Well here is a nice surprise. Ubisoft has just released a new update for the PC version of Watch_Dogs. According to the changelog, this patch improves performance on more recent models of cards (and as the French company noted, 770 and onwards GPUs will see better improvements). This patch will be auto-downloaded from UPLAY, and you can view its complete changelog below.
Watch_Dogs PC Update Changelog:
• Better performance on more recent models of cards.
– 770 onwards will see better improvements.
• Moved all resource creation to an exclusive worker thread.
• Changed technique used for updating texture mipmaps in Ultra textures mode.
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LOL, so they copied what the modders did?
No…
“Changed technique used for updating texture mipmaps in Ultra textures mode.”
Maldo did something very similar with the textures to make them run ultra without as much stuttering.
Maldo Rulez 😀 also in Crysis2 (MOD is astonishing)
in my Blog of course 😉
Haha, so much for Ubi.
Nice try yves guillemot.
What about AMD cards, lol?
Anyway my GTX 980 does not care either way. It eats Watch Dogs with or without the update.
OC 970 is slaying it too 🙂
So… does this increase performance of older cards, too? Why would it affect only 770’s onward?
Because those cards can run the game well anyway^^
Uhhhh, I don’t think so. Performance increases with specific cards should come from updates to the graphics driver, not the game maker.
Game devs always have released performance improvements for CPUs and GPUs, also it’s an NVIDIA logo title so Ubisoft may have consulted NVIDIA about it.
I can’t recall any game ever being updated to run better on a SPECIFIC card or CPU. I can understand if they updated the code for maybe 64bit or multi-core, but those changes will benefit ALL 64bit and multi-core chips, not just specific chips.
Is there something fundamentally different about how the 770 works? (I’m looking into it)
All the 770 is… It’s pretty much a 680 with a littler higher everything with slightly more performance in games. I think Ubisoft just needs to tell their workers to shut up when it comes to naming off hardware.
I will tell you right now the games no longer stutters/massive fps drops on my 750ti set at optimized settings.
As usual, Ubisoft changelogs are vague.
No you don’t understand what ROdNEY meant.
See the gtx770 “should” have been able to run the game at max settings with ULTRA textures because it has enough texture mapping units to run the game but because of the inefficient port the 770 was held back from running it the way it should have.
Lower GPU’s don’t have enough texture mapping units to run at ultra textures without some performance hitches so even though the 770 is now able to run the ultra settings like it should have from day one that doesn’t mean weaker GPU’s are now physically capable of running settings that they do not have the raw prowess to handle.
See it was Ubiosft’s poor software that was holding the 770’s and even the newest 980’s back while the weaker cards are being held back via the hardware.
Do you understand?. I have a gtx980 and Watchdogs ran terribly dropping from 60fps to 35fps all the time, now the reason this was happening was because of the poor code Ubisoft used to stream ultra textures, just because Ubisoft has fixed the texture streaming for cards that are able to handle these textures doesn’t mean that weaker GPU’s should now be able to run settings that require hardware they don’t have.
What GPU are you using anyway?.
In my 20 years of following PC gaming I can’t recall another time when the game manufacturer updated their game to run better on a specific graphics card or CPU. That just doesn’t happen.
Modern Nvidia cards don’t have ‘texture mapping units’ – they have CUDA cores (or Stream processors), which is simply a processor design that allows for textures and code to run efficiently on the same silicon. The amount of these in your card is not why the game stutters – the game stutters because of the game code being optimized for console architecture.
I understand that the newest generation of cards may work differently, but it’s the responsibility of card manufacturers to provide drivers that allow newer hardware to run legacy code and scale the game appropriately. It’s the responsibility of the game maker to allow the game to be scaled (eg, not limit FPS or resolution, or to limit games based on specific cards).
Ubisoft can’t ‘fix their code’ for specific cards – that’s not how it works. UNLESS Ubisoft added new code, [then?] struck a deal with Nvidia that only newer Nvidia cards would get recognized by the game and properly utilize the new game code. Nvidia can’t sell new cards if older cards run new games well.
Likely the game engine recognizes and records what kind of card you’re using. I’d bet you can trick the game into thinking you have a better card and get the performance benefits of this magical new code they added.
Either this, or Ubisoft is extremely incompetent, or they’re intentionally hobbling PC’s so that they can’t run the game better than a console. It could be a mix of all of the above 🙁
I think you should go and look at any modern GPU as they list the specs of their TMU’s aka texture mapping units, ROP’s and shaders aka CUDA cores aka Stream processors. Of course modern GPU’s have texture mapping units. Different GPU’s have different amounts of TMU’s or texture mapping units.
Yes the game was hobbled but only in a way that cards like 770 aka 680 had high enough texture pushing prowess but the engine was unable to take advantage of these GPU’s. A weaker GPU that is unable to manage the load of the ultra textures isn’t going to be able to run them now that Ubisoft has fixed the issue that was bottlenecking the higher end GPU models mate. If a GPU is physically unable to run ULTRA textures at a reasonable performance no amount of engine changes will make the card perform better than it’s physically able to. While the 770 aka 680 was being bottlenecked not by it’s ability to push textures but the poor engine choices.
