Is the game running bad on PC for anyone else?

I was wondering if anyone else is having serious issues running the game. I have the game set to the optimized specs from the nvidia geforce experience and the game seems to run terrible no matter what I turn down. I keep getting framerate drops and freezes. I have the latest nvidia driver as of this post and my specs are:

i7-4930k overclocked to 4.1ghz

32gb of ram

nvidia gtx 690 4gb

Edit: I tried turning v-sync on and it seemed to work temporarily but eventually it'd just go back to running bad. Also I get crazy graphical glitches after changing video settings in game. I would see objects through other objects (like seeing a billboard through a building).

I remember Brad mentioning that he was having some trouble getting it to run smoothly, too.

I enabled vsync in the Nvidia control panel and that kinda....worked? I dunno. The game mostly just studders when I'm driving.

Wasn't Jeff discussing how poorly the PC version ran on his gaming rig on the most recent Bombcast?

It's very poorly optimized. A lot of people with beastly machines are saying they can't get it to run smooth. The game hogs a lot of VRAM, and it's not like the game looks mind blowingly amazing or anything. With everything cranked up to maximum it's a great looking game in most areas, but not good enough to warrant the massive performance drop you get from setting everything to ultra. Some scenes look super flat during the day, which is why is also why it runs smoother when the sun is shining. They have a lot of work to do on this thing.

It runs alright for me. Nothing special. I wouldn't say it performs awful but it's not amazing either. It's kinda weird when you drive, like not hitching but.. awkward? Everywhere else it's fine for the most part.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/28/5757992/watch-dogs-pc-performance

Polygon made an article about how it does not run well on PC. I get decent performance on high but not on Ultra. For the record, my PC plays anything on Ultra at 60 fps no problem. Watch_Dogs is the only game I have any problem with and it is far to look good enough to justify it. It's badly optimized, though mileage may vary depending of your specific specs.

Don't worry, you're not alone having these problems and hopefully Ubisoft will fix (some of) them.

I found that the Geforce experience was recommending Ultra textures even though in game, it was telling me that you need 3GB of VRAM for ultra textures or it stutters like a motherfucker. Once that was changed, it worked fine for me. I'm not getting constant sixty but it's staying north of 35fps with TXAA X 2 and averaging 45 fps. Obviously VRAM isn't a problem for you.

I played the game before installing the new driver and it ran like crap. I would check if you have the latest driver installed because I had to install it manually.

I can't get Watch Dogs to run at any fucking detail level, so. Take that as you will. It stutters and is completely unplayable even on low, and I don't feel as though my rig is entirely the worst. It's not the best, but it runs games pretty damn well and AC:IV looked pretty good. This is ridiculous.

It's pretty poorly optimized. There are a couple fixes for the stuttering problem that I tried, some command line input on startup. Don't remember it but I'm sure it'll turn up if you google it. It seemed to work pretty well for me.

Its a pretty poor version of the game. Honestly, PS4 version seems like THE version to get. And that isn't just my sony leanings talking it just seems like the game was built from the ground up for it.

Very poorly optimized, but with a lot of tweaking I got it to a pretty stable frame rate, but it still stutters a lot while driving, and a tiny but while walking around the city.

I'll have to try this.

This seems to be the fix @dystopiax is talking about. I'm going to try it later tonight, as the stuttering is really bad for me also. Will let you duders know how it works out for me.

It runs just fine for me on medium/high (looks just grand as well) and I have 1/16 of what most of you probably have for a rig as well. A solid 60. I counted the pixels and everything.

Thanks duder. EDIT: Tried it and it works! No more stuttery driving for me!

Just tried it as well, and it seems to help quite a bit. Driving is much more smooth, and frame rate is more stable.

