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Watch_Dogs PC Performance Thread

mkenyon

Banned
Your arguing in a thread where people seem to believe mroe memory = faster when they don't realize you could have a 760 with 20gb of vram and the case would be the same, any game that needs that much vram for a card that doesn't have enough likely wouldn't run well even with it.
Exactly.
 

GHG

Member
Finally got it downloaded after all the Uplay problems and I'm pretty ok with my performance at the moment.

i5 3570k @ 4.6
3gb 660 SLI
16gb Ram

Playing it maxed out at 1080p with txaa x2. Getting 50-60fps when on foot, 40-50 when driving. The only issue I'm having is that it can stutter from time to time when driving. It's like Saints row 2 on PC all over again... Just nowhere near as bad.

So my question... Will locking the game to 30fps eliminate the driving stutter? Also, what's the best way to go about locking it down to 30?
 

knitoe

Member
Your arguing in a thread where people seem to believe mroe memory = faster when they don't realize you could have a 760 with 20gb of vram and the case would be the same, any game that needs that much vram for a card that doesn't have enough likely wouldn't run well even with it.

People like options. Higher textures isn't as much as a performance hit as other settings. I don't have a 760 2GB or 4GB, but lets say 4GB with Ultra Texture runs slower (fps) than a 2GB High Texture. Can someone post some numbers with a 760? With the 4GB, people wanting Ultra Textures can lower other settings, maybe they don't care for higher shadow, water and/or etc, to get same fps. With the 2GB, you don't have the options of Ultra Textures.
 

GHG

Member
People like options. Higher textures isn't as much as a performance hit as other settings. I don't have a 760 2GB or 4GB, but lets say 4GB with Ultra Texture runs slower (fps) than 2GB High Texture. Can someone post some numbers with a 760? With the 4GB, people wanting Ultra Textures can lower other settings, maybe they don't care for higher shadow, water and/or etc, to get same fps. With the 2GB, you don't have the options of Ultra Textures.

Yep. There is no harm in having the extra headroom for flexibility. I would welcome some 8/9gb VRAM cards in the near future.
 
Expected much worse performance tbh

GTX 660 2gb
i7 3770k 3.4
16gb ram

Everything set to high,1920x1200, SMAA Temp + HBAO HIgh, getting 32-40 fps all the time very happy to finally see 16:10 support in an ubisoft game and the game looks fantastic. Their is some stuttering while driving but the framerate doesnt drop not sure whats causing it tbh but its not bad only a small annoyance.

Also the ingame vsync is double buffered using D3Doverider gives a nicer triple buffered image :)
 

senahorse

Member
Is anyone else getting a kind of image retention after playing for a while? Very noticeable when panning the camera, and the only way to fix it is to restart the game it seems. I'm running a 690 in SLI, newest drivers, Windows 8.1. I'll try to get a screenshot the next time it happens.

I had this same problem with SLI 780's, was fixed by changing to another AA method, in my case I am using TXAA.
 

Pjsprojects

Member
Not sure if I should get this on PC or PS4. My PC specs are a 6 core Phenom 2 at 3700 mhz, unlocked 6950 2gb, 8 gigs RAM. I was leaning towards PS4 at first, but if I could go lower settings on PC to get a 60fps I'd probably do that. What do you guys think?

With what appears to be a buggy mess for PC, go PS4! I have an AMD based setup and gave up. See page nine.
 

Dennis

Banned
watch_dogs2014-05-272fjs3f.jpg
 

dawid

Member
The driving-stuttering and lack of triple buffering is really killing the experience for me. Should probably throw it on the shelf and wait for a few patches. Oh UBI... :(
 
so you have to hack this game to get it to work properly? ironic. Ubisoft is definitely fucking with us. Seriously tho, i think half of us get some kind of masochistic pleasure out of trying to figure out how to fix the problems with these kinds of games. a game unto itself. inception

No, this fix did nothing for me.

If you are experiencing heavy stuttering, go to high or medium texture quality, even if it hurts. Game performs much better then.

I really wanted to lock this game at 30, but it just doesn't feel right. Neither with Riva Tuner, nor with the ingame option (too much input lag). Anyway, I am getting mostly 60fps now, I think I found my settings for this game. Actually starting to like it as well.
 

Dr Dogg

Member
Ok so I'm running 2 x SLI GTX 780s and there's stuttering everywhere. Even if I turn all graphics options to low. Well in Ubi.

