We are pretty sure that a lot of you were looking forward to our Performance Analysis for Watch_Dogs on our brand new i7 4930K system. How does Ubisoft’s open world title perform on such a high-end system? Does it suffer from stuttering side-effects? Are 4GB of system RAM enough for it? Are there major differences between quad-cores and octa-cores? Well, time to find out.
For this article – and for all future Performance Analyses – we used an Intel i7 4930K with 8GB RAM, Nvidia’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 and the latest version of the GeForce ForceWare drivers. As we’ve already said, Nvidia has included an SLI profile for Watch_Dogs in its drivers, meaning that PC gamers won’t have to mess with third-party programs (such as the Nvidia Inspector Tool) in order to enable it. There are various reports that Assassin’s Creed III’s SLI profile works better with Watch_Dogs, however we experienced major flickering while using that profile. For the time being, we suggest using the default SLI profile.
Let’s start with the game’s RAM requirements. Once again, we can confirm that the game does not use more than 2.1GB of RAM. This means that PC gamers can enjoy Ubisoft’s latest title even if their PC system is below the official minimum RAM requirements. While we noticed more than 4GB of RAM being used on our i7 4930K, we have to note that we were running a lot of processes in the background. Those willing to close everything except of Uplay and the game will be able to play it with only 4GB of RAM.
In our previous Performance Analysis article, we claimed that there were no differences between a tri-core and a quad-core system. Ironically enough, our i7 4930K was experiencing major performance issues when only 3 of our CPU cores were active. There was major stuttering, we witnessed 97% usage on all 3 cores, and the game was simply unplayable. Do note that this is not what we’ve been experiencing with our Q9650 (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) when it was running as a tri-core CPU.
But what about CPU scaling? We tested Watch_Dogs with four, five, six, seven and eight CPU cores/threads enabled and our results where a bit disheartening (to say the least). While there is a performance difference between a quad-core system and a penta-core system, there was minimal increase between our penta-core, hexa-core and octa-core simulated systems. While Watch_Dogs scales great on multiple CPU cores, it’s pretty obvious that it does not take full advantage of them. As a result of that – and as we can see from our SLI scaling – we were CPU limited despite running an i7 4930K. And while the game was running – most of the times – with 60fps, the engine was unable to properly take advantage of multiple CPU cores.
Moving on to the GPU requirements. Back in our earlier article, we claimed that the game was unaplayable with mixed Ultra/High settings, despite Nvidia’s claims. We can confirm that with our new system, there are still major stuttering issues with Nvidia’s suggested settings, especially while driving. It’s obvious that 2GB of VRAM are not enough for Ubisoft’s title and we don’t know whether the French company will be able to release a performance patch that will provide a stuttering-free experience on these cards.
Performance wise, the game was running with 55-60fps most of the times at 1080p with High settings. There were some drops to 45fps while driving (that were caused by the annoying stuttering side-effects that plague this title) but overall, we can say that the game is enjoyable. Still, this does not mean that it justifies its ridiculous PC requirements.
All in all, Watch_Dogs is a mess. The game is underperforming on the PC, and cannot sustain constant 60fps even on high-end systems. Watch_Dogs is unable to take full advantage of more than five CPU cores, meaning that a lot of you will be CPU limited. Hell, even our i7 4930K was CPU limited as our GPU was never stressed during our playthrough.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Yep, it’s the CPU initialisation. I just got around to installing MSI Afterburner on my new drive and CPU initialisation is awful, basically it’s between 30-40%, while GPU initialisation is 98%. Looks like it’s not what I thought, which was VRAM issues because that’s 1500MB, it’s low CPU initialisation causing stuttering while all the dynamic effects are working as you move around the game.
This game needs a CPU patch, badly and it explains why there isn’t much difference between the modern CPUs.