Oh and every modern GPU has TMU’s and ROPs. The ROP’s handle the pixels or final image and the Texture Mapping Units dictate texel fill rate. Look at the specs for AMD’s new mobile flagship for example..
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-r9-m295x-mobility-chip-feature-tonga-gpu-includes-32-compute-units/
This is a shock to me with how close ACU/Far Cry 4 are. Then again it’s really a case of Too little Too Late.
Other then that I await to see what changes have been made from the game play I seen from them and now when it comes to ACU/Far Cry 4.
{Update} Now running the Game on Ultra texture/Ultra Settings 8XMSAA it does not go over 2038V-memory usage.
Maybe they learned new optimization techniques while developing ACU/Far Cry 4 and decided to implement them in Watch Dogs.
That would only apply to the PS4 and XB1 not PC because the PC has the CPU power to play this game no problem but Ubisoft don’t multi-thread the PC version, while other devs can.
If you want to know what great multi-threading is like, look at Beyond earth, it uses all of my 6 cores(Mantle runs better) even in DX11 because the game uses complex AI and heavy CPU to do it.
Well all 8 Threads of my I7 4770K are maxing out at 55% usage. In Watch Dogs now.
And Beyond Earth is just Civ 5 with better optimization and better Visuals… But overall its ba ba ba boring… You can’t compare it to a game like watch dogs. Ubisoft just blew it and slowly are making up for it.
That’s irrelevant, Civ 5 and Beyond Earth are very AI heavy with random complex moves for each AI on every turn, it’s very CPU intensive so please don’t understate it. Watch Dogs claims to have complex AI but out fo the box couldn’t even use DX11 MTR and DX11 MTR was even broken in Farcry 3. Turns out with Watch Dogs you don’t need a top end CPU because there is no CPU scaling at all between i3 and i7.
Civ games… More CPU bound then anything.. Been like that since I was a kid playing Civ 1 on a 386… Just seems Ubisoft is making minor improvements that’s all. I am getting both ACU/FC4 on PC just to see how well they fair on my 750ti/970 setups
Way too late in my view, it’s not what you expect from an AAA game.
I already stated that. Maybe Fasterthanftl had a point.. And from gameplay I seen from ACU/FC4 it seemed to have no stuttering/tearing issues… So maybe they did put in some optimization they learned with their newer games coming out next month into Watchdogs..
Maybe but I said it from the start that it needs a CPU patch.
yeah I am sure we all knew that just like how AC Blackflag made no sense… Ubisoft is just making people mad this year like EA did last year and the year before that….
I would like to think Ubisoft is doing it on purpose so they can do the right thing to gain attention but I don’t think that is the case.. But it sure worked for EA…
I find it rather hard to believe they learned to multi-thread properly, more like they used the code from the console version because they couldn’t be bothered to multi-thread properly on the PC. These are AAA devs, supposed to be best in the business at what they do considering the price premium they charge for their games. Ubisoft could have just supported Mantle and done it in half the time for all their PC games but it’s an NVIDIA title, NVIDIA can’t see Mantle as not competition, it’s just a graphics API for goodness sake.
you are giving Mantle way to much credit man… It still needs a lot of work. And by the time most of the bugs are worked out and dev teams understand low lvl api’s better DX12 will be out. Even if Past Ubisoft games used mantle it would of been the same garbage…
Ether way Watch dog’s Finally shows better CPU usage. All 8 threads are being used on my i7 4770k. The more improvements from ubisoft the better.
Mantle does what it suppose to do, that not giving it too much credit, it doesn’t have CPU bottleneck areas like DX11 does in sniper Elite 3 and it’s consistently better in every game I’ve tried, even Beyond Earth.
yeah but you seem a bit to naive about it. Dev’s infact have a harder time programming for a low lvl api then they do say DX9/11.3. And yes Mantle does a good job when used right. Sniper 3 and Civ are perfect examples.
To make a statement like ” Ubisoft could have just supported Mantle and done it in half the time” That is giving it way to much credit. Since so far Civ BE is the only game with Mantle support that came out when the DX version came out.
DX11.3 can’t even claim to do that so I don’t know what you’re on about. After all this time you give credit to Ubisoft and DX11 coding from a company that treats PC games like second citizens. Amazing comments and turnaround at the drop of a hat on a patch that’s far too late.
I was giving a example.. dx9/11.3 are high lvl api’s… And they do get credit for making things right… the more right they bring the better. can’t stay mad at a company forever… EA games are a perfect example
And not used right by Ubisoft.
Well If ACU/FC4 are fully optimized titles then what?
