Windows Watch_Dogs

[monokitty]

Anyone playing it via Bootcamp? It's got some beefy 'recommended' hardware requirements:

Processor: Eight core - Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 25 GB available space

$59 on Steam, available now:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/243470

 

[Dirtyharry50]

An i7 is not an 8 core processor. It is a four core processor with hyper threading tech to simulate an additional four cores. It performs a little better than an i5 for apps that actually attempt to use more than four cores which in the gaming world is very rare thus far. It cannot compare to a real 8 core CPU.

The reason I bring that up is that while the game might take advantage of the hyper threading, it is more likely they are recommending the slight bump in speed to 3.5 GHz for Intel and 4 GHz for AMD. I highly doubt a console port would really use hyper threading or 8 cores unless the console hardware version it was ported from did the same. Do current consoles have 8 cores? Maybe they do. I don't own one.

There isn't a game on the market that requires a real 8 cores that I am aware of and it's a good thing too because rare would be the gamer with such a rig. They'd have very few people to sell the game to.

The minimums are:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz

DirectX 11 graphics card with 1 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5770

From this we can conclude it should run decently on a fairly wide range of relatively recent hardware although you aren't going to max everything with less than the recommended. That hardly means it won't look and play great just the same.

I do also take this as an indicator of system requirements starting to climb now with ports coming from the current gen console hardware.

 

[saturnotaku]

From this we can conclude it should run decently on a fairly wide range of relatively recent hardware although you aren't going to max everything with less than the recommended. That hardly means it won't look and play great just the same.

I wouldn't be too certain of that. Not sure if you watch TotalBiscuit on YouTube, but on his first impressions video, he can't run the game on a desktop with an Intel Extreme CPU and SLI GeForce Titan cards (the ones that cost a grand a piece) at max settings and maintain a constant 60 fps. He mentions that even with all settings on low, the system can't do better than about 95 fps. He tested on multiple systems, including notebooks, and it's apparently not as well optimized as it should be.

Though very long (nearly an hour), his video is well worth watching.

 

[madeirabhoy]

realistically, at low settings, will this play on my 2011 iMac 3.1 i5 wight HD 6970M 1mb?

 

[Irishman]

Well, even on the PS4 and XBone, the game tops out rez-wise at 900p and 720p respectively. I'm not sure if the consoles can enable all the eye-candy.

Does anyone - besides the developer - know?

 

[monokitty]

I played it on a 2012 27" iMac with the NVIDIA 675MX 1GB graphics card - no trouble running it whatsoever. I couldn't record the frame rate, but playability wasn't an issue at all; unless, of course, you think anything less than 60 fps is unplayable. (It wasn't running at 60 fps for sure.)

At the native res of 2560-by-1600, it ran at medium detail settings and minimal AA without any trouble. At 1680-by-1050, it can run at high detail settings without any trouble. If you want to rock high details with higher AA, you'll probably need either 2GB of VRAM, or the resolution tuned down to 720p, or both. Anti-aliasing cranked up requires serious GPU horsepower. The game looked and ran well at the native resolution on medium detail settings on full screen.

----------

realistically, at low settings, will this play on my 2011 iMac 3.1 i5 wight HD 6970M 1mb?

You can probably play it medium/high settings with a resolution higher than 720p. You won't need to settle for low settings.

 

[davelanger]

Well, even on the PS4 and XBone, the game tops out rez-wise at 900p and 720p respectively. I'm not sure if the consoles can enable all the eye-candy.

Does anyone - besides the developer - know?

It looks great on the ps4, the only issue is the pop in of vehicles and peds when driving but it seems like the PC version has that too even on a high end rig. So that is a programming issue.

The game looks amazing at night in the rain on PS4. during the day it looks good but not nearly as good as at night.

Here are my quick pros and cons.

Pros

The hacking is very fun and a great addition to this type of game.
The AI is really great and the cops are pretty smart and the enemy Ai act like real humans, not like all seeing robots. So you can actually stealth pretty well.
I have been to Chicago quite a few times and its pretty spot on, it does feel like a living breathing city.
The GPS being on the road is a great addition so you can watch the road and not have to watch a dot on the map when driving. I can actual enjoy the beauty of the game.
There is a ton of side missions to so it seems like the game will never get boring or tedious like most open world games if you rotate the different types of side missions.


Cons
The driving is a little floaty and could be better. I do like the motorcycle the best to get around. It probably feels the best to drive.
The controls are good but they are more like AC than GTA so that isn't the best for this kind of game. Its weird not having a melee or jump button. But I hope I get used to it. It doesnt ruin the game, it just makes it feel weird.
Some missions are auto fail, which can be head scratching like of of the first missions i am chasing a car and the game thought he got too far away so I failed the mission even though I could still see his car in the distance.
The main character suffers from Bales Batman voice which can get grating just like batmans voice, but that is more of a nitpick.

This game isn't a disappointment at all. Most reviews seem to be in the 8 range and that is pretty accurate based on the two hours or so i have put into it.
The game is a good foundation for future games.

All they have to do is add more hacking options , fix up the driving and give us the ability to melee and jump. I also think the game looks great, sure its not as good as the 2012 E3 footage but I would rather they scale back the graphics and all in all this great AI living breathing city, than have pretty graphics and boring AI and a boring City.

One I was walking down the street just profiling people and this one guy rear ended another at a red light, the guy who got rear ended got out of his car and said dammit I don't need this *****.
It was pretty funny.

