Watch Dogs Benchmarked, Performance Review

[Steve]

So much for the "25% improvement" @ 1080P... I am excited about the CF results because AMD states a 92% improvement (at least at 4K) ! Thanks for this Steve!

Any improvements on the nVidia side with the 337.88 driver?

If anyone is curious, these are the releases notes for the 14.6 beta driver.

They did say using 4x MSAA which we didn't test. Still most will use SMAA or FXAA I believe so its not a big deal.

 

[Guest]

Nice hardware review but why didn't you use the 337.88 drivers? Also, you have not posted the GTX 690.

I am running 2560x1600 on a GTX 690 with fxaa and I bet it beats all the cards there. still. Runs flawlessly for me.

 

[Steve]

Nice hardware review but why didn't you use the 337.88 drivers? Also, you have not posted the GTX 690.

I am running 2560x1600 on a GTX 690 with fxaa and I bet it beats all the cards there. still. Runs flawlessly for me.

For the simple fact that those drivers didn't even become available till after the article was complete. As I have already stated in this thread those drivers are no faster than the ones we tested with.

The GTX 690 is okay, wasn't a good graphics card in terms of value and two GTX 680's were much faster. Given that the GTX 680 was included you should be able to work out roughly where the GTX 690 falls.

 

[Jad Chaar]

For the simple fact that those drivers didn't even become available till after the article was complete. As I have already stated in this thread those drivers are no faster than the ones we tested with.

The GTX 690 is okay, wasn't a good graphics card in terms of value and two GTX 680's were much faster. Given that the GTX 680 was included you should be able to work out roughly where the GTX 690 falls.

Steve you should make a video of the benchmarking process so people see how long it takes .

 

[LNCPapa]

Timelapsed

 

[Steve]

Steve you should make a video of the benchmarking process so people see how long it takes .

Wow an almost depressing thought, watching 2 – 3 days of highly repetitive testing, even if it were time lapsed

I really try to shut off as much as my brain as I can when doing these tests that require me to make the same 60 ~ 120 second walk through over 200 times. Probably the worst part is waiting for each graphics card to install, seems to take ages these days.

But I do enjoy the final result, getting to see where everything stands and so few tech sites bother with these exhaustive tests.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Steve you should make a video of the benchmarking process so people see how long it takes .

Yeah seriously how could that be a complaint after seeing the long list of cards that were used. Surely people can think for themselves and determine where their card will be in that list.

<sarcasm>Maybe I should complain that my specific GTX 660 wasn't used! Or should I determine my card will be close to the GTX 660 used in the benchmark?</sarcasm>

Anyone with half a brain could look at that list and tell basically, where their card would fall in.

 

[Steve]

That’s how I look at it cliffy. There are some 30 plus cards spaning multiple generations, work it out

I understand everyone wanting the card they invested their money in being tested and I don’t mind readers politely asking if we can add their card. For some reason most feel they have the right to be irate and abuse us for not including a certain card, you know what they can do

Still overall feedback from you guys is great and it inspires us to keep working hard to bring you more content.

 

[Jad Chaar]

That’s how I look at it cliffy.

@cliffordcooley, the day has come Clifford! I must now call you cliffy!

 

[cliffordcooley]

@cliffordcooley, the day has come Clifford! I must now call you cliffy!

I did once object to being called that name. Although it doesn't bother me as a friendly gesture. I think the reference was toward Cliffy B, a game developer. Though at the time I didn't know about him, and took offense.

 

[Steve]

I did once object to being called that name. Although it doesn't bother me as a friendly gesture. I think the reference was toward Cliffy B, a game developer. Though at the time I didn't know about him, and took offense.

Sounds more chummy to me, like we are good mates

 

[cliffordcooley]

Sounds more chummy to me, like we are good mates

In that case I will welcome the new nickname, regardless of attitude.

 

[Guest]

Well a GTX 690 is effectively 2x GTX 680 so I am not sure how you can work it out from there. My GTX 690 is overclocked 100mhz core and 400 mem to make it actually a bit better than 2x gtx 680s, which is a pretty standard thing to do. The only way it would not do well if Textures is on Ultra, otherwise it would win Also, on the first page it mentions the GTX 690 is tested on the list?

 

[k_patt]

I really wish these were the fps I was getting. I've been messing around with settings all day and watching the frames with fraps. It's almost unplayable unless I use Low preset settings. Mostly the driving causes the problems with a lot of sticking and frames dropping causing me to crash into everything, dropping below 20fps quite often, and staying around low 30's on ultra with vsync off. I had the lastest drivers 14.4 I think from last month, then I tried erasing all amd drivers and installing the new 14.6 beta drivers just released, no change. I'll list my specs and if anyone has any ideas, let me know lol.
FX-8350 clocked to 4.4ghz
R9 290x
16gb ripjaws
Kingston HyperX SSD 240GB
ASRock 990fx Extreme 3 Fatal1ty
XFX 850w Pro Edition

 

[Steve]

I really wish these were the fps I was getting. I've been messing around with settings all day and watching the frames with fraps. It's almost unplayable unless I use Low preset settings. Mostly the driving causes the problems with a lot of sticking and frames dropping causing me to crash into everything, dropping below 20fps quite often, and staying around low 30's on ultra with vsync off. I had the lastest drivers 14.4 I think from last month, then I tried erasing all amd drivers and installing the new 14.6 beta drivers just released, no change. I'll list my specs and if anyone has any ideas, let me know lol.
FX-8350 clocked to 4.4ghz
R9 290x
16gb ripjaws
Kingston HyperX SSD 240GB
ASRock 990fx Extreme 3 Fatal1ty
XFX 850w Pro Edition

Not sure what’s wrong your PC should be doing well. Have you run benchmark programs such as 3DMark to make sure it’s all working as it should be? Do you play other high-end games? Since you are using Fraps I assume you are on top of all that but still it’s the place to start just in case.

