Watch dogs first impressions! Needs 3GB Vram minimum

Ok so, I found out what really makes the game stutter, or "Lag" It is the shadows.

I can turn every setting on "Ultra" accept for the shadows. If I run the shadows on "High", and all other level of detail on "Ultra" the game runs butter smooth!
Not a single skip, or lag! And im on a GTX 660 OEM, so this should be easily capable on your GTX 680 or R9 290 cards.
I am not sure why, but the shadows really seem to kill it, and make the game LAG all the time.
 
murkris118 said:
May I ask what is butter smooth in your description?. It`s just a vague term according to me :confused:...
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Ok, I am at 1680*1050 2xTAA enabled, 16X AF Forced in driver,

High Textures, High Shadows, and everything else is on Ultra.

The game runs flawless! I have the new 337.88 drivers installed.
Once I load in to the game, I don't feel any skipping. I can hop in a car, and drive as fast as I want down the street, without skipping. I will not skip at all.

It is a very "Smooth" game play experience, with anywhere from 28-40 Frames per second. It is very playable. And it also maintains a great level of detail as well.
I am excited to crank all settings to Ultra once I get the 780's

Now, If I enable Ultra shadows the game will begin to skip, and lag as if my video card is out of memory. I verified with afterburner monitoring, the game uses all of the 1536mb frame buffer once shadows are set to "Ultra", once I set them back down to "High", it backs does to 1380 to 1490Mb of memory use. And the game runs smooth again.

I have been tinkering with the graphic settings for a while now. And this is the best visual quality I can currently run. With perfectly smooth playable performance. Vsync is disabled.
4X AA also uses a lot more memory, and the Frame rate drops in the 20's to much.
 
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1080p completely unplayable on your 660? My perfect smooth gameplay experience would be 60 fps by the way... Lets see what my 680 can do at that!.. waiting for the legit copy though, should arrive by tomorrow.
 
Well, actually it is about 34 to 46 frames per second. it is raining, and runs SOOO good! I just ran 3 different benchmarks with FRAPS

1680/1050 Resolution with 2XTAA enables/ 16X AF enabled

Everything is on ULTRA, Textures = high
Shadows - High
 
I would advise everyone to run it with high textures, and high shadows. And it will run perfectly.
 
Did you extract your game files in to program files X86? I don't understand why yours does not run smoothly.. I am really enjoying the game. It runs excellent on my system.

Intel i7 3820 @ 4.3Ghz
4x4gb ddr3 1600mhz
1.5gb GTX 660 OEM 1152 shaders @ 1306/7160 "5821 Firestrike score"
Samsung 840 Evo ssd 120GB

Also! Anymore than 2X AA will KILL THIS GAMES PERFORMANCE AND CAUSE LAGGING! I am only at 2x AA.. 4X AA will cause lagging, and stuttering

To be sure! Your video card is much stronger than mine! And I assure you, the game will run smooth on your system. Set it up like this..

Resolution= Your native monitor resolution. Mine is 1680/1050 etc etc.

Refresh rate = 60Hz

Aspect ratio = Auto

Windows mode= Full Screen

Vsync = Off

GPU Max buffered frames= 4

Textures= High

Anti-Aliasing= 2X MSAA

Wide Screen letter box= Off

Overall Quality= Custom

Level of detail = Ultra

Shadows= High

Reflections= Ultra

Ambient occlusion= HBAO+HIGH

Depth of Field= ON

Motion Blur= ON

Water= Ultra

Shader= High

These are my exact setting! And I promise you, the game runs more than perfect! I can hop in a car, take off as fast as I want, and I do not get a single skip or studder. It runs absolutely perfect, and looks great to!

Maybe you experience a little more memory usage at 1920/1080P, vs. me at only 1680*1050. So, If this is the case! I would try the settings listed above, but use medium shadows. Good luck!
 
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Ok, based on the issues everyone has been having with this game lagging and skipping. This s going to happen if you have a "retail copy" or a "pirated 10gb" copy! So, you need to turn off your system paging file inside windows, and the problem has fixed for me. I can run it at Ultra textures now! Which, I could only run at high texture before. This should help fix the problem! Apparently the game likes to utilize the Pagefile, instead of your actual video RAM. And system ram. So, this should FIX IT!

