Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[pjbliverpool]

These launch day/week/month issues are what pushed me to game almost entirely on consoles

Except there aren't any issues with this game (performance wise anyway, I'm not up to date on specific bugs which may be floating around).

The game actually performs very well if not better on the PC than it does on the consoles with similar GPU's at the same settings.

Yes you need a beefier CPU but to maintain High settings at 30fps you don't need anything crazy. A decent quad core from the last 4 years will do just fine. And we already know PC CPU requirements are going to be a lot higher than consoles thanks to API overhead until Mantle or DX12 become mainstream.

I really wish people would seperate the concepts of "this game doesn't run well on my PC with maxed out settings" from "this game has issues".

If you couldn't achieve a solid 30fps at all high settings and 900p with SMAA on a 7870 then yes, this game would have performance issues. But it can do that just fine (and on lesser GPU's from what I've seen). Settings beyond that don't really count for anything because there's no yardstick with which to measure how much performance (or video memory) a particular settings should be requiring. You can argue that the 'higher than console settings' don't offer much bang for buck given the extra performance required but then you could argue the same thing for the PS4/XB1 graphics over the last gen consoles.

EDIT: Here's one (of many) benchmarks around the net showing the game has no performance issues at reasonable setings: http://www.game-debate.com/news/?news=12880&game=Watch%20Dogs&title=Watch%20Dogs%20Benchmarks%20GeForce%20GTX%20670

 

[-tkf-]

Except there aren't any issues with this game (performance wise anyway, I'm not up to date on specific bugs which may be floating around).

The game actually performs very well if not better on the PC than it does on the consoles with similar GPU's at the same settings.

Yes you need a beefier CPU but to maintain High settings at 30fps you don't need anything crazy. A decent quad core from the last 4 years will do just fine. And we already know PC CPU requirements are going to be a lot higher than consoles thanks to API overhead until Mantle or DX12 become mainstream.

I really wish people would seperate the concepts of "this game doesn't run well on my PC with maxed out settings" from "this game has issues".

If you couldn't achieve a solid 30fps at all high settings and 900p with SMAA on a 7870 then yes, this game would have performance issues. But it can do that just fine (and on lesser GPU's from what I've seen). Settings beyond that don't really count for anything because there's no yardstick with which to measure how much performance (or video memory) a particular settings should be requiring. You can argue that the 'higher than console settings' don't offer much bang for buck given the extra performance required but then you could argue the same thing for the PS4/XB1 graphics over the last gen consoles.

EDIT: Here's one (of many) benchmarks around the net showing the game has no performance issues at reasonable setings: http://www.game-debate.com/news/?news=12880&game=Watch%20Dogs&title=Watch%20Dogs%20Benchmarks%20GeForce%20GTX%20670

The specific issue being raised was stuttering, related to streaming textures and videoram. Classic Pc gaming issue, not all see it but those that does are frustrated. With the reviews this game was getting I decided to skip it for now.

 

[pjbliverpool]

The specific issue being raised was stuttering, related to streaming textures and videoram. Classic Pc gaming issue, not all see it but those that does are frustrated. With the reviews this game was getting I decided to skip it for now.

That's the problem though, the stuttering isn't a technical issue, it's a knowledge issue. The game stutters because you run out of VRAM. The solution is as simple as changing a few settings so that you don't run out of VRAM.

Different people are having seemingly different results with the same hardware because of using different settings, and it's not just as simple as setting your textures to high or ultra. You also have to account for resolution, AA and max buffered frames as well.

The problem is that how can anyone really be expected to know all that? Very few review sites are even getting that correct at the moment. Clearly as someone previously mentioned, the game needs a VRAM usage indicator like GTA IV. That would likely have cleared up >90% of these perceived "issues".

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that no-one who's configured the game via GeForce Experience is getting any of these issues.

 

[taisui]

If the game stutters with a 290X, then it has a technical issue.
The fact that it performs worse on AMD hardware more so than nVidia ones, is also a technical issue.

 

[pjbliverpool]

If the game stutters with a 290X, then it has a technical issue.

Not if you're using settings that cause the game to exceed the GPU's 4GB memory. Unless you're saying that it's impossible to play the game on a 290x without it stuttering, regardless of settings which I'd have to see to believe.

The fact that it performs worse on AMD hardware more so than nVidia ones, is also a technical issue.

That's just a matter of optimisation. Almost every game out there favours one architecture over another, do they all have technical issues?

 

[taisui]

Not if you're using settings that cause the game to exceed the GPU's 4GB memory. Unless you're saying that it's impossible to play the game on a 290x without it stuttering, regardless of settings which I'd have to see to believe.

Yea yea yea, you wanna go check what's the system requirement? It said 2GB.

 

[AlNom]

Yea yea yea, you wanna go check what's the system requirement? It said 2GB.

