Watch Dogs - Ubisoft's Third Person Shooter

Gimpymoo · 27 May 2014 at 14:35

Is it the game it promised to be, worth £40?

drunkenmaster · 27 May 2014 at 14:40

No idea on the pads, perfectly possible it doesn't, however no other game I can think of has this issue, it feels more like a bunch of idiots who just thought, it's so cool when people do burnouts so we'll just make that standard. Because it's pretty hard to do a basic donut in this game to turn quickly using accelerate + handbrake, making it completely absurd.

First go with new drivers... not great, but then I was playing with settings a lot which may have upset it.

Temporal AA was a complete mind ****, it left like a severe ghosting effect that made me feel like I was on acid(having never taken acid and basing that on how every film/tv show ever has shown being on acid

). MSAA/txaa/no aa didn't have a problem.

deblow · 27 May 2014 at 14:41

Omaeka said:
45-60 fps maxed out at 1440p on a 2500k and a 7970? Seems legit.

lol
thanks for the trust, now you made me upload a another clip to show im not talking Bull crap

BTW never said Maxed out, i said ULTRA settings!

please check the clip and let me know if it makes you more trusting or you need more ?

Unlisted clip 0 Watch Dogs 45-60 FPS ULTRA settings
http://youtu.be/tEmsjsPVDeY

TonyTurbo78 · 27 May 2014 at 14:41

new Cat 14.6 drivers installed, wow much different Watch Dogs regarding GPU usage and frame rate. Before on 14.4 driver, I was only getting 51% and 51% respective on both cards so had to disable 1 card which really improved performance actually. Now with the new drivers I'm getting 90% usage on both cards and a constant 50fps - 60fps all on Ultra details and using Temporal SMAA. Much better, much nicer to play, and the frames I'm much happier about. Got the maximum eye candy with the occasional stutter but 90% of the time its really good. The game is just poorly optimized so hopefully with a few more patches, we'll get rid of the occasional hicup

Calin Banc · 27 May 2014 at 14:43

Sliver said:
Weird. My [email protected] is purring along with no problems.

All Ultra, SSMA Temporal. At times it drops under 30fps, so does the CPU usage. It's still playable mind you, but the CPU is really taking a beating.

Like all testing/benchmarking, it's important where are you making the readings. Anyway, will try the new driver.

deblow · 27 May 2014 at 14:45

TonyTurbo78 said:
new Cat 14.6 drivers installed, wow much different Watch Dogs regarding GPU usage and frame rate. Before on 14.4 driver, I was only getting 51% and 51% respective on both cards so had to disable 1 card which really improved performance actually. Now with the new drivers I'm getting 90% usage on both cards and a constant 50fps - 60fps all on Ultra details and using Temporal SMAA. Much better, much nicer to play, and the frames I'm ecstatic about. Got the maximum eye candy and the fluidity back the occasional stutter but 99% of the time, its perfect.

Great, im still on 14.4
took me almost a day to install 14.4 so i hope new drivers install better lol

n111ck · 27 May 2014 at 14:47

You need a clip walking / driving along a road IMO.

Martini1991 · 27 May 2014 at 14:47

sneakysnail said:
it's not your 7970 that's bottle necking you it's the cpu. my oc'd 965 holds my 7870xt back a fair bit. drop the shadows down and see what happens, I'm willing to bet you'd get a fair increase.

A 2500K smashes a Phenom II, and in Watchdogs where the Deneb is crippled relative to PD, a 2500K will literally run rings around your Phenom II, completely different performance.

phazari180 · 27 May 2014 at 14:48

Think I might have to play this one on the TV with controller instead, my OC'd 2500k & 690 really can't keep up @ 1600p.

Sliver · 27 May 2014 at 14:50

Calin Banc said:
All Ultra, SSMA Temporal. At times it drops under 30fps, so does the CPU usage. It's still playable mind you, but the CPU is really taking a beating.

Like all testing/benchmarking, it's important where are you making the readings. Anyway, will try the new driver.

Try running the game at High instead of Ultra. I'm running at High with 60-90 FPS everywhere, and no problems. The game still looks great on High settings.

What res are you running ? I'm on 1080p which helps a lot.

twoodster · 27 May 2014 at 14:53

Gimpymoo said:
Is it the game it promised to be, worth £40?

I don't think any games worth 40 quid personally. I paid 17 quid for Watch Dogs and I don't feel ripped off so far

blky · 27 May 2014 at 14:55

Would anyone be able to guide me on how to exactly play a multiplayer session with a friend?

Devlish · 27 May 2014 at 14:59

Omaeka said:
It being a Nvidia title, the weakness would be peoples AMD cards I'd imagine.

