Watch Dogs (PC master Race Edition)

degrassinoel

Had to be done..

If you bought it on steam, it's available at 9am tomorrow and you can preload the shít out of it right now

So who's taking the day off tomorrow?

Yeti Beast

Won't be buying for a while due to being a broke ass sumbitch at the moment, but I do like this thread's title! :pac:

Status Offline

Think I'll be waiting a while before I buy this one.My "to play" list has gotten out of control lately. I still have to get around to Bioshock:Infinite let alone Dark Souls 2, Stick o f truth aghhhhhhhh
Saying that though, I'll probably buy it next week and get around to playing it in 2 years time

degrassinoel

That's my preload done, 13.6gig of it. That's around the same size as skyrim with it's DLC's. Looking forward to this

ShadowHearth

I am skiping on this for now. I got way too many cool games to play now, plus world of tanks take 90% of my time.
I'll pick it up in few weeks for a tenner! :pac:

Cathalog

Finally started playing on my R9 270X and the performance was really poor. Fingers crossed that it's just a driver issue.

EDIT: Completely my bad - I had 8x AA on by accident. Game runs fine!

degrassinoel

I might stick a stream up on twitch tomorrow for a few hours if anyone wants their experience ruined

Yeti Beast

Cathalog wrote: »

Finally started playing on my R9 270X and the performance was really poor. Fingers crossed that it's just a driver issue.

Might go a little deeper than that unfortunately - article on Forbes.

Edit to reflect your edit - never mind :pac:

Cathalog

Dair. wrote: »

Might go a little deeper than that unfortunately - article on Forbes.

Edit to reflect your edit - never mind :pac:

I saw that and got very worried

Played about an hour of the game, and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. Kind of like GTA with a hacking and stealth aspect. Can't wait to get back to it after work tomorrow!

degrassinoel

Firing up a stream now if anyone's interested

http://www.twitch.tv/degrassinoel

Yeti Beast

Far too early for me!

Following you now, and not in the creepy nightvision glasses from the shrubbery way.

Potential-Monke

Dair. wrote: »

Following you now, and not in the creepy nightvision glasses from the shrubbery way.

Good, as there's only room for one of us in the shrubbery.

Probably pick it up Thursday, as it's payday!

VinLieger

Gonna try this tomorrow with steams new home streaming thingy, who needs a console now?

psugrue

cheapest price for it? was thinking of ordering on amazon US but not sure if the game is region blocked?

Potential-Monke

My arm can be so easily twisted. Just bought it, downloading now. @psugrue: I got it at Go2Arena just now for €36.71.

Kiith

Uplay is down, but anyone trying to download i can get it here. You probably won't be able to login though.

http://t.co/DP4OaRvxAj

Shiminay

I'm seeing a lot of reports of it being horribly unoptimised and running like ass on AMD based systems (like mine) so I think this will definitely stay on my "wait" list

All that said, the reviews and feedback on the game itself does indeed seem favourable, so that's cool.

VinLieger

Kiith wrote: »

Uplay is down, but anyone trying to download i can get it here. You probably won't be able to login though.

http://t.co/DP4OaRvxAj

Yup I cant login to even use my key let alone start the download, hadnt actually planned on playing tonight but its still pretty disappointing that they are this unprepared for demand

dreamers75

On High it runs perfectly 60 fps-ish, Ultra has noticeable graphic improvements but runs from 5fps to 30. Pretty much unplayable. EDIT 7870 I5-2500K

Stealthy like a fox......

degrassinoel

yeah i had to turn mine down from ultra (using a 780 gtx to play it) to high to reduce the fps drops. I'm guessing they'll optimise it or release a new driver for my card. Running it on high since early today and it's really enjoyable

Sand

Its disappointing that they force you to use their crappy service (Seriously, WTF is wrong with just using Steam like everyone sane?) yet seemingly cant be bothered investing in their service to handle perfectly predictable loads on launch day.

It just goes back to the ironic idea that legitimate buyers of a game have to jump through so many hoops to access the game that piracy turns out to be easier and less complicated.

Headshot

Uplay is ****ing woeful, same with Origin.