Does it still stutter on lower settings?

 

[DavidGraham]

I think the only real issue (other than the massive downgrade of course) was giving PC gamers the option of "Ultra" textures. They don't offer much over high and no-one would have noticed if they never launched with that setting and changed "High" to "Ultra" and so on down the line.

Indeed, most issues arise from the combination of Ultra+ MSAA or TXAA, stuttering begins after maybe an hour of gameplay, seems the game's memory managmenet system is lacking, so memory becomes saturated fairly fast. I resolved 90% of my stuttering issues by opting for High textures+TXAA (even though I have the memory capacity for Ultra+AA), still the game stutters even with that but to a much milder degree.

 

[AlNom]

Indeed, most issues arise from the combination of Ultra+ MSAA or TXAA, stuttering begins after maybe an hour of gameplay, seems the game's memory managmenet system is lacking, so memory becomes saturated fairly fast.

The latest driver notes for R9 290X did mention gains with 4xMSAA, so I wonder if they were previously applying MSAA to all of the rendertargets (particularly post-process ones), which would balloon the memory requirements accordingly (and perhaps rather unnecessarily) aside from taking into account that it's a deferred renderer.

 

[-tkf-]

Unless you're saying that it's impossible to play the game on a 290x without it stuttering, regardless of settings which I'd have to see to believe.

The issues seem real enough, high,ultra, 290X, Nvidia or not. And it´s not like it´s a new thing with PC Games at launch. Consoles should do better here, and they do.

 

[Davros]

im getting about 25fps on a q6600 pretty much regardless of gfx settings

 

[pjbliverpool]

The issues seem real enough, high,ultra, 290X, Nvidia or not. And it´s not like it´s a new thing with PC Games at launch. Consoles should do better here, and they do.

Yeah but what exact settings? This is all meaningless unless we have a clear view of exactly how people are running the game when they are getting these stuttering issues.

It's no good saying "it even happens on the 290x" if the 290x is running at 1600p + 4xMSAA + Ultra textures + 3 buffered frames.

And then there's CPU speed to consider. What if that 290x is paired with an slightely weaker CPU that bogs down now and then?

And vsync, is it on or off? Stuttering could be a simple matter of frametime variance in some cases as opposed to vram limitations. Obviously being vsynced to 30 fps the consoles would be much less suseptable to this.

 

[Scott_Arm]

im getting about 25fps on a q6600 pretty much regardless of gfx settings

CPU limited for sure then. That's an old CPU. Time to get an i7.

 

[taisui]

Blah blah blah, there's nothing wrong with WD, blah blah blah, it's just that you don't have have good spec PCs, blah blah blah, it's because you are setting it too Ultra, blah blah blah.

They are actually working on a PC performance patch, though. The irony.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Blah blah blah, there's nothing wrong with WD, blah blah blah, it's just that you don't have have good spec PCs, blah blah blah, it's because you are setting it too Ultra, blah blah blah.

They are actually working on a PC performance patch, though. The irony.

Naturally they have to because of the backlash. To do anything less would be to appear to ignore the customers concerns. There's certainly room for improvement from ubi, streamlining the settings which are clearly causing confusion would be a good start, adding a vram memory counter would be a great step forward, and I fear they may reduce quality/flexibility in some areas to effectively prevent people from harming their experience with overzealous settings choices. If we get some greater efficiencies in there too then all the better.

 

[taisui]

What confusion? the game does not run smoothly and that's why they are patching it.

 

[pjbliverpool]

What confusion? the game does not run smoothly and that's why they are patching it.

At what settings does the game not run smoothly?

 

[joker454]

Sure, the PC will eventually have an unparalleled experience, even for people with more moderate systems, but probably not until after I've finished the game and moved on.

I think that auto resolved itself for me for the simple reason that I almost never play games at launch anymore, I simply don't have the time. I add them to my wishlist and get around to them eventually. Hence I haven't had one issue or crash on pc gaming in years, none in 2012, none in 2013 and none so far in 2014. We should also remember that it's not like consoles are trouble free either. People like to pretend that current consoles are plug and play like the old 8 bit NES, but they aren't. While I have had zero issues or crashes on pc gaming in years, I read all the issues people have with consoles on the forums included game crashes, game lockups, consoles overheating, and on and on. People on console are also having to tolerate issues with their games, it's not like console gaming back in the day where you plugged in the game and everything always worked. Those days are long gone.

 

[taisui]

At what settings does the game not run smoothly?

At the recommended spec it doesn't run smoothly. Not even on a $500 GFX card.

 

[pjbliverpool]

At the recommended spec it doesn't run smoothly. Not even on a $500 GFX card.

At what settings doesn't the game run smoothly on the recommended spec PC? At what settings DOES it run smoothly? Were there any recommended settings to go along with that recommended spec?