I believe you - however I have played through twice with no problems at all. I do note that we have very different circumstance under which we are playing the game: I have the Boxed Collector's Edition with separately purchased DLC - You have the Ultimate edition with pre-packaged DLC (not sure if there is any problems there); I am running on Windows Vista 64 with an ATI card - You are running on Windows 7 with a GForce card (herein may lie some issues - not sure). I must plead ignorance as I have had no issues whatsoever and have not had the need to look into what issues may exist - For me DA:O was one of the brighter spots in the last few years of gaming and I find it a shame you are having such problems as I think our tastes run similar.

I actually have ATI cards, Crossfired, I think we have similar tastes in graphics cards, I hate nVidia cards for their instability issues.

Just fired it up again and I am running Version 1.04 - Running 1.05 may be the catch??

I was led to believe ATI cards were the worst bugged and poorer in terms of performance compared to Nvidia cards. I am making a new build now and everyone tells me to wait until the 6xx series is out to get a GTX580... Previously, I had thought of getting a 6970

I made the decision many years ago to support AMD, ATI, and Creative. No complaints here.

Nah, i have 700+ hours on game+xp+dlc with Win7 64 and a GeForce and annoying bugs aide - think Elven Boots in Lothering - i never had any of the issues and game breaking bugs Orcish and other folks report/reported, the worst i think i got was the random ctd after loooong gaming sessions and even that was in early iterations of the game.

I'm stilll carrying a couple of characters through playthrough's on 1.5 so that's likely not the problem either. I don't have the UE though, i picked up game+xp+dlc as they were being released.

I've never heard any such thing from anyone but irrational fanboys who'd literally never run an ATI product in their life. Even back in the 9800 Pro days I ran WOW like a champ raiding and we always were waiting on nVidia folks to "just a sec, reboot". My ex was running a 9700 Pro and likewise had no issues. It's anecdotal, but when I couple in the fact that I actually have tried to run 2 different nVidia cards over the past few years and had nothing but problems with their higher end cards, problems that I never had with ATI, I'm done with nVidia. nVidia also has a habit of removing support (read as hacks to make it actually work) for older games, this is a big no-no in my book.

Well I ran ATI cards all my life too but the lower to mid range ones as this was all I could afford. I was thinking of building a new system now that I have some money saved up and the graphics card is all that is missing. I was going to go with the 6970 but when I asked on some hardware forums the responses I got were along the lines of "a gtx 570 can easily beat a 6970 and plus it has physx which is amazing and makes all the difference in the world. you've waited this long and now have the chance to get a good system, so get the best man. wait for the 6xx series to come out and get a 580; the price will go down then and a 580 beats a 6970 anyday"

I have a pair of 6870s in my rig I just built. The 6970 is a nice card and probably a net win if you consider power issues over Crossfire with a pair like mine. I'm not sure what games these guys are playing that cause physx to "make all the difference in the world", my bullshit detector goes off when I hear that kind of thing.

All I can say is even with my cards there's nothing, and I mean nothing, that's even giving them a reasonable workout. If you've been happy with ATI quality in the past then there's really no reason to switch, there's no way you'll notice any real difference between a gtx 570 and a 6970 while playing games. By the time the system is aging you'll need to upgrade either one to eek out the last few years from the rest of the hardware so I see it as a non-issue, aka mental masturbation by people who like to read Tom's Hardware a little too much.

In the end, you can get bum hardware from any company, I just don't trust nVidia at all. If you've been unhappy with ATI you might give nVidia a shot to try the competition, but if you've been happy, why fix what isn't broken? It's not like the 6970 isn't going to run every game on max for at least the next 2 years and on high for a year or two past that.

In the end I suggest you build the machine that isn't going to disappoint you whenever you look at it. If you spend 1200 USD on something that irritates you whenever you boot it up you'd have been better to not spend anything at all or to have spent the extra cash to build what you want (provided your children do not starve so you can do so). That's my little personal philosophy about all of this:)

:) good advice, that :) I don't have kids and am single, so other than my own starvation, I don't have much to worry about. I have been planning for a new build for a while now, but especially after the Christmas sales when I bought Dragon Age Ultimate on amazon for a really good price. My current intel GMA 4500MHD laptop cannot handle it, so I thought it was time for that new build. :) May I pm you about some hardware recommendations as you seem more knowledgeable than I in the matter?

You sure can. Though I admit cjgreen knows about 100 times more than I do. You might send him a PM as well. Still, I've got a pretty good idea what I'd build given each price range, so send me that and any gear you'll be reusing (monitor, DVD drive, etc.) so I know you don't need a new one of that.

Hey, I have chunk of my DLC working now because of that alteration you advised me on. However I am having a problem with 2 of the non-OC campaigns. I try to to play them and it says "could not load module" and when I was traveling around the world map I got the same error. Any advice?
I guess I may just have to sign up. It will be the last damn game I buy, it honestly isn't worth jumping through these hoops (I will have to carry my computer to a friend's to use the internet), I don't have much time to play games anymore, and if I have to put up with this for every new game I purchase . . . If I pirated it, I would not have to put up with this shite.

Dragon Age Origins is a real kick in the balls when it comes to keeping your DLC running. Constantly hand shaking if you're online with EA servers and refusing to authrorise whenever it damn well pleases.

The BEST solution I ever had for managing my DLC in Origins was to sign in once... authorise all my DLC and load/start a game. Assuming you achieve this occasionally hurculean feat, turn off the game and fire up your firewall (I just used the built in one in Windows 7). Block outgoing access for the DA Origins exe.

Once authorised, if it times out accessing the internet you're golden. This obviously prevents you from sending your ego stats to your bioware vanity page, but meh. Working DLC without EA fucking you every time just for starting up your legally bought game is worth that terrible sacrifice.

No idea if this still works but it did for me back on 1.03 with the vanilla game and individually bought DLCs downloaded in game.

Well, lucky for me that my tower can't connect to the internet at the moment. Though it meant I had to drag the whole bloody thing to a friend's to get m DLC authorised. I am fucking angry though. If I had torrented this game I would have been playing it a week ago without any problems. I buy the legal copy and it takes me a week to get it working.
I rarely buy games anymore and this may just be the last legal game I buy (except though gog).

Buy them but use and backup the cracked version. That's what I do. No sense punishing developers and lowering our platform's market share to spurn some dumbass suits in a boardroom somewhere.