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By LDK
PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. This report was written by PCGamingWiki contributor LDK. For an up to date account of The Crew fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article.
The Crew is online racing game from studios Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections. It takes place in large open world and lets player to explore simplified version of USA. This article will analyze quality of the PC version, how it performs, how it looks and how responsive are the controls.
The game was released on December 2, 2014 for Windows and is available through several digital distribution channels.
System Requirements
Minimum
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 620, 2.6 GHz or Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 2.5 GHz RAM: 4 GB HDD: 15 GB GPU: AMD Radeon HD 4870 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 with 512 MB of VRAM Recommended
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940, 3.0 GHz or Intel Core i5 750, 2.66 GHz RAM: 8 GB GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6870 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 with 1024 MB of VRAM The minimum system requirements are nothing to be afraid of, required CPU's are five years old and GPU's even more so the game should run on majority of today's hardware without any problems. Similar with recommended hardware specs, CPU's are also five years old, but newer architecture with higher clocks. Recommended GPU's are two generations newer then minimum and even those are in the mainstream range.
All the tests have been done on system with Core i7-2700k clocked to 4.5GHz, 32 GB RAM and HD 6870 with 1GB of VRAM. The testing was done in 2560x1600 resolution to eliminate 60 FPS limiter. Benchmark consisted of driving one lap in test drive mode in New York car dealer during the day.
Graphics settings
The game is running on the Babel engine developed in-house by Ivory Tower and offers few tweaks in the graphics options menu. Every common wide-screen resolution is supported and that includes 4k and ultra wide-screen resolutions. 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions are not supported at all and even if you force it by editing configuration files or by using borderless windowed mode, the picture will be stretched from wide-screen resolution.
There is field of view slider, but for some strange reason this slider is not enabled for single screen setups. There is a cvar in the configuration file and editing it moves the slider in the menu, but it has no impact on the game. It should work for multi-monitor setups with AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround technologies, but I was unable to confirm it on my system.
Another issue is forced framerate limiter. It can be set to 30 or 60 frames per second, but higher framerate is not available. Other options in this menu are common effects that can be tweaked or turned off completely.
Overall performance and image quality
The Crew has four quality presets - Low, Medium, High and Ultra. On the Low setting not every option was turned off so be sure to check them if you have performance problems. Also Ultra preset is not setting anti-aliasing to maximum and keeps it to MSAA 4x instead of MSAA 8x.
At the Low preset the game performs very good on my aging GPU considering it has to run at 4Mpix resolution. And even on Low the game doesn't looks half bad. Medium preset offers better shadows and higher resolution of environment mapping and costs around 12% of performance.
Performance drop of High preset is above 18% and further enhances shadows and mirroring on the car. Overall level of detail is better as cutoff for objects to disappear is further. Ultra preset means almost 32% performance drop from Low but I haven't noticed much difference from High. The testing was done with only FXAA instead of presets default anti-aliasing, because I was unable to get consistent results. More about that later.
I've experienced stuttering on some skill races. The game runs on stable framerate, but it stutters a bit when I reach specific point in a few skill races. Other than that, the game runs very nicely. Full resolution screenshots: Scene 1 Low, Medium, High, Ultra; Scene 2 Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
Controls
The Crew is racing game and as such it offers variety of control options. You can drive with keyboard, controller or a steering wheel and each can be separately configured. Even controller buttons can be remapped. Unfortunately I don't own steering wheel so I cannot comment on that, but controller and keyboard controls seemed pretty well done. Button prompts on the screen are changing on the fly and depends on the last input from controller or keyboard.
Plugging the controller in the middle of the game can cause problems though. The game crashed once when I turned controller (wireless 360) on and commonly D-pad was not responding after the controller was connected after the game loads.
Audio
Audio settings menu has several sliders to adjust volume of different aspects of the game's audio. The Crew is also supporting 7.1 surround sound, however surround sound is utilized only for few effects such as bypassing cars, roadwork etc. Radio, voices and car engine sounds only from front speakers. When driving, you can choose from a few radio stations and skip the songs on the fly.
Performance analysis
In this section we are going to look at how each effect impacts framerate and how does each setting looks on screenshots. Be sure to check full resolution uncompressed PNGs linked in each section. Or visit gallery for list of all screenshots for this article.
Anti-aliasing
I've got a few issues with anti-aliasing in The Crew. The main problem is very unstable performance regardless of resolution. MSAA 4x was running fairly OK with expected framerate drop when my car was stationary. When the car moved, the framerate plummeted to unplayable levels. Same with MSAA 8x but much more unstable. This is the reason, why there is no benchmark for each AA method. The FXAA had only small FPS drop as it is just a post process filter. I wasn't able to select TXAA on my AMD card.
As expected the game is heavily aliased and running lines are very much visible on the car without any AA applied (middle section of the comparison above). FXAA offers much better image quality and the textures are almost not affected, however there is slight moire around shard edges on the textures. MSAA preserves texture quality, but the edge blurring is not that strong and I've noticed light glow on some edges (same issue I've encountered in Far Cry 4). Full resolution screenshots: Off, FXAA, MSAA 4x, MSAA 8x.