Bokeh depth-of-field effect GONE, soft shadows GONE, Nvidia’s FlameWorks GONE; PhysX GONE. What an EPIC FAIL >_<
The shadows are soft and PhysX is coming in a patch like AC4. Realtime reflections are there(one object per reflection only), wind system is there, tessellation and displacement water is there, object destruction and interaction is there, night shadows on light sources are there, car destruction is there, all four doors come off and stay on the ground, car bonnet, bumpers too and you and NPCs interact with them, i.e they will block NPCs path not just walk through them, same with other world objects
The game is way more dynamic than the so called uber Infamous SS on the PS4, which just doesn’t have not nearly the dynamics of this game on the PC.
Man you are trying to protect this shityy game. Wtf. You are also on nvidia forums trying to protect this crap. That kind of lame fanboy shitt remind me to console players. God… i feel bad already…
I dont see the point of this behaviour on a paying customer. I think WE (YOU INCLUDED) deserve something better
They shitt on every pc user face.
I know you are a pc user. This lazy devs needs a good hit in the wallet. My 5 cent
Those are facts, disprove them if you think you can. The game is poorly optimised, what do you want me to say, that the world isn’t dynamic and Infamous SS is oh so much more dynamic because console users don’t understand what’s going on?
I’m not protecting anything, I’ve even posted a shot of the bad CPU initialisation and what makes you think I’ve invested in this game? 😉
he is not trying to defend watchdogs dude. it has it’s ups and downs (more downs) and we all know ubis**t, the company that doesn’t care about pc at all and we know their s**ty support and those DRMs. (yeah, watchdogs have a file that check every second of the game with uplay even when you are offline and that causes more stuttering, but guess what ? pirates finds a way to disable it and gain more boost)
i have a mix feeling about this. i hate ubisoft (right now even more) and i hate them to treat us like criminals, i hate that they downgraded the game,i hate that they don’t care about pc and i hate their sh**ty support,i hate that there are tons of edition for the game,i hate those dlcs that they cut from actual game to sell them seperetly, i don’t like mission design, i don’t like the game’s messy optimization, in that case most of ubisoft games (do they even know how to code ? no), i don’t buy another ubi title again, at least i don’t pay more than 15 or 20$ for them. but watch dogs isn’t all that bad, it’s not good, not good at all imo, but it has it’s ups, nice AI, nice City and alive as well,cockpit view, graphics are ok if not good, at least in an open world title we didn’t experianced a game like this in terms of graphics, dynamics,things that going on on the screen etc…
You should see the comments on GeForce dot com ,It’s like people think NVIDIA developed the game.
you can blame Forbes and their fucking retarded article bashing gamesworks. They decided to jump on the AMD cry baby bandwagon(without waiting for Nvidia to prove or disprove such allegations) and made it sound like Nvidia adding in 2 gamesworks features is what crippled the game and made it run(supposedly) bad on AMD cards. So then Nvidia cry babies also started blaming Nvidia too.
Lets get one thing straight, this game is neither a “gaming evolved” or “the way its meant to be played title”, its vendor neutral in optimization. Nvidia are not to blame for the game running like grandma. The same goes for AC3,AC4,COD:Ghosts. The developers are the lazy idiots. Batman arkham series is different, those games are TWIMTBP games and on top of including the gamesworks libraries in it, they are also optimized for Nvidia hardware.
Blame Ubisoft and their disregard for PC gamers(again…) and instead focusing on the PS4 version.
Its a shame because I really do enjoy the game for what it is, but I wont touch it until the stuttering has been fixed.
Also Sean, just ignore that guy whos calling you a fanboy, I learned a long time ago, even when you try to be objective and state facts, flametards will try and rip on you simply because they are angry. Yes we deserve better, but the game, IF OPTIMIZED properly, is still a really well put together game.
Agreed.
:)) but at least game looks the same as nvidia’s tech trailer and that trailer was about the looks not performance. nvidia didn’t lied
Sean where did you hear that PhysX patch is comming? It means usage of GPU PhysX or something else?
