• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Watch_Dogs PC Performance Thread

DarkoMaledictus

Tier Whore
Also running a GTX 780 ti, I've checked it - it's not the VRAM. Overall I get wildly differing fps, it hovers around 60 for the most part but dips hard into the 40s whenever I drive. Then there are some spots that are even worse. I did some testing on one of the worst - conveniently located just outside the safehouse. All tests were done at 1920x1080 and with temporal SMAA.

First: everything at lowest possible, vsync off (obviously) http://i.imgur.com/yuEkZVe.jpg



57 fps. VRAM at ~2500. GPU load 45 %. Oh, and a funny thing happened - the GPU strain was so low that it automatically clocked itself down to 901 MHz! But still not even 60 FPS! CPU load didn't get included in this picture but it was about the same as the rest, 60-70 %.

Next: textures at medium (aka lowest), everything else at max.



39 fps. VRAM at ~2300 . GPU load 50 % (but at least with normal clocks), CPU load 70 %.

Finally: ultra textures, everything else at max.



38 FPS- VRAM at ~2900 which is basically max for the GPU. GPU load 53 %. CPU load 73 %.

So yeah... it's not a VRAM bottleneck, not a CPU bottleneck and there's no justification why the game can't run this scene at higher than 57 fps with the absolute lowest settings. I imagine that an i7 could be what makes some people with a 780 ti be able to run it at above 60 FPS (I'm also running an i5), but it still reeks of horrible optimization. No wonder it got delayed. They should have delayed it longer from the looks of it, guess we'll have to pray that it get's patched in the future.

Dude I'm not even surprised. Ubisoft does not know how to program pc games. They do that shit with all AC games, only game that seemed optimized is RAYMAN, and that probably didn't require too much to run...
 

maneil99

Member
Found about as sweet of a spot as I'm probably going to get for now.

My rig:

i7-4770k @ 3.50 GHz
16 GB DDR3 RAM 1600 Mhz
780 Ti SLI (with SLI disabled)

I've set textures to high, AA to Temp SMAA, and everything else at ultra (with HBAO low). I get almost a near constant 60 FPS with minimal stuttering. Stuttering is still present while driving, but it's at least more manageable now. I'm testing right outside of Aiden's apartment and the surrounding area. The game doesn't look as pretty as I would like it to, but at least with these settings I can play the game without thinking about performance too much, and I'm sure it still looks better than PS4. Perhaps if they fix the SLI issue I'll be able to increase my AA or textures.
AA maybe, textures no.
 

DarkoMaledictus

Tier Whore
Finally got into the game. Spent around an hour.

Not happy with the performance.
In order for the game to be playable, I need VSync, since tearing is horrible.
However, when I enable VSync, in the scene where my framerate without it is 55+fps, with Vsync it is around 30, basically the game is unplayable. I tried all combinations of ingame vsync and prerendered frames.
So I will have to try forcing vsync + triple buffering from outside the game, like with AC4. Sigh.

Just not a game worth playing on pc, seriously if they ain't going to put the effort I'm just going to drop them altogether. Piss poor performance is unacceptable!
 

TSM

Member
My rig:

780 Ti SLI (with SLI disabled)

I'm actually wondering if SLI makes the vram issue worse. Instead of one video card trying to swap assets in and out of video memory you have 2 cards making the same demand at the same time. On top of cutting your system bandwidth in half (50% for each card), you'd have a lot more overhead with your computer trying to meet both demands at the same time. As long as the vram memory manager is failing this hard, I'm not sure SLI will be a viable option.
 

Denton

Member
i7 3770k @ 4.4GHZ
8GB RAM
SSD
WIN7
GTX TITAN

Downsampling to 1080p from 2560x1440 with everything on max and Temporal SMAA

30FPS locked.

While those screens are beautiful and have nice superclean image quality, I will never understand how someone with Titan, or 780, or even my god damn 280X, can settle for 30fps. It is just so utterly unplayable for me :( (or rather, playable, but nasty and unpleasant to play).
I am pretty pissed that getting locked 60 on any decent settings is nigh impossible in this game.