Ambient Occlusion
The Crew features only two ambient occlusion methods: SSAO, SSAO plus or you can turn AO completely off. SSAO is much stronger than SSAO plus, but not as precise. Performance drop is only 8% for SSAO, but almost 30% for SSAO plus. Full resolution screenshots: Off, SSAO, SSAO plus.
Shadows
Dynamic shadows can be turned off or set to one of four level. Each level is increasing shadows resolution and Contact hardening Soft Shadows should blur some of the hard edges, but I haven't noticed any major difference from High setting. Performance drop noticeable from Off to Low (around 10%), but negligible for additional levels (around 2%). Soft shadows option is exception with performance drop of 21% from no shadows. Full resolution screenshots: Off, Low, Medium, High, Contact Hardening Soft Shadows.
Geometry
This setting is managing polygon resolution of the game's assets and object's cutoff distance from camera. Performance impact is not very substantial and from Low to Ultra the FPS drop is only around 6%, image quality is much better though. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
Textures
Textures is the only setting, that requires resetting the game (that is why the car in the screenshots has different color). Impact on the game is rather questionable. From the screenshot the roadway on the right side of car has little bit more details on Low setting and I haven't found any difference on other textures. But that could be affected by weather or the bump map could be generated every time the game is loaded. Nevertheless other textures stayed pretty much the same regardless of texture setting and average framerate also stayed at the same level. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
Environment Mapping
This setting affects resolution of real time reflections on player's car. The game looks much better when the effects is set to Ultra as the reflections are very sharp and almost at the same resolution as the rest of the world. Performance impact is around 10% for Ultra setting, 8% for High and 2% for Low. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
Depth of Field
I haven't noticed this effect during gameplay but it is heavily used during cutscenes and in the garages. Performance impact is around 5% for Low and 10% for Ultra. Full resolution screenshots:Off, Low, Medium, High.
Grass
Grass setting controls amount of grass billboards in the world. Performance impact of Medium setting is almost none, High setting will cause 5% framerate drop. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High.
Conclusion
PC version of The Crew is running very well and offers some graphics tweaking. Controls can be heavily adjusted and the game supports controllers and steering wheels apart from standard keyboard and mouse combo (which is more than capable).
There are some issues though. Anti-aliasing was bugged on my system, field of view slider is not enabled for single screen setups and the game stutters occasionally (not as badly as in Far Cry 4, but it is there). Then there is the whole always online thing. The game will not start at all when the servers are offline. This is not good, because every race can be played in single-player and what happens, when Ubisoft decides to pull the plug?
Overall The Crew is an average port without game-breaking issues. Which sadly is success after Ubisoft's disastrous this year season.
The game key has been provided by the publisher and contained the game, several cars and the season pass.
Click here to view the article
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By LDK
System Requirements
Minimum
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 620, 2.6 GHz or Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 2.5 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: 15 GB
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 4870 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 with 512 MB of VRAM
Recommended
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940, 3.0 GHz or Intel Core i5 750, 2.66 GHz
RAM: 8 GB
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6870 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 with 1024 MB of VRAM
The minimum system requirements are nothing to be afraid of, required CPU's are five years old and GPU's even more so the game should run on majority of today's hardware without any problems. Similar with recommended hardware specs, CPU's are also five years old, but newer architecture with higher clocks. Recommended GPU's are two generations newer then minimum and even those are in the mainstream range.
All the tests have been done on system with Core i7-2700k clocked to 4.5GHz, 32 GB RAM and HD 6870 with 1GB of VRAM. The testing was done in 2560x1600 resolution to eliminate 60 FPS limiter. Benchmark consisted of driving one lap in test drive mode in New York car dealer during the day.
Graphics settings
The game is running on the Babel engine developed in-house by Ivory Tower and offers few tweaks in the graphics options menu. Every common wide-screen resolution is supported and that includes 4k and ultra wide-screen resolutions. 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions are not supported at all and even if you force it by editing configuration files or by using borderless windowed mode, the picture will be stretched from wide-screen resolution.
There is field of view slider, but for some strange reason this slider is not enabled for single screen setups. There is a cvar in the configuration file and editing it moves the slider in the menu, but it has no impact on the game. It should work for multi-monitor setups with AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround technologies, but I was unable to confirm it on my system.
Another issue is forced framerate limiter. It can be set to 30 or 60 frames per second, but higher framerate is not available. Other options in this menu are common effects that can be tweaked or turned off completely.
Overall performance and image quality
The Crew has four quality presets - Low, Medium, High and Ultra. On the Low setting not every option was turned off so be sure to check them if you have performance problems. Also Ultra preset is not setting anti-aliasing to maximum and keeps it to MSAA 4x instead of MSAA 8x.