Mine is running GREAT!
 
burned-ati said:
Ok, based on the issues everyone has been having with this game lagging and skipping. This s going to happen if you have a "retail copy" or a "pirated 10gb" copy! So, you need to turn off your system paging file inside windows, and the problem has fixed for me. I can run it at Ultra textures now! Which, I could only run at high texture before. This should help fix the problem! Apparently the game likes to utilize the Pagefile, instead of your actual video RAM. And system ram. So, this should FIX IT!

Mine is running GREAT!
Click to expand...

this doesn't do anything.
 
Shadows are what kill the game. I do not know why it is not running good for you guys. It plays great on my system. Very smooth. Still though, I am ready to use the "Ultra Textures" GTX 780's are in route according to UPS. They normally come between 4 -5 and 6 PM
 
This game can utilize over 3Gb at 1080P with all settings on "Ultra", so what would it need at 4K? 2 or 3 titans lol

The guys who actually spent $2,000 two years ago and bought two GTX Titans when they first came out, are totally laughing at us right now. Because they running this game like a joke... even at 4K
Damn.. I wish I would have just kept mine. I sold a Titan to get the 780's
 
buying a high end video card setup is smart! And buying a 4GB GTX 770 was smart to! Or even a 4Gb GTX 680. because, even though everyone talked smack about it being a waste of money to get 4gb over 2gb. A guy who bought a GTX 680 4GB 2 years ago! Can now take advantage of it with watchdogs at 1080P "Ultra settings". And he may or may not know that he even is, unless he would have gotten the 2GB version, then it would have lagged like crazy! So even though he paid $30 more for twice the memory. He can run this game maxed out! And ,just like any other game! Yet it totally gimps the 2gb models. So it was definitely worth it! And watchdogs is truly a GREAT GAME!

I think I am going to change the ways I buy hardware in the future, I never fell in to the 4GB pit either. I always thought 2gb or 3gb was enough. But, you never know!

It is just crazy, that NVidia's flagship card GTX 780 Ti" gets ate clean out of memory with this game. And this is at only 1080P

And here we are trying to open the doors to 4K.

Who says a GTX Titan was not a smart buy?
 
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Ok, so I got my two Evga GTX 780 Classified video cards. So far overclocking is going good. little bit of tinkering on one card got me 10,861 in firestrike.

I did get the refurbished ones. they both seem to work fine. Unfortunately, I do not have enough power supply in either of my two computers to run them both in SLI lol. One of the cards was dinged up kinda bad on the cooler. But its ok I guess. You get what you pay for.

I have a rig in the living room, and one in my bedroom. So, I use the one in the living room a lot more. So, I put one in this i7 3820 rig. And I installed one in my other room in my i7 4820K rig.

I was going to install both of the cards in my living room i7 3820 rig. Im sure the CPU is plenty powerful for them. Its just my PSU is only a 625 and 650 watt in both rigs. So, far I have one card running at 1293Mhz Core/ And 7,000mhz memory.

The biggest thing I noticed! Was, it is a lot quieter, than the 660 OEM! Watch dogs seems to run good. The biggest improvement was my frame rates. It seems to stick around 60 Frame per second with just one card. And I can use over 4X AA now to. I am running Ultra textures. No noticeable lag. Game runs OUTSTANDING! One of the cards refurbished for $415 BUCKS IS A STEAL! I only really needed one. I have another, and I may sell it here. Or Return it! It is a TESTED refurbished GTX 780 classified! 375 watts of PCB power available! I am going to swap the cards, and test its overclocking and see which goes higher. I will post back with details.

I have not registered these cards yet. Evga will supply a 1 YR warranty for the refurbished cards once they are registered.

I am going to keep which ever overclocks higher I guess! :)
 
burned-ati said:
buying a high end video card setup is smart! And buying a 4GB GTX 770 was smart to! Or even a 4Gb GTX 680. because, even though everyone talked smack about it being a waste of money to get 4gb over 2gb. A guy who bought a GTX 680 4GB 2 years ago! Can now take advantage of it with watchdogs at 1080P "Ultra settings". And he may or may not know that he even is, unless he would have gotten the 2GB version, then it would have lagged like crazy! So even though he paid $30 more for twice the memory. He can run this game maxed out! And ,just like any other game! Yet it totally gimps the 2gb models. So it was definitely worth it! And watchdogs is truly a GREAT GAME!

I think I am going to change the ways I buy hardware in the future, I never fell in to the 4GB pit either. I always thought 2gb or 3gb was enough. But, you never know!