Go have a look at the frame timing and power usage in Afterburner or record them with Fraps. For me they're all over the place in SLI but disabling the second card it's a lot more consistent. It's a trade off with one card I get a steady performance but mid 30 early 40s update or both cards and it can go higher to high 60's but when it comes down to 40 it comes down hard. Then again SLI in a nutshell at release.
 

mkenyon

Banned
People like options. Higher textures isn't as much as a performance hit as other settings. I don't have a 760 2GB or 4GB, but lets say 4GB with Ultra Texture runs slower (fps) than a 2GB High Texture. Can someone post some numbers with a 760? With the 4GB, people wanting Ultra Textures can lower other settings, maybe they don't care for higher shadow, water and/or etc, to get same fps. With the 2GB, you don't have the options of Ultra Textures.
What I'm saying is that a $250 card isn't going to give you all of the options for all of the games. This is like "water is wet". A 4GB 760 is the same price as a 280x. This is a total no brainer here.

Are you saying that 2GB cards aren't good enough to get ultra textures in three different games now, and probably more in the future? I'm not sure where the point of contention is. If this is the argument against, "2GB of memory is enough, don't bother with the 4GB variant", then I think we're both lost.
Yep. There is no harm in having the extra headroom for flexibility. I would welcome some 8/9gb VRAM cards in the near future.
You're right, which is why there are other cards with better performance. Like the 280x, 290, 780, 290x, 780 Ti, Titan Black, and 295. :p
 

Skyzard

Banned
can you set v-sync and triple buffering through the drivers or like nvidia inspector?

The driving-stuttering and lack of triple buffering is really killing the experience for me. Should probably throw it on the shelf and wait for a few patches. Oh UBI... :(

Anyone found a way to combat that?

Still got "2 hours" left on the download, should be able to get in past midnight but I was really looking forward to driving in this too.
 
Sorry if this has been posted about; I will take time to read through the thread tomorrow (bed time soon unfortunately).

When I change graphical settings in the game whether it is detail, shadows, water quality, AO, etc the frame rate stutters and drops (down to 10-20 fps - went to 1fps at one point) even if I have lowered them to the lowest setting.

If I quit the game and load up then the frame rate is fine again. It makes testing settings a laborious process to say the least.

Has any one else experienced this?
 

Meh3D

Member
Anyone's see HardOCP's play through analysis?

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/27/watch_dogs_amd_nvidia_gpu_performance_preview

Actually getting much better performance out if the 290X compared to the 780 TI now. Also, the 290X is not having the stuttering most have been complaing about. They post their system specs. Might be a good indicator of where your performance should be. Since driver installations can go wrong. (Has happened to me on NVidia's drivers before.) They also discuss the video ram impact.

Always been a fan of HardOCP's testing methods. Actual playthroughs of the most demanding parts of the game versus canned benchmarks.
 

evlcookie

but ever so delicious
Don't mind the performance I'm getting at the moment. 2500k, 780 oc, most on high with some on ultra at 1440p. Seems to be 45 while flying on a bike and ~60 while on foot. The large Page file tweak seems to have helped the stuttering while driving but I'm so used to that stuttering in open world games.

Haven't done any xml tweaks, I imagine someone will come out with a simple configuration tool to change the settings soon enough.
 

Skyzard

Banned
Anyone's see HardOCP's play through analysis?

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/27/watch_dogs_amd_nvidia_gpu_performance_preview

Actually getting much better performance out if the 290X compared to the 780 TI now. Also, the 290X is not having the stuttering most have been complaing about. They post their system specs. Might be a good indicator of where your performance should be. Since driver installations can go round. (Haas happened to me on NVidia's drivers before.) They also discuss the video ram impact.

Always been a fan of HardOCP's testing methods. Actual playthroughs of the most demanding parts of the game versus canned benchmarks.

Thanks for that. So basically, 3GB is not enough for ultra at 2560. Ultra vs High has a difference in visual quality.

I guess I may try ultra textures on a lower resolution? Lol... is that better?

I have to say, reading that a 780ti is having proper stuttering problems with this game is annoying.
 