At the Low preset the game performs very good on my aging GPU considering it has to run at 4Mpix resolution. And even on Low the game doesn't looks half bad. Medium preset offers better shadows and higher resolution of environment mapping and costs around 12% of performance.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_14849.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_116535.jpg|864|540|Preset Low|Preset Ultra[/compimg]
Performance drop of High preset is above 18% and further enhances shadows and mirroring on the car. Overall level of detail is better as cutoff for objects to disappear is further. Ultra preset means almost 32% performance drop from Low but I haven't noticed much difference from High. The testing was done with only FXAA instead of presets default anti-aliasing, because I was unable to get consistent results. More about that later.
I've experienced stuttering on some skill races. The game runs on stable framerate, but it stutters a bit when I reach specific point in a few skill races. Other than that, the game runs very nicely. Full resolution screenshots: Scene 1 Low, Medium, High, Ultra; Scene 2 Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_20301.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_49343.jpg|864|540|Preset Low|Preset Ultra[/compimg]
Controls
The Crew is racing game and as such it offers variety of control options. You can drive with keyboard, controller or a steering wheel and each can be separately configured. Even controller buttons can be remapped. Unfortunately I don't own steering wheel so I cannot comment on that, but controller and keyboard controls seemed pretty well done. Button prompts on the screen are changing on the fly and depends on the last input from controller or keyboard.
Plugging the controller in the middle of the game can cause problems though. The game crashed once when I turned controller (wireless 360) on and commonly D-pad was not responding after the controller was connected after the game loads.
Audio
Audio settings menu has several sliders to adjust volume of different aspects of the game's audio. The Crew is also supporting 7.1 surround sound, however surround sound is utilized only for few effects such as bypassing cars, roadwork etc. Radio, voices and car engine sounds only from front speakers. When driving, you can choose from a few radio stations and skip the songs on the fly.
Performance analysis
In this section we are going to look at how each effect impacts framerate and how does each setting looks on screenshots. Be sure to check full resolution uncompressed PNGs linked in each section. Or visit gallery for list of all screenshots for this article.
Anti-aliasing
I've got a few issues with anti-aliasing in The Crew. The main problem is very unstable performance regardless of resolution. MSAA 4x was running fairly OK with expected framerate drop when my car was stationary. When the car moved, the framerate plummeted to unplayable levels. Same with MSAA 8x but much more unstable. This is the reason, why there is no benchmark for each AA method. The FXAA had only small FPS drop as it is just a post process filter. I wasn't able to select TXAA on my AMD card.
As expected the game is heavily aliased and running lines are very much visible on the car without any AA applied (middle section of the comparison above). FXAA offers much better image quality and the textures are almost not affected, however there is slight moire around shard edges on the textures. MSAA preserves texture quality, but the edge blurring is not that strong and I've noticed light glow on some edges (same issue I've encountered in Far Cry 4). Full resolution screenshots: Off, FXAA, MSAA 4x, MSAA 8x.
Ambient Occlusion
The Crew features only two ambient occlusion methods: SSAO, SSAO plus or you can turn AO completely off. SSAO is much stronger than SSAO plus, but not as precise. Performance drop is only 8% for SSAO, but almost 30% for SSAO plus. Full resolution screenshots: Off, SSAO, SSAO plus.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_191958.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_121120.jpg|864|540|Ambient Occlusion Off|Ambient Occlusion SSAO plus[/compimg]
Shadows
Dynamic shadows can be turned off or set to one of four level. Each level is increasing shadows resolution and Contact hardening Soft Shadows should blur some of the hard edges, but I haven't noticed any major difference from High setting. Performance drop noticeable from Off to Low (around 10%), but negligible for additional levels (around 2%). Soft shadows option is exception with performance drop of 21% from no shadows. Full resolution screenshots: Off, Low, Medium, High, Contact Hardening Soft Shadows.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_59339.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_1322.jpg|864|540|Shadows Off|Contact Hardening Soft Shadows[/compimg]
Geometry
This setting is managing polygon resolution of the game's assets and object's cutoff distance from camera. Performance impact is not very substantial and from Low to Ultra the FPS drop is only around 6%, image quality is much better though. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_181349.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_192114.jpg|864|540|Geometry Low|Geometry Ultra[/compimg]
Textures
Textures is the only setting, that requires resetting the game (that is why the car in the screenshots has different color). Impact on the game is rather questionable. From the screenshot the roadway on the right side of car has little bit more details on Low setting and I haven't found any difference on other textures. But that could be affected by weather or the bump map could be generated every time the game is loaded. Nevertheless other textures stayed pretty much the same regardless of texture setting and average framerate also stayed at the same level. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_60975.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_72985.jpg|864|540|Textures Low|Textures Ultra[/compimg]
Environment Mapping
This setting affects resolution of real time reflections on player's car. The game looks much better when the effects is set to Ultra as the reflections are very sharp and almost at the same resolution as the rest of the world. Performance impact is around 10% for Ultra setting, 8% for High and 2% for Low. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_175457.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_158793.jpg|864|540|Environment Mapping Low|Environment Mapping Ultra[/compimg]
Depth of Field
I haven't noticed this effect during gameplay but it is heavily used during cutscenes and in the garages. Performance impact is around 5% for Low and 10% for Ultra. Full resolution screenshots:Off, Low, Medium, High.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_23488.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_107328.jpg|864|540|Depth of Field Off|Depth of Field High[/compimg]
Grass
Grass setting controls amount of grass billboards in the world. Performance impact of Medium setting is almost none, High setting will cause 5% framerate drop. Full resolution screenshots: Low, Medium, High.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_30832.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_56/gallery_13_56_108046.jpg|864|540|Grass Low|Grass High[/compimg]
Conclusion
PC version of The Crew is running very well and offers some graphics tweaking. Controls can be heavily adjusted and the game supports controllers and steering wheels apart from standard keyboard and mouse combo (which is more than capable).