 

[yukka]

So how will a nehalem 2.66ghz i7 do with 9GB ddr3 and a 460gtx I wonder..

 

[Steve]

Given how the GTX 480 performed on high I would say the GTX 460 won't do well. Your CPU should be fine though.

 

[cliffordcooley]

So how will a nehalem 2.66ghz i7 do with 9GB ddr3 and a 460gtx I wonder..

I'd wager 20FPS on ultra and 30FPS on high for HD resolution.

 

[Steve]

That’s one hell of an educated guess. I just stuck a GTX 460 into the test system to find out. Both results are from 1920x1200…

High = 22fps
Ultra = 18fps

Didn't take an average of three runs but you get the idea

At 1920x1080 you would be looking at around 20fps on ultra, so yeah not good

 

[yukka]

Cheers. My monitor is 1680x1050 so I might be able to to juggle my way to 30 frames with some tweaking here and there. One day I will upgrade but I would need a new case - can't fit much in the dell minitower I have and I need a graphics card with power sockets on the back, not on the top cos thats where the drives lay..

 

[Guest]

Every other watch dogs pc performance article that I have read , says that the game has serious optimization issues , very high demands and a lot of lag/stuttering due to texture streaming . This is what stops me from buying the game , although I own a Gtx Titan . . . .And all these come in contradiction with what Techspot's article suggest

 

[Steve]

Every other watch dogs pc performance article that I have read , says that the game has serious optimization issues , very high demands and a lot of lag/stuttering due to texture streaming . This is what stops me from buying the game , although I own a Gtx Titan . . . .And all these come in contradiction with what Techspot's article suggest

I have continued to play the game with a GTX 780 and it seems fine, I am really enjoying it. I have heard plenty of gamer's who are much further through the game than me who are also really enjoying it so not sure what to tell you.

 

[saltheart]

Every other watch dogs pc performance article that I have read , says that the game has serious optimization issues , very high demands and a lot of lag/stuttering due to texture streaming . This is what stops me from buying the game , although I own a Gtx Titan . . . .And all these come in contradiction with what Techspot's article suggest

Folks with single monitors and single graphics cards seem to do better than sli or surround/eyefinity. I get massive slowdown in cars.. and get mid forties fps on medium settings... and that's with 3970X/RIVE/16GB-2400MHz ram/kingpin sli and 5760 x 1200 surround. That's without mentioning crashes and freezes. Discussion among users on other sites reveals that many are having these same problems.

There also seems to be a memory leak issue that can require restarting.

I don't have these problems with any other game or benchmark. I have spent days (OCD) doing clean driver installs, game repairs that find nothing wrong, and fiddling with settings.

Surround was broken - letterboxed, but was at least fixable with Flawless Widescreen

 

[Guest]

This should be "revisited" with the 14.6 Catalyst drivers.

Also, could you do one on the "lowest" settings. (Needs to set both the video and display, and possibly alter the game XML configuration for some of that.)

Also, the game should be launched with the watch_dogs.exe file, by creating a shortcut with the "Target" appended with " -disablepagefilecheck", for PC's. (Seems that is a console-only feature causing some issues.) Not sure how to ensure that the game launches with that switch, any-other way.

Also, "Check file integrity", before launching, then "defrag", because the download scatters file fragments all over the place, as it downloads. Then launch it with the short-cut. Then you may have to set it back to full-screen, because it seems to go back to "windowed", even though the settings tell it to display full-screen.

Another odd thing. Setting all volumes to 0, even the hidden one in the XML setup for "globalsounds" which seems to only for music-songs and some random other sounds... still does not turn off all sounds. There is one group of sounds that do not obey any volume settings. (Might be part of the culprit lagging issue. How many other things "set in the settings" are not actually obeying the settings.)

 

[Guest]

No-one finds it odd, that the xbox-360 has the equivalent of the Radeon X1900/X1950 XT cards, or about as powerful as a nVidia 7800/7900GTX, but the PC requires a card nearly 10x more powerful, and the game will not even run on a nVidia 9600 GT card in a PC? (That is better than all of the above.)

While the PS3 has the equivalent of the Radeon X1950, nVidia 7900GT and the Radeon HD 4650.

Lowest card I can get it to work with, in the nVidia path, is the GTX 550 Ti, with mostly low settings.

Though, I may keep that card in the computer, to see if it uses the CUDA cores for some phys-x processing. Instead of my CPU. Might get the best of both worlds that way.

Funny thing is... xbox and ps3 are ATI/AMD components. For all intense purposes, they are Radeons.