I did read that there's a fake torrent for this game that comes with a bitcoin miner lol

VinLieger

Finally activated and am downloading now, cant wait to test this with steam streaming tomorrow

dreamers75

Aiden is the most unlikeable main character ever.

degrassinoel

Really enjoying the game so far, spent most of my time arsing around with playing against people using the mobile app, it's a nifty gimmick, and it's fun. I got invaded once, found the guy and ran him over lol - and invaded some other guy's game, surveiled him and got some multiplayer points for it. He'd no idea where i was. Great craic.

I barely made a dent in Act 1, on part 5 or something of act 1, and tbh i like the characters, the setting and the radio stations are pretty smooth. The AI is incredibly accurate with their shots and grenades. Some of the conversations you hear when you're walking by random pedestrians are hilarious, hacked conversations even more. I've even managed to see clip ingame of a dude using a penis pump.. oh, and another dude excalming "I'm the king of the world" mid-sex.. All in the best possible taste of course

Some minor qualms with it's FPS drops at points but overall i love it.

Back to the penis pumps and titanic quotes then :P

Potential-Monke

Loving this. So much to do! They really packed in the content. Spent 4 hours playing and I've only done 2 missions!

Noxin

Bloody hell this game barely runs on my rig.

Lucky to get 35fps on medium settings.

Rig:
16gb Corsair Vengeance
Core i5-3570K
2GB GeForce GTX 670
SSD drive

Bah, some serious upgrades needed.

ShaneU

The game is poorly optimised, don't blame your pc. The pop-in is terrible, it's constantly streaming assets from the hard drive and cars appear out of nowhere in front of you while driving at high speeds.

Noxin

==edit==

Taking a large part of it back. Stupid settings went MSAAx8 automatically. Was destroying it.

Dropped it to x2 and getting an easy 60fps now on high. I'll tinker around a bit more. Time to restart and see how it goes now.

==2nd edit==

It's 100 times better but driving still gives stutters that makes it very difficult to drive at speed.

J0hnick

AMD FX 6300 (stock, no overclock)
Radeon R9 270 MSI 2GB (Max overclock in Afterburner)
8GB 1866MHZ DDR3 CRUCIAL Extreme
120gb San Disk SSD (OS and current games)
2 TB western digital green

Textures = High (3GB for Ultra ?, seriously ?)
Shadows = High (Ultra kills my frame rate for some reason)
AA = Post Sample MSAA (anything higher kills my frame rate)

Everything else on ultra or as high as possible

At 1080P with V-Sync unlocked I get anywhere between 35 - 65 fps when not driving, but the screen tearing is ridiculous, so I leave it on for an almost constant 30fps 99% of the time bar driving.

At 900P with HBAO+ low instead of + High I get 60FPS 90% of the time when not driving with V-Snyc on, dunno which I prefer :-/ .

Cathalog

Anyone else having awful trouble with UPlay? It takes me about ten attempts to launch the game without UPlay giving out about network issues.

dreamers75

I would assume uplay is being DDosed as it has hit all formats.

VinLieger

Havent been able to get one stable invasion or multiplayer session curious if this is happening with everyone or possibly due to my ****ty internet? Thank god im getting fibre next week if it is.

degrassinoel

VinLieger wrote: »

Havent been able to get one stable invasion or multiplayer session curious if this is happening with everyone or possibly due to my ****ty internet? Thank god im getting fibre next week if it is.

It's uplay being crap i think, any invasion i did yesterday was awful, and the mobile app thing was terrible too

VinLieger

degrassinoel wrote: »

It's uplay being crap i think, any invasion i did yesterday was awful, and the mobile app thing was terrible too

Yeah thats what I thought, Uplay really wasnt ready for this launch at all. Actually had 2-3 good games on the app yesterday even if they were slightly laggy

degrassinoel

Hope they sort it out soon, as those invasions and the mobile app are great fun

dreamers75

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-watch-dogs-face-off

Watch Dogs on PC should be the best version of the game, and yet somehow we find ourselves on shaky ground. Watch Dogs' graphics technical director Sebastien Viard points to the lack of unified RAM as the main reason behind the difficulties, and that Ubisoft Montreal is working to resolve the PC issues, but as of this writing, you may find that hitting a consistent 1080p60 even on a high-power games computer just isn't possible.