There are some issues though. Anti-aliasing was bugged on my system, field of view slider is not enabled for single screen setups and the game stutters occasionally (not as badly as in Far Cry 4, but it is there). Then there is the whole always online thing. The game will not start at all when the servers are offline. This is not good, because every race can be played in single-player and what happens, when Ubisoft decides to pull the plug?
Overall The Crew is an average port without game-breaking issues. Which sadly is success after Ubisoft's disastrous this year season.
The game key has been provided by the publisher and contained the game, several cars and the season pass.
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By Grant0417
System Requirements
Minimum
• CPU: Intel Core i5 2400s @ 2.5 GHz or AMD FX 6120 @ 3.5 GHz
• RAM: 6 GB
• HDD: 50 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 with 2 GB VRAM or AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2 GB of VRAM)
OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-Bit)
Recommended
• CPU: Intel Core i5 3470 @ 3.2 GHz or AMD FX 8120 @ 3.9 GHz
• RAM: 8 GB
• HDD: 50 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 or AMD Radeon R9 290 (3 GB of VRAM)
OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-Bit)
Editor's System
• CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K (Haswell)
• RAM: 16 GB DDR3-2400 (G.Skill Ares)
• SSD: 500 GB (Samsung 850 EVO)
• GPU: Sapphire R9 390 8 GB
• OS: Windows 10 (64-Bit)
Watch Dogs 2's system requirements are not abnormal by today's standards, a 2 GB graphics card with a decent CPU. The game performed well with a smooth frame rate. On my system the low preset gets around 70-80 fps inside and 60-70 outside while the ultra preset (with ultra textures) gets around 45-55 fps inside and 35-45 outside.
Graphics settings
Display settings are pretty good, window modes include: Windowed, Borderless Window, Fullscreen Borderless, Multimonitor Borderless, Fullscreen. One downside is the lack of Resolution Scaling beyond 125%.
Graphics settings give the user a good deal of customization when trying to adjust to their computers need.
Color settings are brightness, or gamma, and sharpness, which if too high can make the image look very strange.
Field of View
Despite being a 3rd person game Watch Dogs 2 gives the option to change the FoV from the minimum value of 70, also the default, to the maximum of 110.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_568051.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_456133.jpg|983|553|70°|110°[/compimg]
Resolution Scale
This setting controls how many times the resolution the game is rendered at. Watch Dogs 2 gives the option of 25% to 125% of normal resolution. This means that using resolution scaling instead of antialiasing on higher end machines will not be as possible as that typically requires around 150% to 200% resolution scaling.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_216844.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_37648.jpg|983|553|100%|125%[/compimg]
Motion Blur
Motion Blur only has 2 options, on and off. It also doesn't have much of an effect on framerate, but your gameplay may look better at high framerates if you turn it off.
Texture Resolution
Texture Resolution seems to be nearly the same between Low and Ultra, despite the Ultra textures that were several gigabytes in size. The only difference I could notice is guns are largely affected by texture resolution.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_115382.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_411694.jpg|983|553|Low|High[/compimg]
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_156252.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_71496.jpg|983|553|Low|High[/compimg]
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_349998.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_211736.jpg|983|553|Low|High[/compimg]
Texture Filtering
Texture Filtering increases the visual quality of textures at steep angles to the camera.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_196523.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_36558.jpg|983|553|Low|Ultra[/compimg]
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_439471.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_334989.jpg|983|553|Low|Ultra[/compimg]
Shadows
Shadows are not bad in Watch Dogs 2 at the lowest setting and ultra shadows are very crisp. Watch Dogs 2 also provides PCSS which allows for progressive shadow resolution.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_288086.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_561969.jpg|983|553|Low|Ultra[/compimg]
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_35117.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_15571.jpg|983|553|Low|Ultra[/compimg]
Water
Water has modes, low and high, the only visible difference is the reflections it has.
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_509654.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_389297.jpg|983|553|Low|High[/compimg]
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_198377.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_55208.jpg|983|553|Low|High[/compimg]
Headlight Shadow
Headlight Shadows are very demanding and has a cap of being enabled on 4 cars at one time.