The word on the street now is bad PC optimization. There is no reason why it should run like that. I hope they fix those problems with a patch or something soon.

when i put everything on ultra there is a bit of hitching up when it rains and there is a lot of cars and other things happening. but on my req grafics it runs just fine. and my custom is almost the same as ultra
althought i had had some input delay when buying from shops so i always end up pulling out my gun when buying something unless im patient.
and also a small hiching when autosaving

Holy shit, that fix actually worked. It still hitched when loading in and saving for a split second, but that actually made the game more stable!

Ooh ill pin that and try it tomorrow.

That is pretty much the only issue I am having. The stuttering when driving / running too fast.

Other than that it has been smooth, and while it is not breaking any new ground graphics wise, it looks fine.

I've had no trouble with a mix of high and ultra setting on my 660 ti. The only things that really kill the performance for me are ultra shadows and textures, but the game looks great with those turned down.

Yeah framerate and screen tears where literally giving me headaches. For now I found just limiting the framerate to 30 fps using the adaptive half fresh like in AC IV for pc has made the game somewhat playable then before.

Go to textures in display options before starting the game.

Turn textures to medium.

For some reason this is fucking the whole game. Any sort of AA above 2x msaa seems to also completely destroy it.

Thanks duder, worked perfectly, driving is actually playable now instead of pausing every 2 seconds to load new shit in.

Totalbiscuit mentioned in his 'WTF Is' of the game that his gaming rig cannot maintain 60fps on ultra or high despite having 2 titans, an i7 processor and 32GB Ram in his machine and an SSD. I think the game is awfully optimized, it's one of the main reasons I'm holding off on it.

I tried the command line fix from steam and while it made things improve a bit and driving doesn't cause as much stuttering, it still causes some.

Yeh i tried with no luck either, or maybe it helped marginally i dont know. I feel like this might be more helpful for amd users maybe.

Wait and hope for a fix I suppose.

@mrbubbles said:

Problem is your graphics card, it's fast but because it only has 2GB VRAM per GPU, you need to turn down AA and texture quality until you're not getting stutters anymore due to running out of VRAM and game having to use HDD cache.

My save got corrupted 12hr in and Uplay synced said corrupted save to the cloud, forcing me to restart my progress.

Does that count as a serious issue?

Bad stutters while driving so far, super lame.

Mostly 60 fps with occasional hitch running at 1080 all on high with FXAA. Game seems badly optimized considering that my rig is an i7 4770k with SLi 770s

It runs poorly for pretty much everybody. The only tip I can give is to put the game in a borderless window mode as opposed to full-screen mode. That alleviated some of the stuttering for me, but not all.

But yeah, I think I've learned my lesson about Ubisoft PC games after this and AC: Black Flag. Terrible optimization.

Anybody tried running it at 1440x900p with 30fps frame lock?

I dunno, i don't have the game but that would seem to be the optimal settings for the game since it was targeted for the consoles (ps4).

Really glad i didn't get this game, I wanted it for the pc for the graphics but it seems like it wouldn't run right on my 7950 and the ps4 version doesn't look all that great.

Seems to me the fault lies less with the graphics cards and more with some optimisation issues on the developers end.

Especially as people are running into this under Nvidia's "recommended specs".

I can understand hypothetically if the textures are too much for it, but i've never run into these problems regarding AA (and nor should i with a gtx 690).

Releasing this game with it defaulting to high textures on rigs that are struggling with that indicates to me that this game is not intended to run this way. Don't turn around blaming the video cards or you become part of the problem. They shouldn't be let to get away with this shit.

@rowr: Texture quality and AA seem to have the highest impact on VRAM usage, hence adjusting those settings should help with stuttering. AA filters certainly look like they could use some optimization but considering 2GB is the requirement for High-quality textures, I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be completely smooth with just that. It's same thing with Ultra which officially requires 3GB but you really want 4GB for stutter-free experience. To further illustrate that point, here is a screenshot I took from MSI Afterburner after restarting the game and doing ~5 minutes of driving. My CPU and GPU are not top-notch so it's only getting me 40-50FPS on Ultra, but because GPU has 4GB of memory, I'm not getting any drops despite driving fast car around the city center.