Yes i do find that

Cathalog

dreamers75 wrote: »

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-watch-dogs-face-off



Yes i do find that

Yeah, I was getting shocking fps drops when driving. Blame the lack of unified RAM that so few PCs actually have these days. Lame excuse imo.

Yeti Beast

They're working on a patch for the PC version, specifically the way it addresses VRAM - Maximum PC.

"Watch Dogs can use 3+ GB of RAM on NG consoles for graphics, your PC GPU needs enough VRAM for ultra options due to the lack of unified mem," Viard (graphics technical director for Watch Dogs) tweeted.

Unlike graphics cards for the PC, next-generation consoles like the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 don't have dedicated RAM for graphics -- both consoles share 8GB across the entire system. Apparently this is causing issues on the PC with the way Watch Dogs is coded.

There are some steps you can take while you wait for a patch. First and foremost, be sure you're running the latest graphics card drivers from AMD and Nvidia. And secondly, Viard suggests turning down texture quality, level of Anti-Aliasing, or even display resolution.

nesf

Cathalog wrote: »

Yeah, I was getting shocking fps drops when driving. Blame the lack of unified RAM that so few PCs actually have these days. Lame excuse imo.

Hmm, did someone actually bother to tell the team that they would be coding for PC as well? I mean, yeah, there isn't unified RAM on PC unless you're using an on-board GPU but it doesn't seem to stop other developers making pretty things and isn't exactly a new thing.

Then again, this *is* Ubisoft.

Edit: Actually, wait a second. That's 3GB of DDR3 on XBox One and GDDR5 on high end GPU cards and the PS4. Do not tell me he's equating these. Please tell me he isn't. (I had to go double check the XBox specs just to make sure because this is an incredibly ignorant statement for someone with technical knowledge, for graphics purposes 3GB of DDR3 is not the same as 3GB of GDDR5, it's a *lot* slower so you need more of it to handle the same amount of data throughput, they're designed for different purposes, DDR3 is slower but a lot cheaper to make so it's ideal for general computer memory where you don't need that extreme bandwidth).

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Hmm, did someone actually bother to tell the team that they would be coding for PC as well? I mean, yeah, there isn't unified RAM on PC unless you're using an on-board GPU but it doesn't seem to stop other developers making pretty things and isn't exactly a new thing.

I'm sure they were aware of it however preference would have been given to optimisations for the console release. So yea, essentially what he's saying is that the the PC version is unoptimised to such a degree that unless you have a GPU with 3GB of VRAM or more, you're going to run into problems at Ultra settings. The patch should, hopefully remedy this.

nesf wrote: »

Edit: Actually, wait a second. That's 3GB of DDR3 on XBox One and GDDR5 on high end GPU cards and the PS4. Do not tell me he's equating these. Please tell me he isn't. (I had to go double check the XBox specs just to make sure because this is an incredibly ignorant statement for someone with technical knowledge, for graphics purposes 3GB of DDR3 is not the same as 3GB of GDDR5, it's a *lot* slower so you need more of it to handle the same amount of data throughput, they're designed for different purposes, DDR3 is slower but a lot cheaper to make so it's ideal for general computer memory where you don't need that extreme bandwidth).

It's the amount of VRAM that he's identifying as the issue here though. While many have complained about performance issues at Ultra, how many have done so while running the game with cards equipped with more than 3GB or RAM? With the last Steam Hardware Survey showing that a little over 3% of users have such cards, I'd imagine the number is quite low.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

I'm sure they were aware of it however preference would have been given to optimisations for the console release. So yea, essentially what he's saying is that the the PC version is unoptimised to such a degree that unless you have a GPU with 3GB of VRAM or more, you're going to run into problems at Ultra settings. The patch should, hopefully remedy this.