Read this this morning, dont intend to buy the game anytime soon (too much SC/Elite) but will when it drops. It was quite interesting on the AMD/NVidia debate. Ive used both and meh.

With that admittedly verbose background out of the way, let’s dig into Watch Dogs specifically. I’ve been testing it over the weekend on a variety of newer AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, and the results have been simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. It’s evident that Watch Dogs is optimized for Nvidia hardware, but it’s staggering just how un-optimized it is on AMD hardware. I guarantee that when the game gets released, a swarm of upset gamers are going to point fingers at AMD for the sub-par performance. Their anger would be misplaced.

I asked Robert Hallock about this specifically, and he explains that they had “very limited time with the title and [we've] been able to implement some respectable performance improvements thanks to the skill of our driver engineers. Careful performance analysis with a variety of internal tools have allowed us to profile this title, despite deliberate obfuscation attempts, to improve the experience for users.”

AMD will release a new driver to the public this week which reflects those improvements. (It’s the same driver I conducted my testing with.) Unfortunately my conversation with Hallock didn’t end with a silver lining: “I am uncertain if we will be able to achieve additional gains due to the unfortunate practices of the Gameworks program,” he remarked...

What you’re seeing in the benchmarks above is a $500 AMD video card (Radeon 290x) struggling to keep up with a $300 one (GTX 770) from Nvidia using one of the lowest levels of Anti-Aliasing, since Nvidia’s TXAA isn’t available to Radeon users. And the performance deficiences scale down accordingly. Both of the cards tested were reference boards, and the system is an Intel Core i7 4770K with 16GB of 1866MHz RAM running on Windows 8.1 and this week’s game-ready drivers from both Nvidia and AMD.

To further put this in perspective, AMD’s 290x graphics card performs 51% better than Nvidia’s 770 on one of the most demanding PC titles around, Metro: Last Light — which also happens to be an Nvidia optimized title. As you would expect given their respective prices, AMD’s flagship 290x can and should blow past Nvidia’s 770 and compete with Nvidia’s 780Ti on most titles. To really drive the point home, my Radeon 290x can hit 60fps on Metro: Last Light with High quality settings and 4x anti-aliasing, at a higher resolution of 1440p. It points to a poorly optimized game all around; but substantially worse on AMD hardware, as Joel Hruska accurately predicted several months ago. (For those wondering, AMD CrossFire and Nvidia SLI scaling are almost nonexistent at this point, especially in higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K).

deblow · 27 May 2014 at 15:02

TonyTurbo78 said:
new Cat 14.6 drivers installed, wow much different Watch Dogs regarding GPU usage and frame rate. Before on 14.4 driver, I was only getting 51% and 51% respective on both cards so had to disable 1 card which really improved performance actually. Now with the new drivers I'm getting 90% usage on both cards and a constant 50fps - 60fps all on Ultra details and using Temporal SMAA. Much better, much nicer to play, and the frames I'm much happier about. Got the maximum eye candy with the occasional stutter but 90% of the time its really good. The game is just poorly optimized so hopefully with a few more patches, we'll get rid of the occasional hicup

Where did you get 14.6? cant see them on the support page

TonyTurbo78 · 27 May 2014 at 15:06

Here mate

http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/amd_catalyst_14_6_beta_download.html

Sliver · 27 May 2014 at 15:08

Devlish said:
Read this morning, dont intend to buy the game anytime soon (too much SC/Elite) but will when it drops. It was quite interesting on the AMD/NVidia debate. Ive used both and meh.

Yeah, I don't care for AMD propaganda. Plenty of people on AMD cards with decent frame rates. Just another fan-boy venting on the tinterweb, boring. The games only been out for 5 minutes. A patch or two and some driver updates and everyone will be happy. Nvidia owners will be happier though.

deblow · 27 May 2014 at 15:09

TonyTurbo78 said:
Here mate

http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/amd_catalyst_14_6_beta_download.html

Thanks a lot

btw, when i disable crossfire my FPS drops to a constant 30 -32 FPS
Windows 8.1
Cat 14.4

Josh · 27 May 2014 at 15:24

Wow, decent game enjoying it so far.

It's hard to outrun cops in a vehicle when the fps drops to single figures though. Needs some better optimisation and it will be a cracker.

bakes0310 · 27 May 2014 at 15:28

No different than max payne 3 needing 3gb vram to play at ultra settings. Infact it wouldn't even let you have the option to try.

twoodster · 27 May 2014 at 15:31

I usually hate motion blur in games and turn it off straight away, but I actually think it improves this. Graphics seem better with it on to my eyes. Anyone else agree?