Not sure where I read it now, but I did read that a PhysX patch is coming, unless I read wrong.
Bokeh DoF is still there but only in cut scenes, don’t know why they removed it from actual game
The bokeh DoF is there when you get your phone out to profile people but it’s like a 3 second effect.
yeah, but it’s enabled only for 1sec 😀 zooming weapons sometimes add bokeh dof in some places 😀
EPIC FAIL!!! I said it before but Gamers don’t believe me, and this is going to happen also for The Division… PC is the lead platform only for E3 Demos… They can’t Make a superior version for the multi-platform games cause they are going to be so ridiculous on consoles… so again it’s the fault of this so called Next-Gen BS.
The Division won’t be on last gen consoles though and it was designed originally for PC only because last gen consoles cant handle it. Ubisoft brought the studio that was making it, so I read.
i want to believe (however devision is an online only title and i won’t buy it) but it’s ubisoft. i’m actually done with them
Try their games out first and wait for the patches 😉
:)) i did it twice but both times they bite my a** lol (there were no performace patches for AC IV or AC III, it took them almost a year to fix ghost recon). but anyway i can’t play online, my ping is 300+ i can’t compete against people in europe with 100ms or 50ms pings. so there goes my online gaming :))
i tried BF4, lag lag lag and online was a mess
i tried cod ghost, even on 4 vs 4 maps i had problems. (funny part was the kill cams, i shoot there but nobody was there. in my cam, there was an enemy and i kiiled him but in kill cam nobody there and he knifed me from behind lol)
i tried patch of exile, i couldn’t hit enemies, there was 2 or 3 seconds delay.
i tried ghost recon online, still lag after lag. one hit i die, 10 hit i kill. lol
BF4 doesnt have any lag or rubber banding and it hasnt crashed in last 60 play hours. The netcode has it’s problems but I still really enjoy playing.
did you read my comment ? i said my ping is 300+ and i have lag in all online games. i didn’t said BF4 or any of those games lagging, i said i lag. my connection is s**t not the online games.
Not well enough apparently, sorry for that.
When Ubisoft give you a game it’s done… there patches fix s***.
I’m talking about the morally wrong way of trying the game first 😉
it means pirate them first :)) , if they fixed it then buy it 😀 but i rather buy a bad optimized indie game instead of pirating an unoptimized or not well optimized AAA titles.
dude the game cant even control like a freaking pc game, it has by far the worst mouse support during aiming i have ever seen. The aiming sensivity is lowered while aiming and it has accelaration.
I still have hopes for division due to being made by actual non ubisoft pc developers, but i am keeping my distance from fc4 or whatever ubisoft makes in the future.
aiming is one problem. changing weapons is another, if not using weapon wheel you must hit for example shotgun key many times to select the shotgun you like, if you use weapon wheel you can not see your mouse pointer, lol. i play it with controller, car controls is a lot better with controller, changing weapons or navigating through menus too
selecing a proper gadget in time is a freaking nightmare, yes i see that guy calling reinfiorcements but by the time i manage to switch to the jammer, ill be dead.
Apparently watchdogs is a “pc game” without inventory shortucts..cuz
“ubisoft”
Lying out of their arses like a boss.
yeah sometimes it gets annoying, specially in the last story mission :))
btw, the game uses 2GB of system memory and 3GB v-ram. 5GB, it’s more like a console (PS4) port than a pc game (key binding is another witness after sony’s contract with ubisoft to promote this game), they said pc is the lead but it smells like PS4 was the lead, maybe they changed it to ps4 mid development ?
IMO, they started designing Watch Dogs before the next gen consoles were finalized. PC was the lead platform as a stand-in for the next gen consoles.
Once they were announced, Ubisoft switched to focusing on the most promising lead platform once pricing was announced and preorders were being compiled.
