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Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:38 pm
by killadark
so i went ahead and got a copy of watch dogs thru some means :P
although i have pre ordered it

first things first performance...
BAD
doesn't matter i run on low or high
indoors im 90 FPS whereas outdoors its sub 40 to 60 depending on FOV (23 fps on very long roads)
I am definitely CPU limited as my GPU usage frequently drops to 20%
the CPU usage sits at 40-60% so it's not even using most of its potential i have my fx8350 clocked at 4.2ghz that as far as my hyper 212 can handle pity.
The driving is just BLEH i mean it just doesn't feel right and then there is the stutters while driving at high speed
then there r the wonky mouse controls for some reason i feel the y and x axis are not moving at the same speed...

This is not my final conclusion though since it is not released there is hope from a day 1 patch and AMD drivers fixing performance issues
I sure had my hopes high for this and probably shouldn't have gotten it before launch as it has left a bad taste in my mouth
ubisoft and their horrible PC ports
next up on their list is the division sure hope they don't cock that one up also

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:44 pm
by Meadows
Hello there!

Elaborate on "some means" of getting a game ahead of release.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:50 pm
by killadark
Pirates have succeeded !
a guy who posted Video of watch dogs on his pc got me searching
id like to add that the game uses 3.7GB of my 4gb Vram that's quite a lot
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/2211 ... ay-videos/

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 1:07 pm
by Meadows
Have you tried to either reduce texture resolution or forcibly set the /3GB switch in the executable to see whether unplayable framerates (<30) would be solved?
(Does the game come with a 64-bit executable?)

Regarding your FX processor, have you tried to set processor scheduling to "background processes" instead of "programs" to see if multithreaded performance would improve? (It helped me in at least two separate cases.)

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 1:42 pm
by NovusBogus
CPU heavy, crappy driving controls and weird X/Y issues? Sounds to me like they must have done what the cynics said they would: make a PS3 game and then rush-port it to other platforms.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 2:04 pm
by killadark
Meadows wrote:
Have you tried to either reduce texture resolution or forcibly set the /3GB switch in the executable to see whether unplayable framerates (<30) would be solved?
(Does the game come with a 64-bit executable?)

Regarding your FX processor, have you tried to set processor scheduling to "background processes" instead of "programs" to see if multithreaded performance would improve? (It helped me in at least two separate cases.)


As far as I know the game requires a 64bit os has a minimum of 6gb ram recommended so ya it's a 64bit game

and changing scheduling haven't helped but reducing texture from ultra to high did help a bit I find less stutters or its just my mind telling me it's better now... :p

Also using msaa makes everything blurry and keep residual images behind

EDIT it's definitely a lot smoother it's dropping under 30 fps a lot less now that I reduced the textures to high Bram usage is at 2.5gb don't really notice the texture change so I guess it'll stay

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 2:11 pm
by killadark
NovusBogus wrote:
CPU heavy, crappy driving controls and weird X/Y issues? Sounds to me like they must have done what the cynics said they would: make a PS3 game and then rush-port it to other platforms.

Totally agree and then there is this annoying FOV problem where it decides to reduce the FOV for no apparent reason like I can see cars spawning 20m ahead on highways

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 2:27 pm
by Meadows
killadark wrote:
NovusBogus wrote:
CPU heavy, crappy driving controls and weird X/Y issues? Sounds to me like they must have done what the cynics said they would: make a PS3 game and then rush-port it to other platforms.

Totally agree and then there is this annoying FOV problem where it decides to reduce the FOV for no apparent reason like I can see cars spawning 20m ahead on highways


I'm starting to think you didn't manage to get the actual release version.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 2:42 pm
by killadark
Meadows wrote:
killadark wrote:
NovusBogus wrote:
CPU heavy, crappy driving controls and weird X/Y issues? Sounds to me like they must have done what the cynics said they would: make a PS3 game and then rush-port it to other platforms.

Totally agree and then there is this annoying FOV problem where it decides to reduce the FOV for no apparent reason like I can see cars spawning 20m ahead on highways


I'm starting to think you didn't manage to get the actual release version.

I think I did it is from the retail copy so..
Ps3 xbox360 also have their own cracked version out
The fov issue seems to be only on highways

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 3:21 pm
by geekl33tgamer
This does not bode well for my crappy PC's specs... It uses up almost 4GB of video RAM and runs your CPU hard?