I'm not saying that textures are all there is to maxing out, as we both know that is not true. But you can have it on high. High textures. On a budget $250 card. Increasing the price of that card to get a version with double the memory is ridiculous when you'll get more out of a better videocard. Like the 280x.

pn0lEKG.png


Like, I flat out don't get why 2GB cards are now dead. Shit, you can run it at 1080p on ultra without running out of memory.

Not really. I've *always* stated that the 770 is a bad buy in its price bracket, and always stated that if buying NVIDIA, get a 760 or a 780, not a 770. I then explain that the 280x/7970 is the card to buy at its price range due to the higher memory bandwidth and more memory.

I disagree. 4GB 770 is the perfect card to run current games at max settings at 60fps in 1080p. Set a few unnecessary things to high/medium in BF4 and you're hitting 100+ FPS at 1440p. The VRAM comes in handy with insane textures or whatever else you want to run. Isn't it rumored that the 880 is 256 bit?
 

ItsTheNew

I believe any game made before 1997 is "essentially cave man art."
Anyone here using RadeonPro? If so, should I enable the Ingame vsync or through RP? I usually set my RP settings at vsync always on, 60hz max with triple buffering. Looking through the settings while I remotely accessed my PC, there seems to be a lot of overlap. Can't wait to get home and adjust them myself.
 

mkenyon

Banned
I disagree. 4GB 770 is the perfect card to run current games at max settings at 60fps in 1080p. Set a few unnecessary things to high/medium in BF4 and you're hitting 100+ FPS at 1440p. The VRAM comes in handy with insane textures or whatever else you want to run. Isn't it rumored that the 880 is 256 bit?
Then why does it struggle to get there on high settings? :p

snlVjAQ.png


For the price of that 4GB 770, you get to buy an R9 290, and aren't really too far off from a 780. Again, a no brainer here.
 
Then why does it struggle to get there on high settings? :p

snlVjAQ.png

Not the case for me. ASUS GTX 770 4GB DCU2 shreds BF4 on Ultra in 1080P.

Edit: Mine was only $350 through NewEgg awhile back

Second Edit: I have Watch_Dogs waiting at home. I'll post my results when I get it going.
 
need help, if uplay is connect to the internet when i start my game it crashed saying watch dogs has stopped working. game works when im offline though.

EDIT: apparently turning off uplay overlay, in game social notifications, or automatic social wall posts fixed it.
 

mkenyon

Banned
Not the case for me. ASUS GTX 770 4GB DCU2 shreds BF4 on Ultra in 1080P.

Edit: Mine was only $350 through NewEgg awhile back

Second Edit: I have Watch_Dogs waiting at home. I'll post my results when I get it going.
The results there were for Watch Dogs, not BF4.

But still, for the same price you can have an R9 290:


The price premium on the 4GB variant cards just makes no sense when you look at the other options.
 

TSM

Member
The big thing to realize is that the PS4 and XB1 have a minimum of 5GB of ram available to games. People are starting to realize that even 3GB of vram is far from future proof for upcoming multi-platform titles.

We could be witnessing the reason that GTA V has yet to be announced. When the video cards haven't buffered the necessary assets into ram, you get the stuttering everyone is dealing with. I'd imagine the other option would be pop in. Pick your poison I guess.
 

void666

Banned
I have two GTX 680 (2gb). If i set textures to medium (it's low actually) i get rid of the stuttering. But i refuse to use the medium setting. It's too damn ugly.
 

TSM

Member
How much VRAM does the XB1/PS4 have?

They use a unified memory architecture. Both the PS4 and XB1 could theoretically use up to 5GB of "vram" since it's all unified. Let's say a developer wants to aim for "3 GB" of vram considering they will have a PC port. Then they start adding all the "ultra" features which will use much more on top of that.
 

Skyzard

Banned
They use a unified memory architecture. Both the PS4 and XB1 could theoretically use up to 5GB of "vram" since it's all unified. Let's say a developer wants to aim for "3 GB" of vram considering they will have a PC port. Then they start adding all the "ultra" features which will use much more on top of that.

8GB shared memory.

Oh wow, that does sound good.

Yeah 3GB seems outdated now, pos half grand new gpu.
 

TSM

Member
Oh wow, that does sound good.

Yeah 3GB seems outdated now, pos half grand new gpu.

Considering the PS3 and 360 had 512MB of ram available and we were already starting to push up against 2GB of vram at 1080p, these new consoles will be no holds barred in a couple years. Add in the ever marching push for more res on the PC and ram requirement will balloon.
 