That was when they focused on PS4 at the expense of everything. It seems they expected more of the next gen consoles than was actually delivered, which resulted in some serious downgrades and them basically dropping all PC port work to try and get the game remotely playable on PS4’s limited specs.
If anyone is left wondering why PC gamers mocked that crappy AMD APU that’s in the Xbox One and PS4 (only minor differences between them), I think it’s much easier to see why now.
It required so much handholding it took away time Ubisoft could have spent making this game run well on PC despite them working on the PC version the longest in the beginning.
“It seems they expected more of the next gen consoles than was actually delivered”
that is exactly what happened in Epic games too with unreal engine 4’s tech demo. i remember i read something like that when PS4 announced in digital foundry
And maybe they did get 1080p/60fps out of it until Sony woke up and Ubisoft told them the brutal truth, that their hardware is not as good as they made out, while NVIDIA said all along it’s mid-range PC over a year ago.
smoothness 0 in the xml file and set gpu max buffers to 2 in the game options for better input responsiveness. Apparently gpu max buffers 5 reduces the stuttering
To be fair though there is more in the game than people think, plus I heard we’re getting a PhysX patch. You can have some options on ultra and it destroys the consoles in fidelity on a 2 year old CPU/GPU. A 7870 and FX 8350 plays the game just fine in frame-rate terms, it’s just that lag needs fixing.
EPIC FAIL? At least on perfomance, but it has a great story, beautiful(not like 2012, but still until now nor game can be alike), great side-mission, inteligent MP, perfect representaion of chigaco city…and so on.
Worth my money!
Yeah, I agree. People are a little harsh. The game is fantastic, even on Medium-ugly textures. But the backlash is justified, I believe. This was touted as “Next-Gen!” throughout the entirety of its lifespan, but then the graphics are curiously and obviously very last gen once we got our hands on it. There was some incredible downgrade at some point in its development.
Keep in mind the people that are MOST outraged are the ones that believed Ubisoft was actually making a next-gen game and pre-ordered and upgraded their computers to be ready for the new revolution. I would’ve been pissed, too. In stead of Next-Gen! we got wind-tumbled trash and stutters and no dual-gpu support and a very silent Ubisoft on the issue.
Yeah but you can get it to look stunning it’s just some times of day in places don’t look all that great. Also, uncompressed images look much better.
bokeh isn’t gone. it’s used when activating slow motion sequences and also when you open your phone to hack someone/thing.
not sure about soft shadows, but this game has some of the cleanest shadows i’ve seen in any game.
and thank god it doesn’t use gimmicky, proprietary nonsense like “physx.
I’m sorry but you keep saying octa, that’s 8 core. This cpu is 6 core with 6 virtual threads. Don’t mean to be rude, It just goes back in forth in the article a couple times and had to make sure Intel didn’t release something I missed. http://ark.intel.com/products/77780
“It’s obvious that 2GB of VRAM are not enough for Ubisoft’s title”
even 6GB titan is not enough :)) it stutters on that too. the solution is in your last paragraph “Watch_Dogs is a mess”
nice article, thanks
from eurogamer’s DF:
On PC, the story isn’t quite so rosy. Despite the release of drivers
from AMD and Nvidia apparently optimised for the game, we cannot find
any way of playing this game at maximum settings without some
off-putting performance issues. We’ve tried GTX 780s in SLI, Radeon R9
290X, GTX 780 Ti and even the 6GB GTX Titan, all of them backed up by a
six-core Intel i7 3930K – a level of CPU power that significantly
exceeds the recommended spec. In all cases, there are frame-rate and
consistency issues that need to be resolved, and a particular rethink is
required in the way that AMD graphics hardware handles this game.
What takes the most VRAM seems to be the 2/4/8MSAA/4xTXXX and ultra shadows, high textures. The game is within 2GB VRAM limit at 1080p, ultra reflections, ultra water, HBAO+, high textures, all high other settings, SMAA. I clocked 1500MB VRAM.