It is just crazy, that NVidia's flagship card GTX 780 Ti" gets ate clean out of memory with this game. And this is at only 1080P

And here we are trying to open the doors to 4K.

Who says a GTX Titan was not a smart buy?
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yea watch dogs is eating close to 5gb Vram on my titan @ 3440x1440
 
PeeWeePee said:
yea watch dogs is eating close to 5gb Vram on my titan @ 3440x1440
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WOW! That is amazing! But, very good to! Does this game runs smooth on your Titan? at this resolution? And on Ultra settings? Everything on Ultra? AA? AF?

I regret selling mine 2,688 shader model! even for $650 :mad:

What are your frame rates like? And a original Titan?
 
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burned-ati said:
WOW! That is amazing! But, very good to! Does this game runs smooth on your Titan? at this resolution? And on Ultra settings? Everything on Ultra? AA? AF?

I regret selling mine 2,688 shader model! even for $650 :mad:

What are your frame rates like? And a original Titan?
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everything is maxed + 2X MSAA
it goes from like 25~50 depending on area.
i think i should drop some setting so it doesn't go below 30.
 
The game is not up to par on graphics for the resources its demanding. I think that UBI did not want to disappoint us PC gamers for downgrading the graphics, solution?, increase the demands with some crummy proprietary technologies like HBAO+ and TXAA, even worse slap a name for it GAMEWORKS lol! (the damn thing does not even have Tessellation support and it is supposed to be a next gen title!) and create a placebo so that us gamers think the game is demanding for some truly next gen graphics. Its at best a meh console port with console grade graphics. IMHO AC4 looks better in all regards. Shame on u UBI!... Please dont screw up The Division. Looking forward to the Snowdrop engine...
 
The more I play the game. The better the graphics look for some reason. The lighting is amazing! And the water and other things look good. But, it is also a huge game to! And there has not been a GTA style shooting title, open world with graphics this good ever!

So, a regular FPS with graphics like this would be cake to run. But, this open world "Huge" environment is another story. A lot of objects! And a lot of textures! Requires a lot of vram. And, now apparently Intel Hyperthreaded CPU's benefit this game as well. I mean the recommended CPU is a I7 3770. Murkris118 if your GTX 680 were a 4GB, you would be killing this game at "ultra" settings.

I mean, Skyrim doesn't have the best graphics! But, once the textures are upped a bit to 2K even, the game uses over 3gb of ram! And it is a open world game to.

I think it is a very fun game though, I been playing it for 3 or 4 days now. And I play it every day. Finally something I can enjoy. Running from the cops, shooting people, and crashing in to things. And it looks pretty darn good to.

The most important thing is this. IF we are PC gamers? Or hardware enthusiast? Then this should give us a good lesson. Because I remember in 2008 when GTA PC came out. It killed my measly Athlon X2 Dual Core @ 2.8Ghz And my Nvidia GTX 260 Core "216" 896MB. And that was a good GPU back then! And it practically folded my CPU at the KNEES! This game was unplayable.

When the GTA 5 or 6 or whatever is coming next, finally does come next, I am expecting great graphics! So, I am going to make sure ive got a very strong high memory video card, and im sure the 3820 or 4820k will do just fine.

Itleast I am happy with the graphics with this game. Even though it is still not quite fully maxed out! It looks good, and runs perfect! So, I am happy with that. Something told me to buy the 6gb GTX 780. And not the refurbished 3gb Classified 3gb 780's

But, I just felt kinda dumb buying a kepler GPU almost at the end of its life cycle for almost 600 bucks. 580 to be exact. Seems like a good deal now for some reason. A lot of people on here paid $680 for them.
 
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I'm running the game at 1920x1080 resolution, Ultra settings, MXAAx4 with 780's in SLI (both at 1150mhz clocks) on a i7-3970x.

Runs buttery smooth avg 70 fps. Occasionally I'll get a dip in the mid 30's but its not enough to deter me from having all the eye candy on. Driving is definitely better with a gaming pad over the keyboard/mouse.

Note:you must use the x64bit libraries for xbox360ce to work with watchdogs if you don't own a xbox 360 controller.
 