On the 2 videos linked above, especially in the second one you can see the FPS is low. The jittering and jumping in places isn't good. It's apparently being run on an i7 4770K and GTX 780. :-(

I'm........Screwed. Now, about justifying that upgrade... :lol:

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 3:29 pm
by Meadows
geekl33tgamer wrote:
This does not bode well for my crappy PC's specs... It uses up almost 4GB of video RAM and runs your CPU hard?

I'm........Screwed. Now, about justifying that upgrade... :lol:

It bears repeating that using the highest ever graphics settings is not mandatory. That's a bad habit the console ports popularised.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 3:31 pm
by geekl33tgamer
I'm not aiming for Ultra detail, but something that looks as good as the PS4 at 1200p is what I had hoped for?

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 3:35 pm
by UberGerbil
Meadows wrote:
Elaborate on "some means" of getting a game ahead of release.
Probably something like this (warning: profanity)

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 3:39 pm
by Meadows
UberGerbil wrote:
Meadows wrote:
Elaborate on "some means" of getting a game ahead of release.
Probably something like this (warning: profanity)

Hohoho! Not to protect publishers, but my schadenfreude is tingling.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 4:49 pm
by killadark
UberGerbil wrote:
Meadows wrote:
Elaborate on "some means" of getting a game ahead of release.
Probably something like this (warning: profanity)

lol
well don't have that running in the background i grabbed mine from their official site so im good

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 7:08 pm
by vargis14
Hope my 4gb 770s in SLI with a Oced 2600k will do the trick....once i get it Ill let you all know what kinda frame rates I am getting.
I am aiming for 60FPS and i use Vsync so I am hoping to be right at my refresh rate.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 11:22 pm
by Melvar
killadark wrote:
Meadows wrote:
I'm starting to think you didn't manage to get the actual release version.

I think I did it is from the retail copy so..
Ps3 xbox360 also have their own cracked version out
The fov issue seems to be only on highways


You don't have the release version on any platform until you install the 27GB day 1 patch.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 11:37 pm
by NovusBogus
Ubi is really dropping the ball, day one patch needs to be at least 50 GB. And none of it can be compressed files, this is 2014 after all and optimization is soooo last decade.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 3:17 am
by Meadows
NovusBogus wrote:
Ubi is really dropping the ball, day one patch needs to be at least 50 GB. And none of it can be compressed files, this is 2014 after all and optimization is soooo last decade.

Not only do I want uncompressed audio for my big bat ears but I also want uncompressed textures and shaders. How can they expect me to suspend disbelief if I can't even see the ultraviolet reflections on buildings with my own eyes?

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 3:05 pm
by Melvar
I was actually being kind of serious. It's become standard practice to send unfinished games out to be pressed onto discs with the intention of fixing as much as possible of what's broken in a day one patch. If you have the disc (or its contents) but not the patch, what you have is a beta version. You can't necessarily judge the final performance from it.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 3:42 pm
by Meadows
Melvar wrote:
It's become standard practice

No it hasn't.

Even if it's true in this case, it makes no sense. Do they want people to root for the pirates? Because that's how you get people to root for the pirates.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 3:59 pm
by Melvar
If anyone knows how to make people root for the pirates, it's Ubisoft.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 4:14 pm
by Captain Ned
Please all, let's be careful with Rule #1.

Thanks for listening.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Wed May 28, 2014 12:46 am
by Hz so good
Late to the party, and I apologize for that. I scanned the thread, I'm not sure if it was mentioned, but :

1) This could be older code
2) In cracking the game, the release group compromised performance.

Until folks get retails copies in the hands, and the same issues are found in that release, then let's blame Ubisoft. I'll supply the torches.

Another thing, It was posted elsewhere, but the Saturday leak was supposedly a fradulent release, using the name of a well-respected group, and it contained some type of bitcoin mining/stealing Trojan contained within it.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Fri May 30, 2014 5:32 pm
by Meadows
For what it's worth, the game runs fine for me. Both before and after installing NVidia's latest WHQL.

1/A. Mouse has separate acceleration values for both axes, ever so slightly more on the vertical axis. As a side-effect, very slow movements will barely register at all, so you'll find yourself nudging the mouse from place to place instead of tracking evenly.
1/B. Mouse sensitivity in the main menu is obscenely high and ignores your settings. Good luck hitting menu items.