Ultra needs 3GB VRAM+, MSAA x8, ultra settings 1080p probably will get near 3.5GB VRAM at a guess. The stuttering seems to be caused by low CPU initialisation which is damn right criminal for such a dynamic game.
the amount of V-Ram req for this game is ridiculous. it don’t really needs 3GB or even 2GB v-ram for ultra, even textures on ultra aren’t the best textures out there (not even close), they messed up something because Cards with 3GB or even 6GB v-ram doesn’t run it better. this is the problem, if it needs more v-ram why still performs the same with 2GB v-ram, not only that, on the CPU side it’s another Mess, 3570k,3770k,4770k,4930 & 4960x all runs the game with the same performance. i don’t know what they did and how they did it but i guess the patch can not fix this type of mess. maybe 6th gen or maybe 7th gen intel CPUs and top end pascal cards 😀
Pretty sure it will need a few CPU patches, it’s quite a CPU bound game because of the open dynamic world. Well, honestly, there are a lot of texture variation, AC4 has smaller parted areas that require loading screens.
yes the variation and on the cpu side there are tons of things going on around you in the game. but you know, this shouldn’t be a problem for that hardwares
Bad CPU optimisation, I wonder where we’ve seen that before. LOL
i lowered textures to medium and fixed stuttering while driving.
But seriously.
Its lead version on pc they said.
Yet their engine runs like crap on pc and cant utilize multiple cpu cores. Not to mention aiming with a gun feels like you are emulating thumbsticks rather actual mouse support.
Lead version on pc they said.
No compromises due to last gen they said.
gtx 670 can max it out they said
the pc version will look better than e3 2012 they said.
Seems gameplay and control wise the game has same problems as fc3, area clearing missions that DEMAND that you meele the main target rather shoot him and the mouse sensivity is lowered while aiming down the sights.
Overall an average game, nothing amazing on any level. Graphics are average, driving is subpar, shooting is meh due to the crappy aiming system, it has alot of stuff to do but the game is not amazing, the story especially is meh. Atleast its fun to run around but i wouldnt recommend full price to anyone. Get it when its cheap or 3-4 patches have been released.
Also whatever ubisoft shows at e3, ill take it with a MOUNTAIN of salt.
i pre-ordered this a month ago :))
tbh, game runs ok for me, it’s always 38 to 45fps but most of the times it’s 45fps. i use High textures and everything else on ultra with 2xTXAA and no stuttering at all. i tried ultra textures with triple buffering from control panel, it helps, same frame rate but minor stuttering specially when i’m in the car.
the world if beautiful. actually best open world city i saw, the city is alive and well designed. buildings are gorgeous with nice detailes.
but yeah, gameplay wise, it’s another far cry or ac game, and we knew it before it was released. go to location A and start the mission, drive to location B and kill (stealth or action) this bunch of enemies, tag the boos, take him down without killing him, watch 2minutes cut scene and do all of them again. Main missions looks the same, side missions look like main missions and all of them looks the same. is like doing the same thing for 20hrs over and over again with different cut scenes in between them.
My wife tried it last night and played it like GTA causing trouble, she liked it and that’s coming from a non biased source who’s played all the GTA games to death. :p
There is fun to be had, the beauty of the game is you play it in what style you want, you don’t need to follow a given path or unlock the other areas, GTA 4 was a big disappointment in that regard.
one more good thing about the game is the game rewards you when you play safe. i mean you care for people in the street, you can’t (dont want) to just run over them with your car and kill them, you can but if you don’t you wont lose your reputation and with a good rep they wont call the cops on you when you take their cars or shooting some bad guys in the gang hideouts. that feels good, it’s not mindless
if only the cops werent such complete dbags and didnt obliderate you even while you just run away, seriously they are way too agressive. Also i dont get why the game demands i meele the target and not just simply give me more xp for doing it, i like having freedom not getting mission fail because i shot the scumbag mobster when i had to just mash his face with a baton.