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what's taking up the 3GB??...certainly not the textures which don't look like any big leap in graphical fidelity
 
what's taking up the 3GB??...certainly not the textures which don't look like any big leap in graphical fidelity
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Bad game design and optimization lol!... Graphics suck B@lls.
 
burned-ati said:
buying a high end video card setup is smart! And buying a 4GB GTX 770 was smart to! Or even a 4Gb GTX 680. because, even though everyone talked smack about it being a waste of money to get 4gb over 2gb. A guy who bought a GTX 680 4GB 2 years ago! Can now take advantage of it with watchdogs at 1080P "Ultra settings". And he may or may not know that he even is, unless he would have gotten the 2GB version, then it would have lagged like crazy! So even though he paid $30 more for twice the memory. He can run this game maxed out! And ,just like any other game! Yet it totally gimps the 2gb models. So it was definitely worth it! And watchdogs is truly a GREAT GAME!

I think I am going to change the ways I buy hardware in the future, I never fell in to the 4GB pit either. I always thought 2gb or 3gb was enough. But, you never know!

It is just crazy, that NVidia's flagship card GTX 780 Ti" gets ate clean out of memory with this game. And this is at only 1080P

And here we are trying to open the doors to 4K.

Who says a GTX Titan was not a smart buy?
Click to expand...

Im sorry but its complete BS that this game requires 3GB Vram for Ultra settings. Its not optimized well and what is it being used for? Do you not notice stuff popping in as your driving? That shouldn't happen with these insane requirements
 
I played last night for a couple hours, I enjoyed everything about the gameplay so far. The driving is a bit stiff at first but I seemed to get a better feel for it as I played around. I float between 35 - 45 FPS on Ultra Settings with my rig. I am also getting this weird blurry effect at times, at first I thought it was some kind of rain drop effect but then if I move around I notice the same blurry effect is "stuck" in a pattern on the screen for a while before it resets. Is anybody else having this problem? I tried v-sync on and off and it didn't seem to have any effect, I also adjusted the graphics to different levels and still got it. I have the latest Catalyst drivers and I even tried no Overclock on my video card but I kept encountering it.

Also I noticed at times this game is sucking up a whopping 5.5 GB Memory when I monitor things with MSI Afterburner. That's the most I have ever seen a game consume, it seems this game will definitely push a current gen rigs limits.
 
I really like the game so far. I think the graphics are fine. As for the game being optimized....I'm sure there are some big improvements that could be made there. But its running very well for me now.

I was having some of the stuttering issues at first that people have complained about a lot. Driving a fast car/bike was pretty rough at times due to the hitching. But after reading around online, I ended up finding a post someone wrote about disabling the paging file in windows....so I gave that a shot.....and the stuttering/hitching has practically went away, it really made a huge difference for me.
I play on all ultra w/ HBAO+ High and MSAA x4
 
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Anime_Fan said:
I played last night for a couple hours, I enjoyed everything about the gameplay so far. The driving is a bit stiff at first but I seemed to get a better feel for it as I played around. I float between 35 - 45 FPS on Ultra Settings with my rig. I am also getting this weird blurry effect at times, at first I thought it was some kind of rain drop effect but then if I move around I notice the same blurry effect is "stuck" in a pattern on the screen for a while before it resets. Is anybody else having this problem? I tried v-sync on and off and it didn't seem to have any effect, I also adjusted the graphics to different levels and still got it. I have the latest Catalyst drivers and I even tried no Overclock on my video card but I kept encountering it.

Also I noticed at times this game is sucking up a whopping 5.5 GB Memory when I monitor things with MSI Afterburner. That's the most I have ever seen a game consume, it seems this game will definitely push a current gen rigs limits.
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No, this game runs amazing for me now. I had to pop another powersupply in my living room rig, it only had a 625 watt. So, I pulled a older 450 watt out of the closet to power my CPU, and SSD's, and motherboard! and, my 625 is powering the two GTX 780 classified's

And, I am running it at "Ultra" everything, 4XAA and id say it is anywhere between 35 to 70 Frames per second. It runs smooth! No popping textures anymore.

When I had the 1.5GB 660 OEM in my rig, it would do the texture popping.

The game looks amazing and runs perfect. The graphics look great! This game runs fantastic. It runs just as good with just one GTX 780 to though.

Adding the 2nd 780, allows me to run more AA And, I get high frame rates. But, it is smooth one one or two!

If any of you guys really love the game, and want to play it maxed out smoothly. I would recommend a 6Gb GTX 780, that single card will alloy you to run it with 8XAA and ultra high resolutions!
 
Also, in July Windows is releasing DX11.2 update, which allows games to actively use system ram right when a video card runs out of VRAM. This update is only available with Windows 8.1, and xbox one.
 
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