2. Vehicles drive very similarly to your mouse cursor: pressing A or D will barely nudge the car's steering wheel for the first few fractions of a second, but if you hold them for half a second, the car's front wheels suddenly slam perpendicular to your direction and the car will turn uncommonly sharply (traction permitting). Same thing with acceleration. You either don't go or floor it like no tomorrow, no in between. The combination of these two things make it very hard -- if not impossible -- to drive at moderate speeds and I found myself speeding through between cars on the road (with the occasional bump or crash) because that was still more bearable.

3/A. Ragdoll and lamp post physics are ridiculous. I accidentally hit a pedestrian at a moderate speed (I was slowing too, so altogether it couldn't have been more than 30 kmph) and the guy flew up 10 feet into the air. Lamp posts are even worse: hit them and they either slide out of base perfectly upright like a chess piece moving through the street (before falling over), or they break into 5 perfectly identical, evenly measured pieces, which then fall down randomly. No deformed posts, no weight. Even the small cars can take out the thick and more massive posts like nobody's business when I'd expect them to slam into them or, at the very least, be slowed down by the impact considerably.
3/B. The animation can be a little floaty sometimes (same issue as with GTA 4+ and most other games that use adaptive/flexible character animation).

4. The main hero never blinks and he has an irritating, lifeless blank stare very reminiscent of what players have to suffer through in Alan Wake. When I say he never blinks I'm serious: in the safehouse, the guy goes to sleep with his eyes open. That's how hardcore he is. Overall, most faces are decently designed but the lip sync could be faster and less floaty.

5. The game has three texture settings: normal, high and ultra. High requires 2 GiB of videomemory and Ultra requires 3 GiB. My GPU has 2 gigs and "High" runs splendidly, so I tried the Ultra setting: and it does not lie. The game constantly thrashes RAM every time the player turns around, it's unplayable unless your GPU is properly equipped. It doesn't matter that I have 16 gigs of system RAM: videomemory is very important to this game.

6/A. Special effects are absolutely fantastic. This game has the best rain effect I have seen yet: during and after rain falls, puddles appear on the road, further increasing immersion. http://oi62.tinypic.com/es1eeg.jpg
As far as the streets and cars go, it's the best looking game I have ever seen. Additionally, at the highest setting they've gone to great lengths to make sure glass surfaces (building windows, car windows etc.) reflect the environment appropriately: you can see towering building tops in windshield reflections and buildings reflect the sky from an angle, and none of it is pre-baked. The environment is thus very believable and dynamic. Lighting is believable without being overdone like an instagram filter. (*cough* GTA 4 memories *cough*)
6/B. Strangely, while a lot of people stare at their phones throughout the game, you are the only person whose face and body are lit up by his phone screen. A curious piece of optimisation.

7. The story has an abrupt, uncomfortably in medias res beginning, and the game starts a little on the slow side of things, but it quickly gets real fun afterwards.


Overall, if they'd only fix the mouse input and vehicle handling, then this could be the game I'd keep recommending throughout the rest of this year to basically everybody I know.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Fri May 30, 2014 5:53 pm
by killadark
@meadows
what cpu are you running ?
my game is running a lot better now after the driver update but still massive CPU bottleneck
the FX 8350 just doesn't cut it for this game have fps drops to 28-30 while driving and avg around 35-40 settings are all maxed out except textures and level of detail
turning up textures makes things choppy for me not sure why i do have 4gb vram ...
since im so cpu bound im using 4x msaa this way gpu sits 100% mostly and looks prettier :P

EDIT: keeping google chrome on in the background crashes the game so i tried starting it after loading the game Facebook says aww snap something went wrong so does anything flash based

and running game on full-screen as compared to border-less gives around 6 more fps for me

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 31, 2014 3:31 am
by Meadows
FX 8350 @ fixed 4300 MHz and a GeForce 660 Ti with +100 MHz on the Boost frequency and +500 MHz on the videomemory.

The screenshot I've shown is my native resolution, and I use borderless, not discrete full-screen. My native resolution is pretty high, however notice that I do not use any AA (I don't like it much) so I probably end up using less videomemory as a result. The game runs at a relatively stable 30-35 fps in open streets and 40 fps in alleys. No vsync (borderless mode does not allow that) but I wouldn't use it anyway. The framerate's not fantastic at all, but motion blur makes it surprisingly good regardless, and I set "GPU Max Buffered Frames" to the lowest value (1) to make sure input lag is as low as I can get.