Eh, isn't there a lot of outcry over its graphical quality at launch on the next-gen consoles though? If it ran superbly on the XBox One I might accept the above but from the sounds of it they didn't even manage that much and had to downgrade the graphics just to get something to chug along at reduced resolution on consoles leaving next to no time for PC optimisation.

gizmo wrote: »

It's the amount of VRAM that he's identifying as the issue here though. While many have complained about performance issues at Ultra, how many have done so while running the game with cards equipped with more than 3GB or RAM? With the last Steam Hardware Survey showing that a little over 3% of users have such cards, I'd imagine the number is quite low.

The 2GB of GDDR5 on my GPU will massively outperform the 3GB of DDR3 the XBox One has access to in terms of any metric relevant to graphics memory here. The GPU itself is a good deal more powerful as well though I'd expect developers to do better coding for the XBox One GPU given standardisation. And yes, pop onto Youtube and PC reviewers with monster systems with 6GB GDDR5 per card aren't seeing good Ultra performance. It's not simply "not enough memory on the average GPU."

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Eh, isn't there a lot of outcry over its graphical quality at launch on the next-gen consoles though? If it ran superbly on the XBox One I might accept the above but from the sounds of it they didn't even manage that much and had to downgrade the graphics just to get something to chug along at reduced resolution on consoles leaving next to no time for PC optimisation.

In the sense that it doesn't look as good as the original reveal? Yep, lots. But as was discussed on the other thread, that was shown two years before the consoles were launched and over a year before their specs were even nailed down so it was never even suggested it would look as good on them. It being a cross generational title was never going to help matters either so in effect, PC optimisation probably came fifth place on the list of platforms.

nesf wrote: »

The 2GB of GDDR5 on my GPU will massively outperform the 3GB of DDR3 the XBox One has access to in terms of any metric relevant to graphics memory here. The GPU itself is a good deal more powerful as well though I'd expect developers to do better coding for the XBox One GPU given standardisation. And yes, pop onto Youtube and PC reviewers with monster systems with 6GB GDDR5 per card aren't seeing good Ultra performance. It's not simply "not enough memory on the average GPU."

In the first case, not if the scenario includes the need for 3GB of VRAM to be used in an application which has problems filling that VRAM. In the context of the XBox One GPU, that's not entirely standardised what with the SRAM on-board being used to make up for the shortcomings of DDR3 compared to the DDR4 in the PS4.

I've not played the game yet so I can't say with any degree of certainty but Digital Foundry called out Texture Management as being the most likely culprit for all of this. So that would rule out the "not enough VRAM" deflection alright and put the blame solely on their inability to stream data to the VRAM efficiently enough.

nesf

From what I've been reading it looks really like this was rushed out long before it was finished. That some timeframe for having the graphics done was too optimistic and Ubisoft refused to shift dates to compensate. There are issues in the game (specifically popping) whose presence in high end PCs playing the game really indicates that a rough port from the console code was used as you should never see this degree of popping in a game like this on a PC with a high end GPU.

The other thing I've been seeing is: Using 3GB of GDDR5 is rather, rather hard to do if your code is anyway efficient right now and you're working at 1080p. 3GB is more 1440p+ territory with current technology.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

The other thing I've been seeing is: Using 3GB of GDDR5 is rather, rather hard to do if your code is anyway efficient right now and you're working at 1080p. 3GB is more 1440p+ territory with current technology.

We're talking about VRAM here, right? If that's the case then it depends on a number of factors such as scene composition, texture resolution, visual effects and even more importantly, full screen post-processing effects. It's not as simple as just looking at the screen resolution to determine the amount of VRAM required unfortunately.

On a related note, Max Payne 3 is an example of how to do graphics settings really really well, imo. As you tweaked each parameter it showed how much VRAM was required out of the total pool available on the GPU. It's a pity more games don't do something similar and allow people to make more informed decisions when playing with the available options.

ShadowHearth

I can only imagine in what kind of state it was last year on November....

Lukker-

So yeah, I should be able to play the game on Ultra setting seeing as I have a 4GB R9 290.

Textures: Ultra
Detail: Ultra
Shadows: High
AA: FXAA
Res: 1080p
HBAO+ low

The rest of the settings are as high as they can go.