Just not a game worth playing on pc, seriously if they ain't going to put the effort I'm just going to drop them altogether. Piss poor performance is unacceptable!

By this logic it is not worth playing anywhere, because consoles being locked to even lower res and 30fps makes them worthless to me too.
 
On a 2GB GTX 670, switching shadows down to high from ultra eliminated almost all the stuttering for me, with textures on high and temporal SMAA.
 

Red Comet

Member
I'm actually wondering if SLI makes the vram issue worse. Instead of one video card trying to swap assets in and out of video memory you have 2 cards making the same demand at the same time. On top of cutting your system bandwidth in half (50% for each card), you'd have a lot more overhead with your computer trying to meet both demands at the same time. As long as the vram memory manager is failing this hard, I'm not sure SLI will be a viable option.

I couldn't tell you if VRAM is the culprit since I'm not monitoring that, but the game definitely performs better with SLI disabled (at least on my system). Disabling SLI largely removed the stuttering outside of driving (which is still present somewhat no matter what I do).
 
Found about as sweet of a spot as I'm probably going to get for now.

My rig:

i7-4770k @ 3.50 GHz
16 GB DDR3 RAM 1600 Mhz
780 Ti SLI (with SLI disabled)

I've set textures to high, AA to Temp SMAA, and everything else at ultra (with HBAO low). I get almost a near constant 60 FPS with minimal stuttering. Stuttering is still present while driving, but it's at least more manageable now. I'm testing right outside of Aiden's apartment and the surrounding area. The game doesn't look as pretty as I would like it to, but at least with these settings I can play the game without thinking about performance too much, and I'm sure it still looks better than PS4. Perhaps if they fix the SLI issue I'll be able to increase my AA or textures.
I almost have the same exact rig except I only have one 780ti. Thanks for sharing your settings now I won't have to mess around with the graphic settings I'll just use the ones you posted.
 

KaiserAlucard

Neo Member
I confirm SLI is the culprit in most of the stuttering. I was plagued with a stutterfest at 40fps with a 670 SLI, and now with a single one I have a fluid 60fps. Damn I even put the shadows in Ultra without too much of an impact. Now either Nvidia improves SLI profiles, or Ubi patches the game for a better optimization, I don't really know which one is more at fault here.
 

fade_

Member
So without going through the whole thread I take it there is still no solution to triple buffering for 60fps vsync? I remember sending this tweet I sent around the the time of AC4

https://twitter.com/UbiGabe/status/403414663515238400

Can't believe the problem is still not fixed. And now we don't even have d3doverrider as a solution. I guess this is what you get for being civil...
 

DarkoMaledictus

Tier Whore
While those screens are beautiful and have nice superclean image quality, I will never understand how someone with Titan, or 780, or even my god damn 280X, can settle for 30fps. It is just so utterly unplayable for me :( (or rather, playable, but nasty and unpleasant to play).
I am pretty pissed that getting locked 60 on any decent settings is nigh impossible in this game.



By this logic it is not worth playing anywhere, because consoles being locked to even lower res and 30fps makes them worthless to me too.

Yeah good point... :(
 
What settings you recommend for R9 270x? I have core older core i7 that runs at 3.8 hz. I have 8 gb of ram.


I have set texture to high, and everything else on ultra. Game play goes 20-60 and then down and then up.

Stuttering is happening a lot when driving.
 
On a 2GB GTX 670, switching shadows down to high from ultra eliminated almost all the stuttering for me, with textures on high and temporal SMAA.

Worked for me, that is awesome. I rather put shadows down to high and use high textures instead of medium. They seem to consume a lot of VRAM. Thanks!
 
AMD 7850 2 GB, i5 2500k (running @ stock speed), and 16 GB of RAM.

Running the game on a smaller monitor with a native res. of 1360 x 768 I've gotten the game to run buttery smooth @ 60 FPS (using 1 frame vsync) by turning shadows and textures down to high, and turning the AA down. Everything else Ultra.

