[Gamepur] 2GB not enough for Watch_Dogs 1080p

[f1sherman]

Watch dogs looks like crap even with ultra textures. Crysis 3 medium textures are better looking.

You say it looks like crap, but that is almost generous compared to reactions on unreleased Crysis 3 on this very forum.

Personally I find the WD looks relaxing. I learned that in Witcher 3, too much detail = not enough relax.
I wouldn't want to be running for hours through Chicago with oversharpen details making my eyes bleed. Even in real life I prefer shades on a sunny day ^_^

 

[f1sherman]

Is it really that bad?

 

[2is]

"That bad" is relative... What are we comparing it too? If we're comparing it to GTA, absolutely not. If we're comparing it to it's system requirements... It's not terribly impressive. The art work is nice though. The graphics quality is "meh"

 

[Majcric]

And there is a 770 running Ultra textures bang on where it ought to be in the graph of performance. Sure it can't do 1440p and above, but at 1080p its completely fine. 3GB is not needed for Watchdogs for the usual HD. Its one of the few games that has an issue at 1440p however, that definitely looks like a VRAM problem due to the severity of the performance plummet and its one of the first games to do it (previously I only saw issues at 2160p) but that is all fine.

Yeah you won't have any problem running this game on Ultra, with Ultra textures at 1080p. Especially after patches and driver updates.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Not exactly an amazing looking game, but the water itself in WD is seriously the best I've ever seen in a video game.

 

[Gloomy]

Yeah you won't have any problem running this game on Ultra, with Ultra textures at 1080p. Especially after patches and driver updates.

Contradicting an Nvidia employee, that's a bold move :thumbsup:

 

[Carfax83]

Crysis 3 has some open areas plus I am talking about just medium settings for it. I am also talking about textures too. Watch dogs looks like crap even with ultra textures. Crysis 3 medium textures are better looking.

Crysis 3 and Watch Dogs aren't even remotely comparable. Watch Dogs has:

1) Massive open world with no loading screens
2) Hundreds of distinct NPCs
3) Tons of simulation including cloth, wind, foliage, rain, water, traffic, weather etcetera..
4) Full day and night cycle
5) Global illumination with dozens of dynamic light sources.

 

[DiogoDX]

Nvidia oficial config and tweaks guide: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

Titan SLI doing only 80-90+ fps in 1080P.

 

[saeedkunna]

WD graphics is not bad but its not immprasive at all. people expected better from whats we saw in E3 now when i compare WD graphics to game like Tomb Raider (2 year sold game) its disappointment WD has some shinning placess @night@rainy weather and water looks great but other than that it looks like last gen game

 

[Granseth]

I think WD looks good. And it runs nicely, but with some stuttering on my GTX780@1440. But there seem to be other things they have forgotten that's more important than graphics, like car physics and GUI for mouse and keyboard.

 

[SirPauly]

Good Lord! That was quite the tweak guide!

 

[Grooveriding]

Nvidia oficial config and tweaks guide: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

Titan SLI doing only 80-90+ fps in 1080P.

80-90 is not really fair. TXAA is garbage and not worth running, makes games look horrible. Runs much better with SMAA or MSAA, the two AA modes worth actually activating.

 

[RussianSensation]

If Watch Dogs, a game that doesn't even have next generation graphics is using 3-4GB of VRAM easily, once developers make games for xB1/PS4 and drop support for PS360, VRAM requirements will skyrocket even more I think. It will be interesting to see how quickly this will happen. These delays to 20nm GPUs may result in prices of VRAM to drop and allow NV and AMD to squeeze more.

From the looks of it, I agree with other's comments that the game doesn't look good enough to need 3-4GB of VRAM at 1440p.

 

[3DVagabond]

There was talk before hand that the large amt. of VRAM available to the new consoles would make new games use more VRAM. Looks like it's true.

 

[RussianSensation]

TechSpot has a performance review up, but not using the latest catalyst 14.6 drivers.

http://www.techspot.com/review/827-watch-dogs-benchmarks/page3.html

Looks like 7970Ghz and 770 are trading blows and 780Ti and R9 290X are pretty close, with 780Ti slightly edging it. But with current pricing of 290x, 780ti is an awful value for sure, at least based on these benches.

Phenom processors looks really poor even against FX4350. In their benchmark, Performance scaling from 2.5 to 4.5 Ghz on the 4770k is practically non-existent.

 

[Majcric]

It doesn't look like they're using the latest drivers from either camp. Also I'm a little curious about the Ultra testing if they have the textures on Ultra. When looking at the testing on the first page it appears they do...waiting to see other reviews.

 

[RussianSensation]

It doesn't look like they're using the latest drivers from either camp. Also I'm a little curious about the Ultra testing if they have the textures on Ultra. When looking at the testing on the first page it appears they do...waiting to see other reviews.

