Full HD & WHQD Perf roundup - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

You can mark my words, Ubisoft is going to release a bunch of zero-day patches as Watch Dogs does not seems to be behaving the way it should with better than HIGH image quality settings. It is very hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem with the game is, but increased frame-buffers do make a big difference indicating there a lot going on in graphics memory. Interestingly enough GTA as an open world game always has had the very same issue and really liked huge framebuffers. But as to why the game needs this much of it is a bit of a riddle. Obviously a large chunk is eaten away by high quality textures and ultra quality settings. But at high quality overall even mid-range cards with 2GB graphics memory are bound to run into some problems IF they have the more exotic AA modes enabled or are gaming in a too high resolutions.

Small note on the R9 295x2 - we installed it a second time, and after the second driver install .. the Crossfire profile apparently refused to work. I inserted the result, but you-betcha-yer-azz that once the final driver is out and the Crossfire profile kicks in, it will show leading performance by far. It was an isolated thing on our end for which I did not have the time anymore to dig into deeper.

Once we redo the test at High Quality / High Textures / FXAA but now at 2560x1440 (WHQD) we do see the AMD cards behave better. indicating they gain strength once the resolution goes upwards.

• So for the mainstream gamers, above a quick run at High Quality settings with high Quality Textures. My recommendation for the guys with a cheaper mid-range 2GB card, switch to high quality settings and FXAA as maximum. Your playable resolution will be be 1920x1080 (Full HD). 
• If you have the better mainstream to expensive high-end graphics cards like the R9 290(x)/295 or the GTX 780 series, then 2560x1440 (WQHD) will be your domain, but here again use your graphics settings with caution, Ultra quality settings can be used when you use lower AA quality like FXAA. If you want MSAA at say 2x then you need to stick at HIGH image quality settings and textures.
• Ultra HD - Well it is simple, even in Multi-GPU modes like the R9 295 and 780 Ti SLI it is a no-go with Ultra image quality as you will run into a freak-fest of stuttering. Here the same rule applies, use High quality settings with High Quality textures. You can play with AA a bit, but we'd suggest you leave it disabled.

Concluding then, as much as we like games to stress graphics cards we are a little puzzled. Watch Dogs is not a game that looks mouth-watering good, I mean it is nice and all, but it is just that. To see graphics card struggle this much over graphics memory is weird to see. However if you use our guidelines then your frame-rate should remain very acceptable and the game playable whilst looking good. You will still run into the occasional stutters here and there as it is the nature of the game engine I'm afraid. Let's hope Ubisoft is able to release a patch that at the very least eliminated the heavy stutters. That or you will need to find your performance/stutter sweet-spot by tweaking image quality (read lowering image quality).

The guys that purchased a high-end grade graphics cards with 4 or 6GB of graphics memory, well here's where your investment pays out fellas ! Overall (graphics memory comments aside) the game is really great though. It is huge, insightful and fun. The hacking makes the game unique and it does give you the Mafia / GTA gameplay feel really. With your graphics card settings nicely balanced out this will be a very enjoyable game overall, and it is certainly a title I can recommend you to purchase. Aside from all the comments the graphics quality is okay but just that, the game itself is very unique and enjoyable and I definitely recommend you to pick it up. And for once I like to give proper to Ubisoft, we had no DRM issues whatsoever this round, and we swapped our a lot of hardware alright !

As you can see, AMD has some work left to do. Though we did use Catalyst beta 14.6 we do think AMD will optimize the game further. Once AMD has its optimized driver out we will update this article with results.

If you like to read up on / or share your thoughts, we have multiple Watch Dogs forum threads with hundreds of posts, remarks, screen-shots and tips right here.

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