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Watch_Dogs PC Performance Thread

Buburibon

Member
Performance drops for running in a window vary a lot from game to game. In watch_dogs I'm roughly talking I guess a 15% reduction in avg fps.

I see, that's enough to notice I suppose. Just a few days ago I was messing around with Tomb Raider (2013), and found that the borderless window performance with TressFX enabled was about 25% higher in certain spots than that of exclusive fullscreen. It's like you said, it must vary quite a bit depending on what you're running.
 

Denton

Member
I'm just guessing at the cause, but it could be explained by at what point in the render process the software you're using is taking its frame-rate reading.
For example, in a true triple buffering design, the GPU is permitted to render as fast as it can and if you add Vsync, the output will be synchronised to the display. The GPU renders to two back buffers, either of which can be flipped to the front buffer for display. If a completed frame is not needed by the display, then it's dropped from one of the back buffers. This way the display gets its 60Hz update and the GPU can churn out frames as fast as possible.

If windowed borderless mode uses a technique like this and if your frame-rate counter is taking its reading from the back buffer, then it'll display >60fps at times, while the out put is actually synced to 60Hz. For this theory to be correct, it would mean Aero desktop display uses true triple buffering + vsync, so who knows? :)

Huh...so Fraps is actually displaying framerate that does not get drawn? huh.

I found this:
http://superuser.com/questions/558007/how-does-windows-aero-prevent-screen-tearing

They write there that double buffering is used, but that makes no sense since framerate does not drop to 30. It must be triple buffer I guess.

One more advantage of borderless window - when I play in fullscreen with Aero enabled, I almost always get error message couple minutes after starting a game (not just WD, many games):

Windows has detected your computer's performance is slow. This could be because there are not enough resources to run the Windows Aero color scheme. To improve performance, try changing the color scheme to Windows 7 Basic. Any change you make will be in effect until the next time you log on to Windows.

Change the color scheme to Windows 7 Basic
Keep the current color scheme, but ask me again if my computer continues to perform slowly
Keep the current color scheme, and don't show this message again



This error drives me up the wall, if I could murder someone at MS for doing this, I would.
I get around it by disabling desktop composition (aero) in each game's exe file, but it is still annoying as hell when it happens.
And with borderless windowed, it does not happen! yay

(this error only started appearing after I got TV and started using dual screen setup, with 24" LCD being secondary and 55" TV being set as primary. When I only had LCD, I never got this error)
 

Spaghetti

Member
bit the bullet and bought watch dogs.

surprise surprise, haven't even begun playing and i'm experiencing issues. registered my activation key on uplay and... no game.
 

riflen

Member
Huh...so Fraps is actually displaying framerate that does not get drawn? huh.

It's just a theory that's probably hokum. In fact that Anandtech article on triple buffering says that FRAPS records the rate from the front buffer and so will underreport the frame-rate in this scenario. I suppose FRAPS could have changed since 2009, but that software hardly ever gets an update of any kind.
 
watch_dogs2014-05-280nxuyr.jpg



[/QUOTE]
My dick is fucking rock hard right now. Those are beastly shots
 

Lizardus

Member
My game keeps starting in Windowed mode and I have to Alt+Enter to go fullscreen. This makes me cringe every time and want to punch the screen.
 

dr_rus

Member
Titans have stuttering issues if SLI is enabled. Disabling one of them removes a lot of the stuttering.

That's quite possible. Never liked SLI/CF because of a lot of such issues.

Than you're one of the few lucky ones, I have a msi 770 4gb and had to put the textures on medium to get a non stutter locked 60 frames on the game

770 can't do 60 at my res, I'm floating around 30-45 with everything at max (High/Ultra). Didn't play much yet but haven't seen that much stuttering to complain about it.
 

Spaghetti

Member
finally fixed my activation woes.

now i need to think very carefully about the settings configuration to avoid bluescreening every five minutes...
 
This game runs beautifully on my 13" Retina MacBook Pro with Intel Iris 5100 graphics and by beautifully I mean 20 FPS on all low settings at 1280x800

I'll take it
 

Setsuna

Member
i recommend everyone do the criminal convoy missions ASAP. The anti vehicle sniper you gain is just the most satisfying weapon in game
 

maneil99

Member
Anyone can give me an estimate on how an HD 5970 and 2600k would do with this game? Talking about playing in 1080p.

