Very High Quality
Already at 1680x1050 it becomes clear that Dragon Age II is a very demanding game when using the Very High quality in-game preset. This is a game that will be truly enjoyed by multi-GPU owners as made evident by the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990 that was capable of rendering 80fps.
A single Radeon HD 6970 averaged just 44fps at this relatively low resolution, while the HD 6950 was only slightly slower with 40fps, both cards provided very playable performance. The older Radeon HD 5870 also held its own with 37fps.
With the latest drivers Nvidia has overcome any initial issues and the GeForce GTX 580 now performs as expected, leading the pack just below the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, scoring 45fps. We recommend an average of 30fps as the minimum you want for an enjoyable lag free gaming experience with Dragon Age II and the Radeon HD 6870 just managed this with 30fps.
The performance trends at 1920x1200 remained much the same. That said, fewer cards were able to provide an average frame rate of 30fps or greater. The Crossfire-enabled Radeon HD 6990 averaged 74fps compared to the 39fps of the Radeon HD 6970. The Radeon HD 6950 averaged 35fps making it slightly faster than the HD 5870 and the GeForce GTX 570.
At the extreme resolution of 2560x1600 we found that gamers will require multi-GPU setups to play Dragon Age II. Whereas the Radeon HD 6970 and the GeForce GTX 580 dipped below 30fps, the HD 6990 provided a very playable (and astounding) 52fps.