The combination of shadows and AA seemed to really kill the game for me (unplayable stuttering)
 

Red Comet

Member
Well I've got the game running satisfactory, but now I'm having audio troubles. Sound effects and music are okay, but dialogue goes from very quite to silent. I've checked the settings and all audio options are at 100. Even after turning everything down except for voices the problem persists. Does anybody have this problem or know a solution?
 

Dave_6

Member
Well finally got it installed and played through the intro mission. It performed fairly well though I have no idea what the framerate was as (like Wolfenstein) Afterburner isn't working with this game. I'm running it at 1080p with a mix of High/Ultra settings and temporal SMAA. Didn't have any issues until I began driving around in which the stuttering problem showed up. The game then froze up. Started the game back up, hopped on a motorcycle and it froze up again after about 30 secs. I don't think it's a heat issue with my PC. Anyone else had it freeze up like that?

My setup:
3570K@4.4
8GB Samsung RAM
3GB 7970 (not overclocked)
Corsair H60
 

Netboi

Banned
Well I've got the game running satisfactory, but now I'm having audio troubles. Sound effects and music are okay, but dialogue goes from very quite to silent. I've checked the settings and all audio options are at 100. Even after turning everything down except for voices the problem persists. Does anybody have this problem or know a solution?

Maybe you have audio communication on so when there is another sound or voice that pops up it goes down. I have Soundblaster ZX so I haven't experienced that problem.
 
It absolutely isn't. No one buying a $250 video card should ever expect to completely max out a new game. The GPU on the 760 or 770 wouldn't be able to keep up to justify the additional memory. You're kind of ridiculous.

Careful, before you resort to name calling you should make certain you are correct. In this case, you are not, and adding an ad hominem on the end doesn't help you any. No one said anything about the price of a card, for reference sake though the 770 is a 300 dollar card, even in it's 2gb implementation. Actually your entire reply is very poorly worded. What "...absolutely isn't"?

Also, the GPU "can't keep up" is nonsense. More VRAM has never shown to be a hinderance to any of these cards and, if the game supports the increased usage, has always shown to work better than the lesser VRAM version. Also these are all rebrands. The 770 is a 680, which, let me remind you, was blasting 7970's in benchmarks all day when they went head to head. The 680 also had a 4GB version which it had no problem pushing. The same is true of the 760 which is a 670 and the story is the exact same, except the 670 fell behind the 7970 on several benchmarks.

I'm not going to get in a pissing contest, and this has gone off topic enough. Enjoy.
 

Red Comet

Member
Maybe you have audio communication on so when there is another sound or voice that pops up it goes down. I have Soundblaster ZX so I haven't experienced that problem.

I looked into that, but I have my communications set to do nothing when it detects communications activity. Weird.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Finally navigated the Origin and uplay maze to get this working.

i7 940 at just 3ghz, 780sc, all ultra, HBAO+, Temporal SMAA game performs admirably (and looks gorgeous) but nowhere near 60. Latest NVIDIA drivers.

minor first mission spoiler I guess

Couple questions:

1. Can anybody who got the digital deluxe on origin tell me how to be sure if you unlocked the deluxe stuff? I input the code from the email into uplay once, it accepted it, but I have no clue how to know if it's in-game or not.

2. What are the first couple things to turn down to tweak for performance?
 

finalflame

Member
I'm running:

Single 780 Ti clocked at 1300/7900, watercooled @ 2.12 V
i5-4670K @ 4.2ghz
2x8gb DDR-1600
2x840 EVO 256gb RAID0

I have tried using the -disablepagefilecheck flag, running in borderless/windowed/fullscreen, and a myriad of other options.

I am running the game at 1440p @ 100hz.

I have everything in Graphics Settings set to Ultra, HBAO+ High, Temporal SMAA, but only High textures. No VSync, max framebuffer = 1.

My framerates seem consistent with my settings - at these settings I get about 40-60 FPS. The issue doesn't seem to be a distinct dip in framerates (as reported by FRAPS), but rather the stuttering is killing me.The framerate doesn't seem to drop, but the game hitches for a fraction of a second for no fucking reason, while maintaining 40-60fps. It seems to be something with loading assets. I even clocked my memory clock higher on my video card (as far as I can push it before I get artifacting) to increase the bandwidth, but it's not cutting it.

