Watch Dogs Benchmarked, Performance Review

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.)

As mentioned quite a few posts back we already looked into the 4.6 driver, makes no difference in terms of single card performance. Also all the other stuff you mentioned was not a problem for us while testing and now while playing.

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.

I don't find that odd at all. PC has more detail, extra rendering technologies, higher resolutions (not up scaled), more advanced AA and the list just goes on and on. Lower the quality to match the consoles and you will get away with the same dated hardware.
 
Got SLI working with nvidia 337.88 drivers.
Makes sure 'GPU Max Buffered Frames' is set to 2 or more.

However SLI does not scale well in Watch Dogs.

My FPS averages went from approx. 40-60 to 50-70.
Both GPUs are working hard at ~90% each so can only assume they doing something useful together
o_O

Lastly and unrelated to SLI...
  • Internet wisdom suggest that running 'Borderless' is the better choice for Watch Dogs. I can concur with this on my system.
  • Do not set 'Textures' to high or ultra unless you indeed have enough vram. I run on Medium
  • 'Detail' will also have a big impact on performance. I run on High
  • In game MSAA seems very performance heavy. I was able to 'override' AA in Nvidia control panel and set as high as 32x CSAA with no problem. I am able to run Temporal SMAA but I prefer to use just FXAA.
i7-2600K 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
2 x Nvidia GTX 580 SLI
1920x1080 Borderless
Win 8.1 x64
 
Forget the benchmarks, this game is really not worth buying. It is so lifeless and bland. The online component is completely broken due to peer-to-peer hosting that is allowing widespread and rampant cheaters. The story seems so boring. They actually went backward from GTA 4. This in no way can compete with GTA 5 even though they try hard.

3/10 score. Pick it up on Steam sale when it goes to 10 bucks or less. I am certain it will be before X-mas. Or just pick up GTA 5 when it is released.
 
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