Medium settings. 1 Gb of VRAM will be a pain in the ass. The 5970 is advertizes as 2gb but its just a bunch of PR. Your GPUs can only access one modules VRAM.
 

lmbotiva

Junior Member
alright, i installed msi AB and open on screen display, i used the frame limiter of the app and lock it to 60 and to my surprise the stutter is gone, i remember doing this same thing with darksiders 2


EDIT: does anyone knows how to hide the frame counter in on screen display msi afterburner? i know fraps is F12 but ive tried everything on this to no luck
 
WTF GAF. What have we come to.

I see the stutters, but the game is running at a full 60fps in these shots? the stutter is BARELY noticable. how can you not be happy with that? If my game ran like that I'd be THE KING OF THE WORLD.

Most of us with older hardware have FREEZES like that for a whole second at a time while it loads assets. holyshit, if this is what EVERYONE is complaining about I understand why, but seriously, you need to learn to accept it, IT"S NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD BE, trust me.
Well shelling out money for a 690 and 3970x I'd expect stutter free too.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Few hours played, some stutter, mostly while driving, not too bad from what I've seen so far. Running mostly smooth.

Windows 7
2600K (4.5ghz)
780 3GB (1150 core/6.5ghz memory)
8GB RAM (1333mhz)
1920x1200

Getting mostly 50-60fps with ultra everything, hbao and shaders high, DoF on, motion blur off (preference), temporal smaa.

14292291051_9b7ce6134a_o.png
Can I ask what outfit that is??
 

Jeremy

Member
This is weird as hell but here it goes... After adding -disablepagefilecheck which I've heard is placebo, I was still getting stuttering in 1080p on high. I increased resolution to 1440p and the stuttering disappeared on High and is barely noticeable on Ultra and using AA. I've posted specs a couple of times but here they are again:

GTX 780 Ti SC
i5-4670k
8GB ram
 

Tnecniv

Neo Member
alright, i installed msi AB and open on screen display, i used the frame limiter of the app and lock it to 60 and to my surprise the stutter is gone, i remember doing this same thing with darksiders 2


EDIT: does anyone knows how to hide the frame counter in on screen display msi afterburner? i know fraps is F12 but ive tried everything on this to no luck
Go to 'settings', 'on-screen display', type in hot hey of your choice next to 'toggle on-screen display.'
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Medium settings. 1 Gb of VRAM will be a pain in the ass. The 5970 is advertizes as 2gb but its just a bunch of PR. Your GPUs can only access one modules VRAM.
It's going to look like ass because of the microstutter below 60fps. Ironically, I had to retire my 5850s because of my CPU and not VRAM.
 

Dave_6

Member
Ok after messing around tonight, my crashing/freezing issue has something to do with the 2nd campaign marker on the map (where Aiden's wife calls about a party). I can play this game as long as I want but as soon as I get to within a few blocks of that 'marker' the game freezes up. Every time. WTF?

Until I figure out what is causing it, I don't guess I'll be getting any farther with story unlocks...
 

Smokey

Member
So I had a (relatively) smooth session for about a hour or so earlier. I've settled on using High textures,motion blur off, AA off. Everything else has been left at Ultra. I've left SLI on. Still some hitching here and there but other than that it was a pretty pleasant experience at 4k. Plenty of driving and shooting and it held up. Lower 50s-60+ depending on what was going on.

I also downloaded the X360 Wired Controller driver. I did not have that installed yesterday when my controller was acting weird. Today I had no issues after installing that driver. No W8 driver so I grabbed W7 64-bit and it worked fine.
 

rezn0r

Member
So I disabled 2 of my 3 Titans and the game seems to run much better now, although it still stutters while I drive.

I've been keeping up with this thread (don't have WD yet), I feel like this quote right here really sums up a lot for me. Hoping Ubi fixes some things with patches.
 

Axial

Member
So performance wise I have finally everything sorted out.
I'm running the game at 2560x1440 downscaled to 1080p, everything set to high, HBAO+ low, capped at 45fps and v-sync forced through nvinspector at 1/2 refresh rate and play the game at a steady 30fps(tried limiting the frames at 31 instead of 45 but even though v-sync was forced it still teared horribly).