Yep, I would have liked a compete failed mission if I killed the main target rather than starting it again. AC4 does let you fail the contacts, and later you can come back and catch him.
Yeah that would be fine you would get to kill him and you will be able to re do the mission later for more gameplay and doing it diffirently.
What we need is a tranquilizer dart, or some other way to incapacitate a man without running up to them and smacking them in the face. It’s kind of ridiculous.
yup
The game is mad fun, I just jumped on top of a train while it was about to go though a tunnel and then jumped off it on to a platform. LOL
Considering there is no actual jump in this game, there are loads of places you can get up, they haven’t really limited you.
all i want beside some optimization in this game are choppers and airplanes 😀 that would be cool
You can be a real dbag in this game by hacking stuff but if you shoot cops or civilians you lose alot of reputation, seriously though, the wanted system is annoying as h3ll, some guy calls the police, i shoot him, some other calls the police, i shoot him, then some other guy calls the police OMG STAHP ALREADY what do i need to do nuke your arses to get the message? Stop calling the police!
Yeah, Like Total Biscuit said in his WTF video, the police, crime system are rather inconsistent and the police are relentless. AI is good though.
too fast though, i was a mile away with a sniper rifle i try to aim and i get shot before i even manage to fire, they are faster than the ai in gears of war 1 and twice as accurate.
LOL, a bit like Saints Row 3/4.
yeah but in saints row you dont take 3-4 hits and die. Watchdogs is stricly a cover based shooter. You leave cover, you are dead. Also the crappy mouse support while aiming makes things more frustrating.
Watch dogs has gone gold they said… yet it needs desperate patching in all fronts.
yes you can die really fast, and sticking to cover wont help much, the AI is smart, they always try to flank you 😀 even if they can’t they use granade to force you to came out of cover 😀 it’s a good thing and a bad thing in the same time :))
Bad: you die quick, checkpoints are rubish and takes too long to go there and die again, lol
good: it’s challenging and more realistic and you need strategy
also how the fck do you are “supossed” to leave cover? seriously pressing c again just makes the character circle around the cover. Seems like the cover system needs work to, what should i do press the movement buttons or space to get up?
with X360 controller i use “B” (space ? ) button to roll over the cover or i press down (movement button-sticky keys) to leave cover. i don’t know much about action situations but in stealth they work fine, i guess in action it gets a little messy, specially with keyboards
c gets you into cover and v gets you out by default, if you check the key bindings there is a “leave cover” key. Basically it has to be on a separate key.
thanks
It works the same as SplinterCell, move away from the object rather than pressing C.
what cpu? my gtx 660 hits high settings with 30-45 fps and stutters as h3ll on driving unless i drop to medium textures.
“tag the boos, take him down without killing him, watch 2minutes cut scene and do all of them again.”
Yup, i was hooked for hours, but it will get old.
Seriously though the story is meh and the gunplay sucks, i blame the crappy aiming controls but damn the ai is super fast and ultra duper accurate.
For a game that started as a racing game and lead on pc, its not particulary good on either of those things.
Good game, just not amazing, wolfenstein is better.
i5 3570k 3.4ghz & a 660ti 1306mhz with 8gb 1600 ram,1680×1050.
yeah story isn’t good but i really don’t care about stories in games. gunplay isn’t it’s strongest suit however stealth is fun. driving is meh for a game that started as a drving game but it depends on cars too, i liked the muscle cars and cockpit view was a nice addon.
did they fixed wolfenstein’s performance issues ? i really like to play it but still short on money and i don’t want to waste 60$ for another game with 0 support.
oh, try lower shadow quality as well and use high textures, see if it helps. after textures, shadow is the second demanding option i saw in this game, specially in sunset and night times.