Clearly not by the requirements, more optimised means using less CPU, not an i7 minimum. In Battlefield 4 the FX series can keep up with i5/i7 because its well multi-threaded.
none of their min/req makes sense. Even the AMD hardware is off. I am just gonna have to wait till the 11th to see myself. And min was a i5 btw…
Yes we will see.
FC3 was very well optimized, but no AC ever was! So that would be new.
Except they shipped a broken DX11 MTR, nothing amazing about DX9 running well.
FC3 was a stutter mess and fps was a mess as well. But FC3 looks better then most Ubisoft titles
Devs have more work to learn new APIs every time. They has same problem with DX10/11 with almost no performance improvement! Also I have not seen a game with “not perfect” (to use your word) implementation (MANTLE works everywhere! as very likely DX 12 will as AMD helps with that too)
Also PC gaming industry generate 50 billion of profit every year, which is enough to optimize games a bit, don’t you think so?
Hardly! Effective Multi-threading is impossible under current API and the only reason why new APIs are coming! Every game will be limit by 1 core performance in future too! But with double effectivity + better scaling.
Of course it is, that’s my point about Civ5 and Beyond Earth. Ubisoft clearly don’t know how to do it properly or just don’t care and DX11 MTR was broken in farcry 3.
Problem of Disrupt engine was never in CPU scaling! Not like in anvil next engine btw.
Disrupt engine had problem with PC not having unified memory causing stuttering and FPS drops!
Well so far I have not had Stuttering/FPS drop issues with this patch
I’m glad you got to play the game properly 5 months later.
Yea Ubisoft was to little to late!
Uninstalled 2 months ago…. tired of stuttering. I´m no going back
same here I hope they keep the trend only not 5 months later “-)
Now running the Game on Ultra texture/Ultra Settings 8XMSAA it does not go over 2038V-memory usage.
That is interesting.
yeah 11/11 is around the corner… I am still confused about ACU’s min/recommended specs…
AC uses different anvil engine. Watch Dogs has Disrupt engine. Very interesting that most of ubi games has its own engines.
Two completely different engines
Ubi… ?
Optimization months later.. ?
Didn’t expect that /s but still , if it is decent its okay.
Cool, but still not enough to make me pay what they want for it on Steam. I’ll take my time and wait for a 66-75% sale, thank you very much. 😉
got it for like 50% off before it was released 😀
Really? It would have been a good $30 game, but instead it was a bad $60 game.
yeah use sites like savygamer to find good deals
cdkeys.com, you’re welcome.
Already beat this game sorry and i wished it came out sooner but i’m still wondering how much better it is since i’m running a 8350fx and 770gtx
Still pretty p*ssed off at Ubi over the sh*t job they did optimizing this game. But, maybe this is the start of something good and they really are gonna start supporting the PC more like they said they would. Only time will tell… *crosses fingers*
ubisoft hate gtx 670
5 months too late. Whoever thanks Ubisoft for this needs a reality check.
Have run a 20min test and noted no performance improvements. oh well
Too late sorry. Should have released it closer to when the game was released ffs…
Guys, the game DOES scale well. I can go from a GPU limited situation where the CPU stays at 100% almost all the time (at 1080, pretty high settings), to a GPU limited scenario where the CPU usage drops if the GPU is limiting the frame rate.
With that said, medium settings for textures should be used for a 2GB card, high for 3GB and ultra for 4GB (no MSAA) and above that, with MSAA and of course, more than one card is required. If you look with Afterburner, when the memory usage closes on the limit of the card, it suddenly drops to a lower level. At that point I believe, the information goes to system RAM instead, from which access is slower and takes more time – stutter and drops in performance may occur.
Oh an, yes, you do need a 6 core or more (8threads) in order to run it well, couple with a decent card a “high” settings.
Suggestion: try running with detail level to medium, in order to reduce the geometry/draw calls etc., ergo less demanding CPUs will manage a higher frame rate and keep the texture details to a more manageable level. 😉
The game was running fine on 970 SLI until this bloody update was released! now it’s sits at 40fps with 2gpus running at 60% I mean what the hell?
Try and use Worse + Moldo mode, it should improve performance.
I think it still will be screwed up with this mod. Game was running great until this update.
With my new 980 and this update I should be able to run it at 1440P. But hell, games seems pretty sh*t anyway, so yeah- to little to late.
I was just triple checking it and SLI scaling on 970 is now broken after this update!
This game was unplayable for me for the last 6 months until i got 2×970 few days ago. Now it was running great.. and they broke it.
btw. I tried Worse + Moldo mode and it’s the same as without it (it was also great before)
Great, I just finished the game after getting my GTX 980. I even uninstalled it.
ubisoft make a game about hacker for hackers! ubisoft cant fix the bugs that they cause! so it takes hackers to create a patch because ubisoft cant do it. dont you at ubisoft think you owe some hackers thanks and maybe not give them all bad names? if u have to hack your own game you pay £45 for and then expected to pay for dlc’s?? i refuse to pay for things that dont work. perhaps ubi should give something back to the hacker comunity to show there gratitude