I noticed though, no matter if v-sync is turned off/on, the game has some atrocious mouse smoothing and inverted acceleration. Didn't notice it at first until I had my first gunfight, it's as if the game is handlig mouse movement like an analogue stick.
Anyone know how to fix that?
 

Dries

Member
I know I won't get Ultra textures with 2GB VRAM, but will I get all other settings at Ultra with a:

i5 2500k 3.3 Ghz
8GB RAM
single GTX 770 2GB
res: 1080 x 1920

How would it perform??
 

KaiserAlucard

Neo Member
I know I won't get Ultra textures with 2GB VRAM, but will I get all other settings at Ultra with a:

i5 2500k 3.3 Ghz
8GB RAM
single GTX 770 2GB
res: 1080 x 1920

How would it perform??
If you put textures at medium and everything else in Ultra your game will run smoothly. Don't go too high with AA though.
 
2600k 4.3 Ghz
8Gb RAM 2333
780GTX 1Ghz

With some tweaks to page checks, the game runs beautifully on 2xTXAA and Ultra textures, but sometimes has stutter during district transitions, probably due to flushing previous environment textures and loading the new ones. IMO there is something wrong with the algorithm, because 3Gbs of VRAM should be enough and I heard people complaining about the same stutters with 4Gbs.
 

scitek

Member
I know I won't get Ultra textures with 2GB VRAM, but will I get all other settings at Ultra with a:

i5 2500k 3.3 Ghz
8GB RAM
single GTX 770 2GB
res: 1080 x 1920

How would it perform??

I was able to run everything at Ultra except textures, which was at High, and temporal SMAA, and lock it to 30fps with:

i5 2500k @ 4.5 GHz
2GB GTX 670
8GB RAM

You should be fine.
 

d00d3n

Member
2600k 4.3 Ghz
8Gb RAM 2333
780GTX 1Ghz

With some tweaks to page checks, the game runs beautifully on 2xTXAA and Ultra textures, but sometimes has stutter during district transitions, probably due to flushing previous environment textures and loading the new ones. IMO there is something wrong with the algorithm, because 3Gbs of VRAM should be enough and I heard people complaining about the same stutters with 4Gbs.

How do you tweak page checks? I have similar specs, but SLI. Gave up trying to optimize performance after only getting about 30fps with ultra and no anti-aliasing, but glad to hear that some people are getting the game to run properly. Btw, what fps do you get in fraps?

The issue with getting any benefit from SLI remains I guess, but that is a problem for another day ...
 

KaiserAlucard

Neo Member
Are there comparison pics for texture quality somewhere? If I can play 35-40 fps with High textures I'd totally go for that.
The problem with high textures is that you'll certainly have stuttering and mini freezes. The game is much more stable with medium textures, maybe it will be adressed in a future patch. The thing is, cards with only 2Gb VRAM seem to really struggle here.

Here's a comparison between Medium and High textures.
http://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs/watch-dogs-textures-comparison-1-high-vs-medium.html
 

CLU

Neo Member
I find it funny that this game runs waaaay better than AC4 on my setup:

i7 3610QM 2.3GHz
16GB RAM
single GTX 670M 3GB
@1080p

By which I mean that on medium setting (and ultra textures) I can get a rock solid 30fps and if I halve the resolution- rock solid 60fps. This was simply impossible in AC4 as even on low+800x600 the game refused to run above 50fps in all areas, and anything below 60 felt clunky as all hell. With the pagecheck parameter WD runs without a hitch for the most part, without anything too severe. And even those 30fps feel really nice almost as if the game was coded correctly or something unthinkable like that :D
 
How do you tweak page checks? I have similar specs, but SLI. Gave up trying to optimize performance after only getting about 30fps with ultra and no anti-aliasing, but glad to hear that some people are getting the game to run properly. Btw, what fps do you get in fraps?

The issue with getting any benefit from SLI remains I guess, but that is a problem for another day ...

Here's a link.
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/22134/article/watch-dogs-pc-graphics-tweaks-guide/

I meant that -disablepagefilecheck thing. I can say that my game runs at 40-50 fps most of the time, and about 60 when the scene is simple. I run the game at 1080p, and I don't use frame buffering and VSYNC. Turning off TXAA completely makes it lock out at 60 fps and further minimizes the stutter.
 
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