The results there were for Watch Dogs, not BF4.

But still, for the same price you can have an R9 290:



The price premium on the 4GB variant cards just makes no sense when you look at the other options.

Sorry for spamming the thread but it was a $150 price difference back in Dec/January and it's now about $50 less for the 4GB 770. If 50 bucks (and you're okay with AMD) is worth 3fps...get the 290. When/If Gsync hits the market, you'll be glad you went with NVIDIA.
 
The results there were for Watch Dogs, not BF4.

But still, for the same price you can have an R9 290:

I can post BF4 graphs for R9 290 :V

Golmund Railway, 30 minute match, 1080p Ultra (4xAA):


Stock clocks. 3 frames below 60 over 30 minutes of gameplay, probably during a screen transition. 99th percentile = 13.06

If you get a non-reference model (mine is reference) and drop AA to 2x you can probably hold 120FPS pretty reliably.

So yeah, I agree with you, 770 4GB is a bad purchase.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
WD is tearing us apart
Yj1mS8h.png

GTX 770 2GB is not in the PC build sheets anymore since AMD prices have stabilized in the US and are fantastic deals right now.

760/780 are listed as second options for people who want nVidia.
How much VRAM does the XB1/PS4 have?
8GB unified, 3GB held for OS and reserve.
 

Smokey

Member
Sure wish uplay website worked so I can download the client, register the code, and play the game I paid for.

Too much to ask apparently
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
More ram should be freed up later. 3GB reserved is excessive.
Run the risk of funny incompatibilities, we'll see how safe they play it. Wouldn't be surprised if some first party games got to disable some features or got 5.5GB.

Either way these are in for the long haul and I'm sure 5+ years of updates and added features / OS bloat won't be kind.
 

knitoe

Member
Sure wish uplay website worked so I can download the client, register the code, and play the game I paid for.

Too much to ask apparently
You won't be playing much with 3GB @ 4K. You will be crying in the corner wishing you didn't get rid of your Titans.
Run the risk of funny incompatibilities, we'll see how safe they play it. Wouldn't be surprised if some first party games got to disable some features or got 5.5GB.

Either way these are in for the long haul and I'm sure 5+ years of updates and added features / OS bloat won't be kind.
If suddenly resources was less, yes, incompatibilities issues possible, but more resources available, doubtful.
 

saunderez

Member
Anyone here using RadeonPro? If so, should I enable the Ingame vsync or through RP? I usually set my RP settings at vsync always on, 60hz max with triple buffering. Looking through the settings while I remotely accessed my PC, there seems to be a lot of overlap. Can't wait to get home and adjust them myself.

RadeonPro doesn't seem to be working with this game. I've got 64bit enabled but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything. It's disappointing because it improved my experience with Assassin's Creed IV tremendously and I'm pretty confident it'll help with watch_dogs if it works.
 

Smokey

Member
You won't be playing much with 3GB @ 4K. You will be crying in the corner wishing you didn't get rid of your Titans.

I'll roll with no AA as I planned. Going straight for Ultra don't give a fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.... whenever UBI stops being a bunch of jackasses

I'm sure I'll complain shortly after
 

Red Comet

Member
Just found out SLI is broken in the game with my GTX 690. DIsabled SLI and the game got less stutter.

I disabled my second 780 Ti and I'm getting much better performance now. How ridiculous is that. Everything maxed out, I can maintain about 60 FPS on foot with minimal stutter. I'm still experiencing game breaking stuttering while driving though. I tried capping the framerate at 30 FPS, but the stuttering was still present while driving.

Really hope they patch this soon and fix both the driving and SLI issue.
 

Serandur

Member
Sure wish uplay website worked so I can download the client, register the code, and play the game I paid for.

Too much to ask apparently

Everyone's saying you had Titans and got rid of them. Why and when?

Oh wow, that does sound good.

Yeah 3GB seems outdated now, pos half grand new gpu.

My 780 is a pos already? ;(

Someone please reassure me I won't vastly regret it for its VRAM when The Witcher 3 comes around. Oh god, Assassin's Creed: Unity is going to be bad, isn't it? Man, my card doesn't even seem to choke on its VRAM with AC IV at 4K, can one game like Watch Dogs realistically spell doom (for max textures)? It's so strange; the only time I fear higher texture settings is the first time I jump into the truly high-end GPU scene.
 
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