Last week, EA unveiled its latest addition to the beloved Dragon Age franchise, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, now available on PC. This title, built on the powerful Frostbite Engine, invites players to explore its immersive world while we delve into its performance metrics.
Performance Benchmarks
For our performance analysis, we utilized a robust setup featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor, paired with 32GB of DDR5 RAM running at 6000MHz. Our graphics card lineup included AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, as well as NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4090. The testing environment was set on Windows 10 64-bit with the latest drivers from GeForce and Radeon.
BioWare has equipped Dragon Age: The Veilguard with a plethora of graphics settings, allowing PC gamers to fine-tune their experience. Options include adjustments for Textures, Lighting, Level of Detail, and Terrain. Notably, the game supports advanced features such as Ray Tracing, DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3.0, and Intel XeSS. Each setting comes with a descriptive window, enabling players to visualize changes in real-time, enhancing the overall experience.
While Dragon Age: The Veilguard lacks a built-in benchmark tool, we opted to analyze performance in the game’s initial area, recognized as one of the most demanding sections. This approach provides a reliable insight into how the game performs across its various landscapes.
Interestingly, this title stands out as one of the few games capable of leveraging more than eight CPU cores. Our findings indicated that while average framerates remained consistent with and without Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), the minimum framerates showed marked improvement when SMT was enabled. This suggests that a minimum of six CPU cores is advisable for a seamless gaming experience. Testing with a simulated quad-core setup revealed significant framepacing issues, even with SMT activated, particularly at Ultra Settings on 1080p.
At 1080p with Ultra Settings and without Ray Tracing, the game demonstrated smooth performance across a variety of GPUs. The NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti, for instance, consistently achieved framerates exceeding 70FPS. Moving to 1440p at Ultra Settings, a GPU equivalent to the NVIDIA RTX 3080 is recommended, although the RTX 2080Ti still provided a satisfactory experience when paired with a G-Sync monitor.
For those seeking a native 4K experience at Ultra Settings, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and NVIDIA RTX 4090 managed to maintain framerates above 60FPS. Interestingly, performance remained comparable between High and Ultra settings on our system, suggesting flexibility in graphical fidelity without sacrificing performance.
Visually, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a stunning showcase of modern graphics capabilities. Character models are intricately detailed, with hair rendering that stands out as some of the best in contemporary gaming. The environments are equally impressive, adorned with high-quality textures and interactive elements that enhance immersion. Players will appreciate the absence of stuttering issues, smooth mouse movement, and stability throughout extensive gameplay sessions.
In summary, Dragon Age: The Veilguard emerges as one of the most optimized PC games of 2024. It caters to a wide range of hardware configurations, from older systems to high-end setups, while delivering an exceptional visual experience. The absence of performance hiccups and the overall polish of the game underscore the capabilities of the Frostbite Engine, marking a significant achievement for the development team.