“Also whatever ubisoft shows at e3, ill take it with a MOUNTAIN of salt”
Agreed
I agree there are some broken promises, but I wouldn’t call the game average. I’ve had some great times in Watch Dogs so far, and I’m continuously impressed by the sheer amount of stuff this game is packed with. It’s DENSE. Lots of objects all around and lots of stuff to blow up.
It’s kinda like GTA, but it doesn’t condone mass murder. Trying NOT to kill civilians actually benefits the player (citizens will call the cops less, which allows you to get away with more).
Dang man, I’m really lovin’ this game. It’s a shame you can’t enjoy it for what it is, but I guess not everyone will. Oh well.
Yep, it’s going to sound like we’re Watch Dogs defenders but I agree, it’s got it’s problems but it’s got much more depth than the likes of GTA, it’s doesn’t control how you play, you can just go around the world being anything or doing anything you want and you don’t have to be anything a lot of games tell you to be, good or bad.
It’s basically your own morals and NPCs can call the police and you can stop them or escape, have fun with the police as you see fit. Sleeping Dogs in similar but it give you easy way to get away from the police like one button escapes from handcuffs.
Not sure about you, but I’m certainly a Watch Dogs defender (I guess that’s a thing?). I am split, though – I agree with the harsh rhetoric over the performance issues that are a proven mess, but once those things are taken care of it really is a fine game.
Agreed, I was starting to think it lacked that R* touch that GTA has but it’s actually got everything there, you just have to find it rather than walk around blindfolded. Got to say though, the game looks really stunning at times, those NVIDIA shots were not bullshots after all. Reflections on ultra make a big difference along with HBAO+.
it does lack that R* touch, it doest havea anywhere near as detailed map or as varied missions and vehicles but atleast it doesnt have the overdone american culture parody style with stupid stereotype parodic characters that suppose to be funny.
I was hoping for a better story and more freedom, i wanna say its a fun shooter, but its not and the driving is just average, there are alot of distractions and thats great content wise but it lacks a focus on gameplay mechanics, its kinda hard to explain that in detail, it feels the gameplay could use more focus. I cant put it any better than that. Something doesnt click well in the game, i dont know if its the wanted system, the story, the aiming controls or the subpar driving, something is missing.
Yeah GTA have that specialness and tight controls but watch Dogs is more open, I’m surprised what you can do and get to without a jump button, you can even walk along edges of buildings.
you can climb areas that are meant to climb not go everyhwhere like say just cause or prototype, saboteur is also pretty good.
Reviews say the game ges better later on, i am still on the first chapter which is pretty damn slow from what i heard.
I did the mission where he meets with his sister and that’s it so far, just been exploring and seeing what can be done randomly.
its fun but its not a huge game or revolutionary. I can enjoy it for what it is, but it is average, what was gonna be, was amazing.
Ubisoft are having a laugh releasing this game with such poor CPU initialisation on the PC and claiming it’s very CPU intensive for such a dynamic world.
“CPU1: 29%” – GPU: 99% = LMAO
http://i.imgur.com/14eArJI.jpg
I want to buy it, but I don’t know, it seems like a lot of hassle.
wait a week or two for a patch, see if they improve it then buy it, if not you need to do some optimization yourself to be able to run it smooth on your pc.
That’s what I’m thinking too, wait for a patch. I might just wait until I can get my hands on the Asus ROG Swift monitor (hopefully this month)
http://www.purepc.pl/karty_graficzne/jakie_wymagania_watch_dogs_duze_test_kart_graficznych_i_procesorow?page=0,8
Looks like this game require 6 core i7 3960X @ 4.5 GHz for smooth (60fps) gameplay. I dont know how consoles can run W_D even at 30 fps,
Yea indeed the game scales great on my i7 3770k *8 core/HT but still not at full potential !
I always assume open world games are going to be horribly optimized. I’ve only been pleasantly surprised by Just Cause 2 and Sleeping Dogs.
