Watch Dogs PC troubleshooting and research thread

[Andytizer 269]

Wiki article is here: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Watch_Dogs

 

Please report your findings below.

[Pridit 39]

I've been doing a bit of digging on this. I've found a few things out. Firstly disabling mouse acceleration/smoothing which I've also added to the article plus a deferred fx quality setting which is set to console. Still unsure what kind of difference this makes when set to PC, but most are saying it's a placebo and any screenshots are just downscaled 4K or normal Ultra setting. The comparisons further reinforce this, as there's seemingly no difference.

 

Mouse accel: http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/26c0v3/mouse_accelaration_fix/

Deferred FX: http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/26c3ew/deferredfxqualityconsole/

 

3 GB VRAM is also required for Ultra texture quality and they aren't joking around with this. I have a 2 GB MSI 770 and it just doesn't cut it, even with a 4770k. I'm hoping there's a day one patch or drivers to resolve some of the performance issues, but on High texture quality and Ultra everything else (excluding anything fancy lika AA, AO) it's mostly smooth but still with a few frame drops here and there. The game also runs with 4 GB RAM so 6 GB is not a hard set requirement.

 

There's some AA and texture comparisons here: http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/26da4g/watch_dogs_antialiasing_comparison_on_pc/

[Andytizer 269]

Reduce stuttering, source: http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/26fji7/get_rid_of_ultrasetting_stuttering_by_adding/

 

Make a shortcut to the game and add "-disablepagefilecheck" without the quotation marks after the target and the stuttering should be extremely minimal (essentially just when driving very fast and loading new environments).

[Andytizer 269]

From the Nvidia website:

GeForce 337.88 WHQL, Game Ready Watch Dogs Drivers Increase Frame Rates By Up To 75%: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-337-88-whql-watch-dog-drivers

 

Make sure to update your drivers before launching Watch Dogs!

[Pridit 39]

GeForce just did a huge article on Watch Dogs comparing and explaining the settings plus benchmarks with a variety of different cards: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

[Andytizer 269]

The WSGF research thread: http://www.wsgf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=27302&start=50

[ThunderKnight 2]

AMD Catalyst 14.6 Beta Driver :- http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

[Garrett 214]

A topic on the Steam forums indicates that Going offline on Uplay increases performance; if this really is reproducible (by benchmarking or whatever) it could be useful to include it.

[Mirh 103]

A topic on the Steam forums indicates that Going offline on Uplay increases performance; if this really is reproducible (by benchmarking or whatever) it could be useful to include it.

Post #4 claims you would simply need to disable "invasion feature"

[Nocta 3]

I don't know if it fits here (sorry if not), but the Lunayahs Enhanced Mod (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=390558) for Watch Dogs seems to combine the best of the different mods existing (including TheWorseMod).

[Mirh 103]

If it's something which tweaks the game engine I would find this nice to have in the relative game page (improved textures seems legit too)

 

But I can't understand all this hype for ENBseries first, and sweetFX (and all the various alternatives) now.

They are simply post processing filters injectors... they can technically work with any game.

At maximum we could dedicate a separate page like that for borderless fullscreen methods

 

Back to your mod, the original post of your link is a bit messed, anyway since it's nearly 1.5GB I believe it may fall into the first category, even though... as I said it has too much things to be simple to install.. and in my opinion we would have better to endorse simple and effective modifications, not ones which could strain an i7 cpu with 16GB of ram..

 

But I don't own the game, and I don't know how it works and how much all those ubisoft complains are founded. So, I hope somebody else could give you a better judgment

[Guest]

-snip because poor grammar, I'll just re-word it later-

[Nocta 3]

I didn't tried it myself (I don't have the game), I was just reading about it being kind of an attempt to get as close as possible to the E3 preview which was really impressive from what I remember.

 

I agree with you Mirh on the overhype around ENBseries and sweetFX and didn't realize it was using it, sorry.

[Guest]

The only benefit I can see by using the mod is the fact that the Ultra textures can easily be enabled? Otherwise all it seems to do is amp up to 11 the DoF effects. The game itself still runs like ass.

[Nocta 3]

Ok forget about it! :)

 

Quick side-question: I loved the part of the wiki called "selected mods" for Oblivion.

It's really nice when you don't know the game, don't want to modify it too much or break the game but still want some nice improvement.

 

And I find it in general really difficult to find good and up-to-date infos about mods.

Especially if you're searching for mods which improve the graphics while keeping the original atmosphere (but also for well-done complete-changer ones like Stalker Misery for example).

 

A good example is GTA 3/VC/SA, those games clearly need some mods to update the graphics but if you want something without a ton of supercars and real advertisement, it's quite tricky...

 

Could we have such recommendations more often in the PCGamingWiki pages? :-D