Ya they should have waited to apply all the patches and use the latest drivers. However, they also use Temporal SMAA which is less intensive than say MSAA or TXAA.

 

[Carfax83]

From the looks of it, I agree with other's comments that the game doesn't look good enough to need 3-4GB of VRAM at 1440p.

People need to understand, that a large part of the reason for such high VRAM requirements is the setting. The game takes place in Chicago, a very large American city. So there's going to be lots of unique and dissimilar textures throughout the game, unlike say Crysis which has plenty of repeating textures due to being set on a remote island.

The other part of course is the size and scale of the game, plus the fact that it's seamless with no loading screens. The draw distances in this game are huge. Just look at these LoD comparison shots between high and ultra:

LoD ultra

LoD high

There's quite a bit of stuff being rendered in the background in ultra, that's not in high. And those aren't mere backdrops either..

Anyway, apparently the day one patch fixes a memory leak or something and so reduces the amount of VRAM required to run the game.

 

[Fastx]

Works for me. Go on newegg and find this card:

PowerColor AXR9 290X 4GBD5-PPDH

It is $425 after 9% off and $30 MIR.

That was tempting when I saw it per your link but beware of the on going problem (under performing /black screen) below/link. BIOS fix per user does help or fix the problem at times.

PCS+ 290X
http://www.overclock.net/t/1462592/powercolor-pcs-r9-290/830

Also this is another deal I saw tonight on a TRI-X 290 $354.99 ar shipped which I ordered tonight. I posted a screen shot because last time I posted on a deal good (low price) for a MSI 780 Ti it was gone soon after I posted it and someone here thought I misread the price.

 

[OCGuy]

770 equaling 290x with new NV drivers.

This thread title is as embarrassing as I predicted it would be.

I would read some of the benchmarks today before making any of the suggested purchases. Its not even close.

 

[SPBHM]

770 equaling 290x with new NV drivers.

This thread title is as embarrassing as I predicted it would be.

I would read some of the benchmarks today before making any of the suggested purchases. Its not even close.

AMD Catalyst 14.6 beta,
Nvidia GeForce 337.88 WHQL.

http://pclab.pl/art57916-2.html

770 is 7970/280x level, not 290x

 

[OCGuy]

Huh? Those prove my point about the VRAM not exceeding 2GB (it is easy to look and see).

We will be getting non-Russian/Polish reviews shortly, and then hopefully mods lock this thread.

 

[RussianSensation]

Huh? Those prove my point about the VRAM not exceeding 2GB (it is easy to look and see).

We will be getting non-Russian/Polish reviews shortly, and then hopefully mods lock this thread.

The fact that CF and SLI works awfully in the benches you linked makes that site's testing irrelevant imo. Looks like the benches from GameGPU, Guru3D, PCLab.pl, and TechSpot are all over the place. I am waiting for HardOCP's review of real world gameplay for once. Also, your bench is with FXAA which is hardly going to be used by anyone since Temporal SMAA and SMAA is far superior in this game and still has a small hit.

Man, the graphics in this game are pretty terrible for the performance level it requests from modern GPUs.

For a title that is supposed to be a next generation game, in the daytime it is not a beautiful game to say the least....

Besides grass, water and night time rain/reflections, I expected a lot more from this new engine. Sure, it's not fair to compare an open world game to a shooter like C3 or M:LL but this game has a long way to go before being a contender for the top 3 best looking PC games.

 

[Carfax83]

Besides grass, water and night time rain/reflections, I expected a lot more from this new engine. Sure, it's not fair to compare an open world game to a shooter like C3 or M:LL but this game has a long way to go before being a contender for the top 3 best looking PC games.

Now that I actually have the game and have been playing it, I can give a solid opinion of what I think of the engine so far.

Personally, I think this is one of the best game engines I've ever seen. The CPU optimization in this game is incredible to say the least. I'm seeing almost equal loading across all 12 threads of my CPU, something which I've never seen before.

And for a game with this level of detail, the amount of pop in is very low considering how fast Aiden can travel across the City. Any game engine that uses stream technology is going to have pop in, but from the few hours that I've been playing it, pop in hasn't been a distraction. Setting LoD to ultra really extends the draw distance out by quite a bit but really hammers the CPU and GPU...

Has there been a downgrade? Definitely. But you had to expect that, because the game is shipping on last generation consoles as well as next gen.

 

[Silverforce11]

Besides grass, water and night time rain/reflections, I expected a lot more from this new engine. Sure, it's not fair to compare an open world game to a shooter like C3 or M:LL but this game has a long way to go before being a contender for the top 3 best looking PC games.

Funny you say that, because the grass, water, night time, rain and reflections are what gives ambience and immersion and obviously eat up a ton of GPU resources to do.

Also the open world and long view-range with great LoD is definitely NOT comparable to instanced small level shooters.

Edit: We should all move to the other thread, with benchmarks now coming from lots of sites.