The issue is, people with 6gb GTX Titans are reporting these same stuttering issues. I think this game has a serious fucking problem. My framerates are consistent with the graphical settings I am using; if I change it to high I get it closer to the 55-65 range, same for disabling HBAO+ and AA: they give significant FPS increases.

But the stuttering is ever present. I refuse to change my textures to Medium on my fucking card. This is ridiculous. I really hope Ubisoft answers to this and releases a fix, the stuttering does not seem to be linked to framerate performance.
 

low-G

Member
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.

If worse GPUs than what the PS4 has can run the game at 30fps at 1080p, why isn't the PS4 version 1080p?

650 Ti Boost (happens to be my GPU), less powerful than the PS4's GPU, though.
 
Finally navigated the Origin and uplay maze to get this working.

i7 940 at just 3ghz, 780sc, all ultra, HBAO+, Temporal SMAA game performs admirably (and looks gorgeous) but nowhere near 60. Latest NVIDIA drivers.

Could you define "nowhere near 60"? I7 940 and 780sc here too and am wondering what to expect
 

Did it stop the stuttering? If not change the textures to high.
The stuttering is your system swapping assets in and out of vram when you run out. The only thing you can do is lower settings that affect vram usage until you stop having the issue. Many people are having issues with 3 GB cards at 1080p and you are trying to run it at 1440p.
That too. It is impossible to run the game perfectly.
 

maneil99

Member
If worse GPUs than what the PS4 has can run the game at 30fps at 1080p, why isn't the PS4 version 1080p?

650 Ti Boost (happens to be my GPU), less powerful than the PS4's GPU, though.

PS4 version has minimal to no drops, likely wanted to be safe vs sorry
 

TSM

Member
I'm running:

Single 780 Ti clocked at 1300/7900, watercooled @ 2.12 V
i5-4670K @ 4.2ghz
2x8gb DDR-1600
2x840 EVO 256gb RAID0

I have tried using the -disablepagefilecheck flag, running in borderless/windowed/fullscreen, and a myriad of other options.

I am running the game at 1440p @ 100hz.

I have everything in Graphics Settings set to Ultra, HBAO+ High, Temporal SMAA, but only High textures. No VSync, max framebuffer = 1.

My framerates seem consistent with my settings - at these settings I get about 40-60 FPS. The issue doesn't seem to be a distinct dip in framerates (as reported by FRAPS), but rather the stuttering is killing me.The framerate doesn't seem to drop, but the game hitches for a fraction of a second for no fucking reason, while maintaining 40-60fps. It seems to be something with loading assets. I even clocked my memory clock higher on my video card (as far as I can push it before I get artifacting) to increase the bandwidth, but it's not cutting it.

The issue is, people with 6gb GTX Titans are reporting these same stuttering issues. I think this game has a serious fucking problem. My framerates are consistent with the graphical settings I am using; if I change it to high I get it closer to the 55-65 range, same for disabling HBAO+ and AA: they give significant FPS increases.

But the stuttering is ever present. I refuse to change my textures to Medium on my fucking card. This is ridiculous. I really hope Ubisoft answers to this and releases a fix, the stuttering does not seem to be linked to framerate performance.

The stuttering is your system swapping assets in and out of vram when you run out. The only thing you can do is lower settings that affect vram usage until you stop having the issue. Many people are having issues with 3 GB cards at 1080p and you are trying to run it at 1440p.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Could you define "nowhere near 60"? I7 940 and 780sc here too and am wondering what to expect
Not comfortably yet. For starters I haven't driven a car. I'm definitely hitting 60 in this little room/corridor. And it falls off with rapid camera movement, but doubt it's below 50 or 45. But I certainly imagine with lots of action and driving it'll shrivel, will keep you posted.

Weirdness:

Alt+tabbing can seemingly tank framerate- if I switch to borderless, then back to full, seems to snap back to good
 

Kaan

Banned
My rig:

3770k
Dual 7970
16 Gigs Dominator
(2) 240 Corsair Neutron GTX in Raid-0

Running the game at 2560x1440 - tried maxing everything is the tearing is horrible, and I get occasional stutters. Turning down shadows etc. makes the game smoother, but in all honesty it's not THAT amazing graphically, so I'm not sure why my rig can't play this easily.

