Dragon Age: Inquisition

Our RPG of choice for 2015 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest game in the Dragon Age series of ARPGs. Offering an expansive world that can easily challenge even the best of our video cards, Dragon Age also offers us an alternative take on EA/DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, which powers this game along with Battlefield 4.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 3840x2160 - Ultra Quality - 0x MSAA

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 3840x2160 - High Quality

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 2560x1440 - Ultra Quality - 0x MSAA

Once again turning down Frostbite’s performance-crushing MSAA, what we find at 4K with Ultra quality is that the GTX Titan X is once more hitting framerates in the 40fps range. At 41.7fps the GTX Titan X is the only single-GPU card to average better than 30fps at these settings, with the next-closest card being the GTX 980 at exactly 30fps. Overall the GTX Titan X does particularly well at 4K Ultra, beating the GTX 980 by 39%, the GTX 780 Ti by 53%, and the R9 290XU by 44%.

Users looking for higher framerates can either turn down the quality setting one notch to high, which gets us 54.4fps from the GTX Titan, or drop down to 1440p, which is good for 79.3fps. Meanwhile our multi-GPU configurations once again make their presence felt. At 4K High quality both the GTX 980 SLI are over 60fps, however the GTX Titan X unexpectedly beats the R9 295X2 at 1440p.

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  • joeh4384 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    Old news.
  • joeh4384 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    I bet if you overclock the crap out of this, its TDP shoots north of 300 watts.
  • cmdrdredd - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    People buying this don't care about TDP.
  • Kutark - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    Which means even with OC it would still be at or under a 290x. I'm failing to see the problem here.

    TDP is really only super important for compute cards that will be running for hours on end at 100% load.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I didn't care either, my $800 FX9590 loved 320 watts and my "uber" two niner zeroX loved double dipping that 320 watts, so I converted my carbon arc Linclon 220 welder to handle the AMD juice load and my DVD/RW/DL/LS melted tight to my CM heavy tower and dripped bubbling fire plastic drops through my liquid AMD loop... bye bye overclock
  • shing3232 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    It does not make anything, because 290x is a old Card
  • Stuka87 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    You can't take those numbers seriously though, as they are wrong. Anandtech is *STILL* using reference cards for these tests. You have not been able to buy reference cards for over a year now. The current cards are run MUCH cooler, MUCH quieter, use less power, and have better performance.
  • Stuka87 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    Quick edit, it seems XFX is still selling a reference 290X. No clue why, but they are. You can get custom cooled AIB cards for less. Could just be leftover stock though I suppose.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    Using reference cards is consistent with our long-standing policy to use them. Aside from the immediate definition of reference, I believe that it is very important not to cherry pick results. The results you in our reviews should be equal to or lower than the results you will get with a retail card - we specifically want to avoid publishing results higher than what the buyer can get.* We don't want to overstate the performance of a card.

    * Using the same testbed hardware as us of course.
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link

    Still it shows the 290(x) in a way poorer light than is actually true. At least that should be stated but better would be to add a AIB card to the reviews,

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