I'm sorry for blaming your videocard and I'm sorry if I hurt it's feelings. (just kidding, sort of)

no. it runs great for me. I have everything on high- even textures.

If you're having trouble then lower your graphic settings- especially AA and Textures.

You shouldn't have to, as your graphics card looks like it should support it, but this game is poorly optimized from what I read around the web.

I personally have no trouble with the game. It's like butter.

Yeh i'm not debating hi res textures impact vram, just that it seems to be less smooth than even is being recommended by Nvidia and defaulting to in general in the game. Indicating a performance issue with the game.

Really from the way this game actually looks - which is average as fuck compared to some of the big hitters in recent time like crysis 3 and metro, it shouldn't be impacting nearly so much on high end systems. But Ubisofts track record with optimisation isn't something remotely in question.

Lets be fucking real here, you shouldn't be having issues running this game with sli titans.

got it running at around 30-45 fps on 1080p high settings(motion blur off) and ultra textures on my gtx 480, 2600k system...not getting terrible hitching, only stuttering when i drive too fast around the city.

@jsnyder82: The funny thing is that Black Flag runs perfectly fine on this rig and I never had any issues with it.

@crommi: so you're saying I should toss my 4GB 670 back in and see if that fixes it because ubisoft can't program for 2 videocards (that's technically what my 690 is)?

Helped quite a bit, thanks!

I'v found that turning down everything to high(running on a 770 2gb but getting a r9 290 in the next couple days so will update) keeps the stuttering down and turning the textures down to medium would cut it down to none. It's explained here whats going on http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/watch_dogs_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html

Well, that is another option. Your 670 4GB would probably run the game much smoother because it has twice the ram.

I decided to put this game on my backlog list until the devs send out a patch for the stuttering. I am running the GTX 770, tried all the recommendations and it still seems to stutter.

Medium textures makes it run fine for me. Really badly optimized considering it looks a few years old even if it looks much better than the console versions.

This game is poorly optimized for PC, but what I find even more ridiculous is the communication. Clearly both Nvidia and Ubisoft recommends 3GB of Video Memory for "Ultra Textures" (Indicated in the GeForce Experience and the graphic settings for the game), but it has been proven that the game uses more, even more closely to 4GB, on "Ultra Textures" in a 1920x1080 resolution with no anti aliasing. So either we have a game that uses more memory than it should (my guess) or it's intended and the communication here, for whatever reason, is incorrect.

So what we have here in this current condition:

• High textures equals 4X MSAA, 1920x1080 under 3GB of video memory
• Ultra textures equals 0 AA, 1920x1080 over 3GB of video memory

Seeing that Nvidia's new reference video cards (non-Titans) targets for 3GB of onboard memory I find this extremely troublesome. People purchasing a GTX 780ti shouldn't expect a game running poorly in a 1080p resolution, maybe in a 2160p (4k) , but definitely not in 1080p. Ubisoft need some serious check & fix for Watch Dogs on PC because this is not acceptable.

Runs alright for me with a GTX 780, disabled motion blur out of preference, and forced Vsync on via Nvidia control panel just like for Assassin's creed 4, other than that, a girl running this benchmark vid suggests you can fix stuttering by setting the GPU buffer manually

There's probably very simple explanation for the misleading system requirements, Nvidia is the technology partner for this game and their 900$ top-end gaming card (GTX 780 Ti) comes with 3GB ram. You can't really expect Ubisoft to screw over Nvidia who provided them with tools, libraries and hardware by announcing that you need 4GB card (AMD) to run Watch_Dogs at Ultra settings. That being said, the difference between "High" and "Ultra" textures is not something you notice unless you're walking around the city. While it is nice that signs and billboards look sharper and you can actually read what it says on restrauran menus, it's by no means necessary and even "High" is very sharp compared to other open-world games.

But I am little surprised at the GPU usage, I assume it's due to PhysX but I thought it would switch to more optimized GPU processing if you had Nvidia card installed.