This is just one mans opinion, but Sleeping Dogs with the HD Texture pack is MUCH nicer to look at than this.
 

Axial

Member
I gotta say that except for the poor v-sync implementation everything runs rather good.
I'm playing the game at 1080p with temporal SMAA at the predefined 'high' setting with an average 50 to 60 fps. Feels and plays good.
Whenever I'm not doing any missions and just some sightseeing I up the res to 3200x1800 and enjoy the game downsampled to my monitors native res.
The downsampled image really makes all the neat little details in the envoirement more noticable and pop out, surprisingly the game keeps a steady 30 fps at such big resolution.
Haven't also encountered any stuttering so far.
My rig:
i5 3470k @ 4.4GHz
8 GB of system memory & GTX770 with 2 GB vram.
 

b0bbyJ03

Member
so this fixed the majority of my stuttering to the point were if im driving there have been sections were i dont even get a stutter for more than a minute (pretty sad that that is considered good) and it is not persistent when i do get a stutter. i used the disablepagefile thing and one thing that really pushed it over the edge was setting the max gpu frame buffer to 1 instead of 3. that really helped. i have everything but textures maxed and im using temporal smaa. specs are gtx 780, 3770k stock, 8 gb ram, and samsung ssd.
 
Not comfortably yet. For starters I haven't driven a car. I'm definitely hitting 60 in this little room/corridor. And it falls off with rapid camera movement, but doubt it's below 50 or 45. But I certainly imagine with lots of action and driving it'll shrivel, will keep you posted.

Weirdness:

Alt+tabbing can seemingly tank framerate- if I switch to borderless, then back to full, seems to snap back to good

i5 3570k 4.7ghz and 780 SC 1241/6600mhz
I'll check for you. It felt smooth except for some stutters while driving

Thanks guys. My concern is the i7. When all the passmark talk was flyin around last week and that dev said you needed 10k or higher, I checked and the 940 is barely over 5k. Bummer.

Still don't get why this game apparently doesn't run super well, even on titans. BF4 looks so great and can run full ultra with a little super sampling even, and still lock at 60. Same problem when ACIV launched. Idk shit about shit about developing pc games but if seems to me ubisoft isn't nearly as capable as DICE or Crytek...
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
To those of you with AMD cards, enable RadeonPro x64 by clicking the 32-bit icon under the AMD Radeon Graphics icon until 32/64bit appears. Then tweak to your hearts content :).

Here are some screens with my settings (third image has the 32/64bit icon boxed in red):

r5wfVJp.png

FZhtjNf.png

ETzi0ug.png

SwWlQLi.png

kOVbhw1.jpg


Specs for anyone wondering:

i5 4670K @ 4.5
R9 270 OC
8 GB RAM
1400x900 monitor @ 75 Hz (thus the 38 fps lock)

With the new drivers I set the level of detail setting to high with no stuttering or ultra with occasional stuttering. When I don't have stittering the game is smoooooth as fuck, buttery :).
 

TSM

Member
Thanks guys. My concern is the i7. When all the passmark talk was flyin around last week and that dev said you needed 10k or higher, I checked and the 940 is barely over 5k. Bummer.

Still don't get why this game apparently doesn't run super well, even on titans. BF4 looks so great and can run full ultra with a little super sampling even, and still lock at 60. Same problem when ACIV launched. Idk shit about shit about developing pc games but if seems to me ubisoft isn't nearly as capable as DICE or Crytek...

It's nearly impossible to tell what affect the processor is having at this time. Too many people having vram issues. At some point reasonable settings for each level of vram (2GB, 3GB or 4GB) will emerge and we may get a better picture.
 

Dave_6

Member
Fuck, I can't drive or ride a motorcycle for no more than a minute and the game crashes out to Uplay. WTF.

Just crashed again in the same exact spot/area on the map! FUCK.
 
Top Bottom