I expected to get better than an average of 25 FPS when I'm outside. The game doesn't even look good. I've played a few missions and it's fun but I really don't enjoy games when the frame-rate isn't steady. It's the god-damn enthusiast in me.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

We're talking about VRAM here, right? If that's the case then it depends on a number of factors such as scene composition, texture resolution, visual effects and even more importantly, full screen post-processing effects. It's not as simple as just looking at the screen resolution to determine the amount of VRAM required unfortunately.

Resolution isn't the only factor most certainly but it has by far the biggest effect because it increases the effect of every other factor you mention there. AA is the really, really big one missing from your list, 4 x MSAA will cripple many cards that otherwise run a game perfectly.

Some reading: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-myths,3694-5.html

Observe 1080p memory usage, it never even approaches 3GB in any of the tested games.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

Resolution isn't the only factor most certainly but it has by far the biggest effect because it increases the effect of every other factor you mention there. AA is the really, really big one missing from your list, 4 x MSAA will cripple many cards that otherwise run a game perfectly.

Some reading: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-myths,3694-5.html

Observe 1080p memory usage, it never even approaches 3GB in any of the tested games.

Ah, my bad, I incorrectly included AA in the full screen post processing column despite the fact that, in the case of Watch_Dogs at least, FXAA is the only one that applies and whose affect on VRAM is negligible in comparison to the likes of MSAA.

But yes, that's what I was getting at with the most importantly prefix since, as you pointed out, it can have a rather large impact on memory required. 2GB is what I'd expect the limit to be on a busy game with decent levels of MSAA used currently alright. The Tom's article again mentions the problem Watch_Dogs most likely suffers from:

Most applications dynamically load and unload textures as they're needed, though, so not all textures need to reside in graphics memory. The textures required to render a particular scene do need to be in memory, however.

If texture management/streaming hasn't been optimised for systems without unified memory, especially for an open world game full of dynamic objects and in which you can travel particularly fast (read: driving), then you're going to have some serious performance problems. It's certainly fixable though so I guess we'll see how well once the patch is released.

Doylers

Is it really just VRAM usage though? Im running a 780(OC'd a touch). with the game on ultra I see +3GB of VRAM usage this causes alot of stuttering, if I drop to high im using about 2700MB so within the capabilities of the card then if I drop to medium it uses just under 2GB of vram and I get very little to no stuttering. I have found that in my case at least, setting like AA and HBDO dont effect the stuttering to suggest there the cause.

What I noticed aswell was actual RAM usage on my pc was low, the game takes 2 gigs ? Some people are reporting it takes more than that. As for GPU usage in ultra its a 95%, high at about 80% and medium a leisurely 55%. Really seems to be one piss poor port, annoys me when my friends on a 670 and 880m are running it with no problems at all

gizmo

Doylers wrote: »

Is it really just VRAM usage though? Im running a 780(OC'd a touch). with the game on ultra I see +3GB of VRAM usage this causes alot of stuttering, if I drop to high im using about 2700MB so within the capabilities of the card then if I drop to medium it uses just under 2GB of vram and I get very little to no stuttering. I have found that in my case at least, setting like AA and HBDO dont effect the stuttering to suggest there the cause.

Well the Digital Foundry article I linked above said this..

Politics aside, what's very clear is that those pursuing 60fps gameplay are facing a challenge. Texture management seems to be the major culprit - streaming ultra-level assets into and out of RAM simply doesn't happen fast enough, resulting in noticeable stutter. It's not a RAM issue based on our testing - we replaced a 3GB GTX 780 Ti with a 6GB GTX Titan, producing the exact same result. Only by lowering texture quality from ultra to high did we improve matters, and even then the stutter wasn't completely eliminated. We also factored out graphical quality presets too by dropping down to medium settings - and yet still we saw dips in overall performance. Additionally, we were running the game from SSD on a SATA3 connection.

So I guess they're not utilising the full VRAM pool available on the PC and due to whatever problems are present on the texture management side, performance is being severely affected. That would at least explain the general issues people are having, why they're not remedied by using a beefier card (the aforementioned 6GB Titan) and why the graphics director even mentioned the unified memory cause.