[compimg] http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_402059.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_333183.jpg|983|553|Off|On[/compimg]
[compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_193842.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_100333.jpg|983|553|Off|On[/compimg]
Reflections
Reflections affect reflective surfaces and their reflection of the sky box and other objects. Low only reflects the sky box and High reflects environmental features.
[compimg] http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_492820.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_108/gallery_2519_108_234495.jpg|983|553|Low|High[/compimg]
Anti-Aliasing
Anti-Alasing is one of the only setting in the game to have a massive hit on the games performance. It can affect the framerate by up to 10fps. The avaiable AA options are TXAA (only available on Nvidia graphic cards), MSAAx2, MSAAx4, MSAAx6, FXAA, and SMAA. FXAA and SMAA cause the game to lose sharpness and just overall blur the screen.
Performance analysis
The game preformed very well with out many frame drops, there are some issues though. Pop in is a major issue with objects appearing with in a very visible distance while driving. The game has an unlocked framerate so high refresh rate monitors do not have to worry. Load times are very low on my SSD with wait times being at max 10 seconds and typical under 5.
Controls
The game offers a large amount of control customization from changing many items such as sprint and aiming from Hold to Toggle. The game also enables changing mouse and controller sensitivity as well as X and Y axis inverting. The whole game works with mouse controls and no menu can not be navigated smoothly with it unlike the original watch dogs.
Audio
Audio settings are lacking, there is only one volume slider for the master volume. Music can be toggled on and off and subtitles can be enabled. The in game audio is very nicely mixed though with no sound overpowering the rest.
Conclusion
Watch Dogs 2 is a massive step up in a port from the original game, it offers large number of customization. The PC Port doesn't suffer from meany of the issues other PC ports do such as bad Keyboard and mouse control and bad optimization like its predecessor. The only issue I have had with Watch Dogs 2 is how demanding the game can be, I typically can get in 60+ fps in games with high or ultra setting but Watch Dogs 2 pushes my computer past that and it is well deserved as it has beautiful graphics on PC.
PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. This report was written by PCGamingWiki contributor grant0417. For an up to date account of Watch Dogs 2 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed our article and want to us create more articles, more often, please consider donating to PCGamingWiki's Patreon campaign:
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By RaTcHeT302
PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. For an up to date account of Battlefield 1 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article.
Developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on October 21, 2016.
The main focus of this report is to aid users in finding the most optimal and best looking graphical settings in order to solve and even prevent most framerate issues.
System Requirements
Minimum
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K or AMD FX-6350 RAM: 8 GB HDD: 50 GB GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2 GB DirectX 11) OS: Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-Bit) Recommended
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 or AMD FX-8350 RAM: 16 GB HDD: 50 GB GPU: GTX 1060, RX 480 (4 GB DirectX 11) OS: Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-Bit) Editor's System
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 (Skylake) RAM: 32 GB DDR4 2133MHz (Kingston HyperX Fury) SSD: 500 GB (Samsung 850 EVO) GPU: MSI R9 380 4 GB OS: Windows 10 (Version 1607) (64-Bit) While the minimum system requirements may look pretty high an i5-6500 paired with a good graphics card and enough memory should be enough to run the game at very high framerates with really good graphical settings. Overall most settings will generally not change the look of the game by that much, most settings can easily be hand picked and optimized in order to get the highest possible framerate.
Battlefield 1 can often use up to 3 GB and even up to 5 GB of RAM, systems with limited memory might perform poorly, heavy stuttering might also be present unless more memory is installed.
Players are unable to access the main menu right away on launch, they'll be transported into the single player campaign instead, the options menu should eventually become accessible however.
There aren't too many video options, the depth of field effect, which is heavily used on most menus cannot be disabled, it is often the cause of large performance issues, which could be a big problem on lower end systems, it also misleads players into thinking that their framerate might be worse when in reality their in-game framerate might be much better.
Overall most settings don't change or improve much. There's no control over the tinting effects the game uses, the sun glare effects also cannot be disabled although these are minor things and aren't too important. There's a lack of a draw distance setting which would've greatly helped, by default the standard draw distance is extremely small, even when enhanched with other settings, the antialiasing modes often might fail to hide some of the problems the new rendering engine has, with lots of objects fading out of nowhere or too close to the player's view.
This issue is prevalent on the Amiens map, where windows and even certain walls will often change out of nowhere as the player gets closer, however Mount Grappa and other similar maps handle this slightly better.
On the other hand, there are a lot of options related to the gameplay such as plenty of mouse and keyboard options, extensive audio settings and ways to disable the heads up display and other similar things.
After reaching the main menu, open the options menu by clicking on More located on the top right or on the gear icon located in the center left area under the Shortcuts title.
Field of View
Only values between Vertical 50° and Vertical 105° can be chosen which translate into Horizontal 64° and Horizontal 120°. The vertical values are also translated as horizontal values in the options menu.
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Aim Down Sights Field of View
Written as ADS Field of View in the options menu. When enabled the game will replace the zoom in effect while aiming with the desired Field of View value.
