I just noticed I was running on Ultra everything but there is a texture setting above ultra called fade touched. I tested both and apparently fade touched textures don't introduce any reduction in frame rate for me. At 1080p and no MSAA but using high post process AA I get 65fps averages and 43fps minimums either way. I do notice an increase in memory usage (fade touched uses nearly the full 2GB on my 670). Going to leave it on fade touched until I notice a reduction in performance. On ultra I have zero complaints and couldn't tell any slowdown even during fights. Obviously the cutscene bug hits but is reduced with the force 60fps commands.
Though honestly I didn't see the difference when I enabled fade touched. Maybe details hold at increased distances or something? I can't find any comparison shots that point out what is "better" about fade touched. Any thoughts?
edit: someone says on NeoGAF that at high, ultra, and fade touched you see the same texture assets but there is a larger memory cache used so you will notice less pop in at higher settings. This may explain why when standing in redcliff village I would see some stuttering when looking around with fade touched textures enabled just now. Switching to ultra removes that and it doesn't have the same drops to ~30fps. Maybe there are some areas that simply have more going on than can be handled at 2GB(the in-game benchmark didn't show this). This explanation would also account for how I don't notice a difference in actual picture quality and the benchmark with relatively little going on (much less than some city areas of the game) didn't show a fps difference.
Yeah, there are a few settings that the "ultra" preset doesn't max out -- tessellation, post processing effects, and textures, in particular. It's a bit annoying, since most of the benchmark websites are just going with the "ultra" preset and thus aren't giving an accurate picture of performance when you actually have everything maxed out.
I ran the benchmark multiple times on my rig, with a 1440x900 monitor (the 1080p monitor in my sig broke months ago, I'm getting a new one). I checked if each individual setting would improve performance by reducing it to the second highest value. I found no significant variance with any individual setting turned down like that. But then, the benchmark may not have properly tested each setting; if the texture setting works by just increasing cache size available for textures, then it would cause performance issues not caught by the benchmark.
I like the idea of a setting meant to take advantage of the greater memory pools available to high-end graphics cards. Pop-in is the enemy of an immersive experience, and anything that counters it is welcome. It's a damn bit more foresight and attention to the PC game side than Bethesda showed with Skyrim, where people had to hack the game to be large address-aware until Bethesda officially patched it in. It seems 2 GB may not be enough to fully take advantage of the setting, though. Oh well. ^_^
A word about the actual game: Just bought it, and enjoying it so far. I haven't even left for the Hinterlands, I've been too busy interrogating Cassandra, Cullen, Varric, Josephine, Leliana, and Solas. This ability to rather freely talk with other characters rather than having to wait for pre-determined conversations to have with them is a welcome return to Dragon Age Origins' way of doing things over DA2.