8 CPU cores to render 21 NPCs!!!, this thing is not taking advantage of more CPU cores but it's taking advantage of our ignorance. and i thought being lame and gay requires less processing not the opposite.
The 1% lows indicate this game is very well optimized which is why the mouse movement feels so good. I'd rather play a game with a solid 80 FPS than one that goes from 90 – 120 FPS with bad 1% lows.
Some tests on Very High would have been good, Ultra usually taxes performance too much for too little.
Meanwhile…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6023095a9f375b66a7461b361aa421faaa601123cb10bcd0486590aea3643a3.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f57ef724229376090f95b97fd59533cdde35e94e7fcb787b1305918f48de397e.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/683197461192d152852b3f6555f11a52089b466e2c2dc12a95ccc25386ab70a9.png
And check out these translations
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf1b0013eef1755ec84853e99aa7ffb6a560795c1551c9b3fce8cd2fa4915a3c.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d3af3d7e2e79b677cc81d50b2c8bb147d04616da845563a72a93758ced82981e.jpg
"talk to dragons about gender stuff"
a more accurate title of this game.
These people legit want you to believe this a 9/10 rpg after baldurs gate 3 and they gonna give it goty just for being woke, it doesnt matter how mediocre it is and how few choices it has and how bad the writing is, its woke therefore 10/10.
I don't speak German, but I'm guessing the German version has the same gender neutral noun BS that is happening in the Spanish translation?
And I simply refuse to believe the screenshots of that note by the demon creature are real. The note reads like something straight out of the mind of an axe-wound having psycho serial reypist/killer. Are we sure this isn't just some cheeky troll post made by someone to make the game look more insane than it already is? It's just too much!
It's real, there was a video circulating on Twitter yesterday showing the guy opening the codex. Also the German version uses tr4nny neo pronouns like the Spanish version. Same thing in French, Polish, and Russian.
That nonsensical rambling. Just sexual predator things.
Magierne and Zwergerne is a disgrace for the German language.
Is fast zum lachen wenns nicht so traurig wär
this is just like a Fable 1 remaster.
fable 1 is better than this.
How wonderful, also, TRUMP 2024!
If theres ever been a game that NEEDS to fail its this one, ALL male energy/writing/atmosphere/depth has been replaced with Modern POZ and surface level narrative/gameplay depth(like all modern slop)….If it doesnt Fail then pronouns/BDSM scars/ mental disease WILL BE REQUIRED in all upcoming RPGs/narrative games…Instead of getting a new enemy type or environment those resources/time will go towards Gheying it up… Plz normies, dont, just DONT…
The modern audience they are chasing they are actually creating it, shaping it through games like this.
The fact they are pushing the lgbtq++ agenda on this game that looks cartoonish and in turn appeals to kids is even worse if you think about it. Same thing with Concord with its cartoon-like art direction.
Expect more sh*t like this.
The modern audience they are chasing they are actually creating it, shaping it through games like this.
The fact they are pushing the lgbtq++ agenda on this game that looks cartoonish and in turn appeals to kids is even worse if you think about it. Same thing with Concord with its cartoon-like art direction.
Expect more sh*t like this.
The modern audience they are chasing they are actually creating it, shaping it through games like this.
The fact they are pushing the lgbtq++ agenda on this game that looks cartoonish and in turn appeals to kids is even worse if you think about it. Same thing with Concord with its cartoon-like art direction.
Expect more sh*t like this.
Geez all this for this scrap. Shame and disgrace what happened to bioware deserves to be closed down this is brain poison this.