Otherwise when set to Off the weapon will zoom in as usual instead. This can be useful to see more things in a larger area and it shouldn't impact the performance.
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Motion Blur
Optimal Setting: 0%
Things will look smoother while moving the camera around but visibility may be slightly reduced, there's a huge performance drop for such a simple setting however and in most cases it's not worth using.
The effect itself can be pretty subtle when set to values between 10% or 15%. Some artifacts might be present when using the highest value.
To disable this setting find the options menu located in the top right corner labeled as More then under Options select Video and set Motion Blur to 0%.
This setting should be disabled in order to obtain higher framerates and to keep the image clear. Otherwise, this mostly comes down to user preference.
Depth of Field and Weapon Depth of Field
Optimal Setting: Weapon DOF to Off
The depth of field effect can only be partially disabled. While the game is paused the overall framerate might be lower, this issue is only present on certain maps however. Close the pause menu before checking the framerate number. The framerate might also drop every time the pause menu is brought up, once the pause menu is closed it might take a few moments for the game to stabilize.
Weapons have their own depth of field setting, this effect is only applied while aiming and while in a vehicle.
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To disable this setting find the options menu located in the top right corner labeled as More then under Options select Video and set Weapon DOF to Off.
This setting should ideally be disabled seeing as it has a negligible visual impact.
DirectX 11 and DirectX 12
Optimal Setting: DX12 Enabled to Off
Use the DirectX 11 mode if possible, on a few specific maps the framerate might be lower while in the loadout area, however it should be fine while actually playing, overall this mode should be more stable and the game should run well either way.
The DirectX 12 mode can achieve higher framerates but certain maps have some performance issues which can lead to random microstuttering, there's also a minor issue where the framerate might drop while spawning.
While using both modes microstutter might be unavoidable on maps such as Amiens and Empire's Edge, while maps such as Mount Grappa perform as they should. On Empire's Edge the framerate might often drop while inside one of the main buildings, this same building is also present on Mount Grappa where there are no performance issues. Lowering the graphical settings on some of these maps might not solve the problem itself.
Otherwise try setting the Lighting Quality to High or Low or try lowering the Mesh Quality and even most settings to Medium if needed while playing on Empire's Edge if the framerate drops and if the stuttering become unbearable. Amiens has a few specific spots where lowering the Mesh Quality might very slightly help, although the microstuttering shouldn't be as noticeable if the DirectX 11 mode is being used. Running around in circles while in the DirectX 12 mode in certain areas in the Amiens map might ruin the frametime and cause microstuttering.
Resolution Scale
Optimal Setting: 100%
Better Graphics (High End Only): 125% up to 150%
Jaggie Removal (High End Only): 175% up to 200%
This setting controls how many times the resolution should be enhanced, higher values will also very slightly improve the draw distance, the texture filter will be slightly more effective which means that most textures might have a sharper look from far away, the antialiasing techniques are also slightly more effective. When the player is too close to a texture however this effect is lost and the texture will lose most of its sharpness.
This setting should be kept at a value of 100% seeing as lower values will ruin the overall image and higher values might be too intensive for certain systems to handle. Lower end systems might need to lower this value in order to gain playable framerates, although there are better settings which can be changed first.
Most differences can be pretty subtle when using higher values and they might be difficult to spot during usual gameplay. Notice the door, the extra detail around the door and the stone fence, along with the mountains and the trees in the distance.
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Click on the Image to See the Animation (25% to 200%)
When using the maximum value this setting can help alleviate the ring effect present on most textures, which is very often visible while strafing left and right or while moving towards or away near a wall.
Notice the lamp post on the very far left, which has far less holes while using the highest possible value and how the texture on the wall changes.
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Often these changes can be less subtle, such as the tree on the far left, its branches are rendered slightly farther while also reducing the amount of jaggies visible to the player.
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Other subtle changes can be fairly minor but the improvements themselves can be pretty noticeable depending on the model, notice the cables and the crosshair on the gun itself along with the barbed wire on the bottom right.
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This setting doesn't always help with the draw distance issue however, objects which are just very slightly farther away from the player will be full of holes, even while using the best antialiasing mode. This setting cannot replace the antialiasing modes and instead it should complement them seeing as the resolution scale setting does a poor job at masking any jaggies on its own.
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This is a pretty unreliable method seeing as it often might fail to even work properly, while the railing here might look perfectly fine, it still often vanished and reappeared very slowly on screen even when it was not supposed to.
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This setting should only be lowered as a last resort, any values below 100% will heavily ruin the overall image. Any real benefits will only be visible while using higher values.
Texture Quality
Optimal Setting: Medium (Normal Trees) or High (Extra Eyecandy)
Higher Framerate: Low
This setting has a relatively minor visual impact, it doesn't affect most textures in any meaningful way. The only things which clearly change are the shadows on the player's weapon. When set to Low every texture will have a slightly lighter look to itself, when set to Medium most textures should have their normal look and when set to High or Ultra some textures may also have better reflections or a higher quality look to them.
