I didn't play it for more than not-very-long though, so it is possible that boss fights or battles with a lot of enemies would have made me chug. But as it stands (stood), it thought I could do middle of the road settings and it was right. I took off persistent gore but never got far enough to see if that mattered. I don't think I changed anything else.
On this laptop I have way more RAM and processing power than I'll ever need, but my graphics card is terrible. It's integrated graphics, and the best one available for VAIOs, but still terrible compared to... anything at all. I guess it looked kinda bad, but not in a way that bothered me at all. It just looked like medium setting textures. I'd take screenshots but I uninstalled it.
Mass Effect strikes me as a much more poorly made game than DAO, though.