Agree, I think Mafia 2 was a good port too, despite its Physx performance. But with a little tweak you could disable NPC cloth simulation and was much better with Physx on high.
Yeap, i7 4930K is a six-core. We basically simulated octa-core and above systems by enabling Hyper Threading. Although Hyper Threading does not make it a ‘proper’ twelve-core CPU, it gives precise results and behaviour on scaling. Basically, if a game scales beyond six cores, it will allocate additional threads the same way it would do on proper CPU cores.
The same you said about ACIV. Ubisoft doesn’t care about PC gamers, no matter what they say. They think we are all dirty stupid pirates here.
Prepare for Division downgrade and poor optimization.
Good news, it turns out the gas station explosion hasn’t been downgraded as bad I we’ve see, the wind even affects the smoke from the explosion. There are lots of particles after the explosion as well, they seem to rain down.
http://i.imgur.com/Qtzd5m0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/L19z5Sm.jpg
on consoles it isn’t like this i guess, i watched 4 or 5 videos when gas station explosion happened. but i took some shot on PC version myself. many particles & it really impacts on cars too (picture no 5). explosions and s**t doesn’t impact my frame rate at all.
here:
someimage…com/KZRTn7k
someimage…com/3lzZ1C1
someimage…com/xrGNyOh
someimage…com/4UCZtvY
someimage…com/1GXm7cr
and this is just beautiful:
someimage…com/SVbMhkI
someimage…com/QyJLShk
besides all of that, the game has some really nice draw distance, specially when you are on a boat and leaving the city behind
All the little things I keep seeing I’ve not seen in any open world games. The weather system seems to be more advanced and complex than AC4 and the wind system blows smoke in the direction it’s blowing. Smoke gets lit by lights as well as it passes by them.
“Smoke gets lit by lights as well as it passes by them”
it looks like the volumetric smoke effect from the division’s tech demo, less impressing but yeah still nice.
It looked like complete crap in that XBox1 video, PC version looks much more impressive with the smoke and particle effects. The particles cover more than half the screen, there are loads of them.
it has protection to check every second if a file is different. EVERY second!!!
hahahaha
Watch Dogs on ultra, ultra textures, 8xMSAA, 1080p, HBAO+ can use 7.53GB of RAM, 2.27GB VRAM. 9.70GB total confirmed.
John why don’t you wait to do these kinds of benches? ubisoft said they’re aware of the issues and are working on a patch to fix them.
the game is obviously bugged in it’s current state and so it’s foolish to do these types of benches right now.
1.game released with it’s current state (final build – a year delay for more polish) as a full game. so it’s not foolish, it’s ubi’s problem.
2.we could have another benchmark post patch (part 3) to see what improved or did they improve it or not
NO IT’S NOT FOOLISH.
Are you serious or are you just trolling ?
Can you guys (DSO article authors) make a special article about Ubicrap’s practice of releasing “console ports” and lying to our faces saying that their games are optimized for PC ?
I’m just really tired of this shitty company lying and getting away with it every time. It’s time a site with credibility when it comes to PC gaming expose what this company really is so PC gamers like us won’t be scammed again.
From now on, when it comes to anything Ubicrap, It’s “try”(you know what I mean) it first then buy later
watchfucks,yeah
For your test did you try to change the value DeferredFxQuality in the gamerprofile.xml to PC instead of Console? To me it changed completly the experience with almost no stuttering at all.
i run the game on ultra setting but texture on high my frame rate 32 to 50 but most of the time 45 fps im using gtx 670 16 GB ram i7 3820 and yes stuttering every where
——-one day we can play ubi game with no problem one day——
Try adding this at the end of your watch dogs.exe shortcut like this without quotes.
“watch_dogs.exe -disablepagefilecheck”
Basically, if you have 2GB of VRAM then put textures on medium and everything else on ultra HBAO+, except shadows(high) and get a stutter free experience, even I get 30-45 at 1080p and these settings on my GTX660