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Certain objects such as these trees may look lighter from far away. Set this value to at least Medium to stop the trees from looking like this.
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There are a few extremely specific spots where setting this to High will help with the look of the game, otherwise it can even be left on Low and the game itself will not change much at all. There are no clear differences between High and Ultra, this setting could be left to at least Medium to solve the tree issue or High for the extra eyecandy and to save some extra memory.
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This setting does not solve the texture load in issue at higher settings which is visible while using binoculars or while shooting artillery rounds. This is a minor issue and it only happens for a few seconds.
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This setting has a minor visual impact while using any values and a minor performance impact overall. Most differences will be pretty difficult to notice from far away.
Texture Filtering
Optimal Setting: High
Higher Framerate: Medium (Might Reduce Microstuttering)
Better Graphics: Ultra
Textures will look very washed out when this is set to Low and overall this setting has a major visual impact for a relatively minor performance cost. Most textures will have a ring effect around them which is mainly visible while strafing left and right or while moving towards or away near a wall. This setting often poorly filters most textures even while using the Ultra setting. See the doorway on the left side in order to find the differences.
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This setting has a major visual impact and a minor performance impact. When set to at least Medium most differences might become fairly difficult to spot while playing.
Lighting Quality
Optimal Setting: High
Higher Framerate: Low (Framerate) or Medium (Eyecandy)
Better Graphics: Ultra (Worse Performance on Maps with Performance Issues)
This setting mainly controls what the shadows will look like and which shadows will be rendered. Extra eyecandy is enabled after using values such as Medium and higher.
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There aren't too many differences between High and Ultra. The lights themselves are often unaffected.
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There are a few specific areas where the shadows might be completed disabled when this setting is set to Low which may grant extra visibility.
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Overall this setting should have a fairly minor performance impact with a minor to major visual impact depending on the map, certain maps often feature very simple blobby shadows, ideally this value should be left on High seeing as maps such as Empire's Edge have a few specific buildings where the performance might be lower otherwise.
Effects Quality
Optimal Setting: Any (Probably Medium or High)
There aren't any clear differences as to what this setting affects, it didn't seem to have much of an effect over anything, as with most settings Medium or High should probably be enough. Overall there wasn't really any impact over the framerate.
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Post Process Quality
Optimal Setting: Low (Framerate and No Flicker) or High (Minor Eyecandy and Flicker)
This setting controls which objects should reflect into ponds and rivers and other similar water surfaces, certain surfaces are also enhanced. There isn't much of a point in using values other than Low and High for this setting. Overall this setting might feel a bit buggy because of some odd issues on certain maps. There isn't much of a difference between Low or Medium and High or Ultra. Notice the reflection near the shore and the improved reflections on the boat.
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This setting isn't as noticeable as it may seem when it is disabled, there's also a rather jarring problem where reflections will update too often as the camera moves making them flicker, this happens on High and Ultra. Overall this setting is mostly useful for screenshots, otherwise most maps lack any large water surfaces or any large reflectable surfaces for this setting to be effective.
The effect itself is only visible at certain angles, it may also hurt visibility during gameplay. There's also a minor ghosting effect present while laying into ponds and some other mud like surfaces. The flickering effect is also present on vehicles when using High or Ultra. Most vehicles will look slightly shinier, the effect is barely noticeable however and it's not worth using this setting in its current state.
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Ideally this setting should be left to Low, seeing as overall it has a pretty minor visual impact and it also has a huge performance impact and it doesn't seem to be working properly otherwise.
Mesh Quality
Optimal Setting: High (Framerate and Draw Distance and Reduced Microstuttering) or Ultra (Increase Draw Distance)
Higher Framerate: Low or Medium
This setting controls the draw distance of most objects and whenever they should cast more shadows, ideally it should be set to at least High or Ultra seeing as anything lower will cause models to appear out of nowhere too often and too close to the player, the increased distance itself is already pretty low and even on Ultra this issue appears too often, lowering other settings just to increase this one is worthwhile as it would make the game more enjoyable to play.
Each value from this setting does very little to help, the differences are pretty extreme and it really shows how invasive this issue is when using the lowest values.
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When using a value higher than Low some extra shadows might be thrown in. In more blocked off spaces the differences won't be very noticeable. Notice the tree and how aggressive the level of detail is, with extra branches being visible on Ultra and other smaller details, along with another tree being rendered on the far left.
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Objects might constantly appear and disappear as the player gets closer to buildings and other facades. Some textures might also look worse and when this is set to Low models will have fewer polygons overall.
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On Ultra shadows will be cast farther away and other smaller objects will be rendered earlier, the increased radius is fairly small. Finer details such as branches, cables, pieces of metal will be visible from closer away.
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The effect of this setting is also visible in the loadout menu, with certain buildings outright disappearing and a lot of detail being lost.
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This setting has a pretty minor performance impact considering its large visual impact over the game compared to other less important settings.