The game is most sensitive to the resolution in my case. If I retard the graphical quality somewhat (LOD and shadows down by one step each and motion blur and DOF turned off), I only get 5 extra frames a second, but if I also turn down the resolution to 1080p (which is truly ridiculous on my screen in borderless mode, as it barely fills more than half of my screen) then I get an additional 10-15 fps on top of the above.

I'm sad to announce that I also found buildings with pre-baked reflections since writing the previous comment, and just as I had feared, they're hideous. See for yourself:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/6iy1r8.jpg
This is with "Reflections" set to "Ultra". Ugh.

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sat May 31, 2014 4:15 am
by killadark
Meadows wrote:
FX 8350 @ fixed 4300 MHz and a GeForce 660 Ti with +100 MHz on the Boost frequency and +500 MHz on the videomemory.

The screenshot I've shown is my native resolution, and I use borderless, not discrete full-screen. My native resolution is pretty high, however notice that I do not use any AA (I don't like it much) so I probably end up using less videomemory as a result. The game runs at a relatively stable 30-35 fps in open streets and 40 fps in alleys. No vsync (borderless mode does not allow that) but I wouldn't use it anyway. The framerate's not fantastic at all, but motion blur makes it surprisingly good regardless, and I set "GPU Max Buffered Frames" to the lowest value (1) to make sure input lag is as low as I can get.

The game is most sensitive to the resolution in my case. If I retard the graphical quality somewhat (LOD and shadows down by one step each and motion blur and DOF turned off), I only get 5 extra frames a second, but if I also turn down the resolution to 1080p (which is truly ridiculous on my screen in borderless mode, as it barely fills more than half of my screen) then I get an additional 10-15 fps on top of the above.

I'm sad to announce that I also found buildings with pre-baked reflections since writing the previous comment, and just as I had feared, they're hideous. See for yourself:
http://oi60.tinypic.com/6iy1r8.jpg
This is with "Reflections" set to "Ultra". Ugh.


that does look awful i never paid attention although it is better than nothing and manages to fool the majority so...
i do prefer border-less but since full-screen gave me a reasonable fps boost i have been running that way
i did take some pic of the game looks wonderful in the rain

https://plus.google.com/103972550631749 ... utr2254Fbq

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 6:15 am
by killadark
after reading around the net i have come to the conclusion that the game runs fine on a few graphic cards that were available to the developers while making the game
the GTX670 and 7970 or r9 280x everywhere i go i see people with theses cards telling that they don't have fps problem might be a coincidence but way to many of them if so

Re: Watch Dogs Performance

Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:40 am
by geekl33tgamer
I don't think it's graphics cards holding things back?

I don't have such a good PC, but I am playing this game on the "High" detail pre-set, FXAA enabled and at 1920 x 1200. It's smooth most of the time (37 FPS Average), with occasional jitter only when I say turn a corner suddenly and it's say a packed street full of cars and people. There's a small delay when the game is fetching the things it needs and placing them in RAM or giving data to the video card.

I've used things like Afterburner that graph GPU and CPU load over time, as well as RAM, PageFile etc. In Watch Dogs, the GPU is never at 100% load, it hovers between 71-79% with about 1.5GB of it's video RAM occupied. The CPU on the other hand has all 4 cores loaded 95%+ constantly, the entire 8GB of RAM is utilised and the PageFile is a further 11GB (1.5GB being used) with near constant read/write activity to the SSD in the process. Watch Dogs seems more constrained my CPU and RAM performance above all else. I can record a video with Afterburner overlay on Watch Dogs while it's playing, and you can match the performance drops in-game with times when the CPU or Pagefile are being run pretty hard.

I'm actually looking for a new CPU/RAM and Mobo, like a nice Haswell i3/5 and cheap Z87 M-ATX board if I can find one. Not just for this game, but for the PC in general. In my case, everything will benefit from a processor with better performance and no Front Side Bus to the system RAM that is the biggest bottleneck I face. This problem will almost go away then, but bringing it back on-point again...

...Everyone with poor performance probably needs to take a look at their CPU in this game first. Any of the i3 or newer from SB onwards, and the AMD 6/8 core CPU's, generally don't have issues from the benchmarks I've seen.