Terrain Quality
Optimal Setting: Medium (Enable Parallax)
Higher Framerate: Low (Disable Parallax and Gain Visibility)
This setting controls the parallax effect for the terrain, which makes rocks pop out and other similar details. There isn't much of a difference between Medium, High and Ultra meaning that this setting can be left on Medium in order to enable the parallax effect. Depending on the area itself this may slightly hurt visibility for some extra eyecandy. Most surfaces will look flatter than usual however when setting this to Low.
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This effect is widely used throughout the whole game and depending on the area it can either have a major or minor visual impact.
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Certain areas in the game might not change as badly however, the effect might not be as noticeable while standing.
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Muddy surfaces will look flattened when this setting is set to Low and tire tracks and other details will be completely lost.
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On some maps the geometry might be slightly shifted around instead of adding more depth to the terrain.
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This setting mostly comes down to preference, if a higher framerate is needed set this to Low in order to obtain a more consistent and even possibly reduce or remove any stuttering issues or to at least Medium to enable the parallax effect itself. Overall there should be a pretty decent performance boost when this setting is disabled. Larger open areas might have lower framerates than smaller more enclosed ones with this setting.
Different parts of the game are affected differently, the performance can vary.
Undergrowth Quality
Optimal Setting: Ultra
Higher Framerate: Low
This setting mainly adds shadows to the grass and other small foliage. Higher values control the shadow draw distance.
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The effects of this setting can be seen on the squad screen, although the shadows might not be applied depending on the current weather.
What this is set to mostly comes down to user preference, it has a pretty minor visual impact and it should be disabled if a higher framerate is needed.
Antialiasing Post
Optimal Setting: TAA
Higher Framerate: Off (Trees With Holes) or FXAA High (Normal Trees)
This setting has a huge visual impact over the game, ideally TAA should always be used because of the extremely poor draw distance. When this setting is set to Off trees will have holes and white dots all over them, even on lower end systems the most basic levels of FXAA would really help with this problem. Even then the antialiasing techniques do a fairly poor job at masking most jaggies, with cables, trees and other similar thin objects looking really odd from very close distances. Notice the lamp posts on the left and how some of them have entire pieces of their own models removed because of the different antialiasing modes.
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This setting mostly comes down to user preference, although for a better experience FXAA or TAA should be used. Lower end systems might not be able to handle either modes however and should disable this setting in order to gain higher framerates.
Ambient Occlusion
Optimal Setting: HBAO
Higher Framerate: Off
This setting mostly comes down to user preference, models will have extra shadows which add more depth, some vehicles may look floaty without this setting and certain areas or textures might look washed out, the visual impact can range from minor to major depending on the map or area, interior buildings will also benefit the most.
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Some levels might not end up looking too different overall, however things might tend to look a bit floatier.
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Certain levels and most vehicles will benefit from this setting, rocks and other similar objects will look better.
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This setting might have a major performance impact on slower systems unless other settings are lowered, faster systems shouldn't struggle too much however.
Optimal Settings
These are the optimal settings used for this system, among the most performance intensive settings are Resolution Scale which should be set to at least 100% and Post Process Quality which should be set to Low.
Setting the Terrain Quality to Low and the Ambient Occlusion to Off might also improve the framerate and get rid of some of the microstuttering issues.
The Motion Blur and Weapon DOF settings should also be disabled in order to instantly gain a few extra frames.
An alternative set of settings can also be used, anything below will very slightly change the look of the game. The Texture Filtering setting or the Mesh Quality and the Antialiasing should be given priority if possible.
Lowering the Mesh Quality setting and disabling the Ambient Occlusion might help in areas where the framerate might often randomly drop. Overall the game should still look mostly the same.
Gameplay was overall really smooth even with the occasionally frametime delay now and then.
The general performance is highly dependent on which map is currently being played on, certain maps, even though they shouldn't, might do worse than others. Lowering most graphical settings might not help with this issue.
Gameplay Settings
There are plenty of extra options, if anything there are more gameplay options than video options. There's plenty of freedom as far as to how and which keys should be assigned, the same keys can even be assigned to the same actions if needed.
Extra mouse buttons can also be easily assigned on their own separate slots.
There are racing games who wish they had this much control over their input methods.
For smoother aiming Raw Input should be enabled, which should ideally eliminate any mouse acceleration and provide improved mouse aiming in most cases.
Custom controls schemes can also be set for the controller, the settings are not limited to the presets.
Click on the arrows until Custom appears, then select Back and open Key Bindings, then navigate to the desired category and set the desired controller buttons under Stick.
The heads up display should be fairly customizable.
Most notifications and other tutorial annoyances can be disabled.
Audio Settings
There are a fair amount of audio settings and there's also an audio setting for the language, however currently the display language cannot be changed which is strange considering how many options there are.
Some players might be stuck with the first language they picked when they first installed the game, contacting the EA support might be the only solution in this case and its worth trying.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this article, please consider donating to PCGamingWiki's Patreon campaign.
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