Another which is actually pretty damn cool, I was doing one of those gang hide out missions, and I was going between the cameras, and I guess I wasn't hidden well enough or I was taking too long, but one of the gang members spotted me and the next thing I knew I was getting shut up while I was hacking the cameras.

Its great to know that you are not invisible while hacking around inside the cameras the enemies can actually find you while you are doing that. Also, its great to see enemy AI flanking you and not just running straight at you like they do in a lot of open world games, the enemy AI actually work together to try and kill you.

 

[Hakiroto]

I played last night (on the iMac in my signature) using Windows 8.1 in Boot Camp. It automatically puts the textures to ultra (as that needs 3GB Video Ram) and everything else on the high preset. At the native resolution it's not amazingly smooth with those settings. I checked with Fraps and I was getting anywhere from 25-40. I didn't play for long enough to see it being a problem but I tend to prefer it running higher than that so I'll have a play around and find a sweet spot. Not that I'm saying it's happening in this thread but when discussing game performance I too often see people saying "oh, it runs perfect on my system" when it's pretty obvious that it won't and it's just a waste of everyone's time. I know now that I have a top end iMac for gaming so I at least have a decent understanding of what will and won't run great. It's a forum to help people, not to flex how your system is better than someone else's. That said, it's a nice looking game and I had fun for the hour or so I played last night. Have fun, everyone!

 

[Nermal]

I got the PS4 version yesterday and it's fun enough, although driving is a challenge because all the computer-controlled cars are driving on the wrong side of the road and I keep crashing into them

 

[garnerx]

I highly doubt a console port would really use hyper threading or 8 cores unless the console hardware version it was ported from did the same. Do current consoles have 8 cores? Maybe they do. I don't own one.

They do, actually. Eight cores at something like 1.6 GHz. One or two cores are reserved for the OS.

 

[MICHAELSD]

I'm optimistic it'll run well on my rMBP although running under 1080p looks awful on my TV and MBP due to lack of upscaling.

Q6660 which is minimum is far inferior to most i7s.

 

[saturnotaku]

I got the PS4 version yesterday and it's fun enough, although driving is a challenge because all the computer-controlled cars are driving on the wrong side of the road and I keep crashing into them

In Chicago (where the game is set), and the entire western hemisphere for that matter, we drive on the right-hand side.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

I wouldn't be too certain of that. Not sure if you watch TotalBiscuit on YouTube, but on his first impressions video, he can't run the game on a desktop with an Intel Extreme CPU and SLI GeForce Titan cards (the ones that cost a grand a piece) at max settings and maintain a constant 60 fps. He mentions that even with all settings on low, the system can't do better than about 95 fps. He tested on multiple systems, including notebooks, and it's apparently not as well optimized as it should be.

Though very long (nearly an hour), his video is well worth watching.

You bring up a good point I should have kept in mind in my reply above. There is always the possibility of a poor or poorly optimized port from console. We've seen that plenty of times and I should have made mention of that possibility always existing. I was just focusing on the specs assuming a quality port.

I consider it stupid to market something that won't run well on most average gaming PCs. They shoot themselves in the foot doing that, wasting an opportunity for increased sales, good company reputation that leads to further sales down the road, etc., etc. Sony learned this lesson the hard way with EverQuest II which was far too demanding at a time when World of Warcraft which it was competing with (both released in 2004) would run on anything. The lesson learned there is reflected in their choice to go with WoW-like graphics in EverQuest Next and more forgiving system requirements overall compared to what they were asking of users back in 2004. I know that's not a console port but it speaks to the idea of making something the typical PC user can actually run with acceptable performance.

I didn't see TB's video although I do watch them sometimes. Based on what you quote him reporting, I still wouldn't know to what extent the game is scalable and able to provide a quality experience although not set to the max. I understand some people feel a need for everything to be max all the time but it is possible for many to enjoy a game which looks and performs well at lesser settings depending on the game and how well it scales to various hardware.

Personally, I am heading towards owning a console for titles like this where I can play with a good experience on the originally intended platform and not deal with the issues of console ports.

----------

I played it on a 2012 27" iMac with the NVIDIA 675MX 1GB graphics card - no trouble running it whatsoever. I couldn't record the frame rate, but playability wasn't an issue at all; unless, of course, you think anything less than 60 fps is unplayable. (It wasn't running at 60 fps for sure.)

At the native res of 2560-by-1600, it ran at medium detail settings and minimal AA without any trouble. At 1680-by-1050, it can run at high detail settings without any trouble. If you want to rock high details with higher AA, you'll probably need either 2GB of VRAM, or the resolution tuned down to 720p, or both. Anti-aliasing cranked up requires serious GPU horsepower. The game looked and ran well at the native resolution on medium detail settings on full screen.

----------



You can probably play it medium/high settings with a resolution higher than 720p. You won't need to settle for low settings.

Now that's what I was thinking of originally. If it's a decent port and scales well it should look and run fine and lo and behold it does. It's a shame poor TB cannot run max everything with high fps on his uber rig but oh, well. Most mere mortals do not own such machines anyway and that's the crowd they really need to make sure can have a good experience because that is where the money is for them.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

They do, actually. Eight cores at something like 1.6 GHz. One or two cores are reserved for the OS.

That's cool. So it stands to reason that depending on how the console version is coded, perhaps in some cases (maybe a lot coming up) they can take advantage of hyper threading on i7 CPUs for increased performance but the point still stands an i7 is not an 8 core CPU and is not in the same league performance-wise.

The only reason I harp on that point is simply to point out that performance is not likely to be terribly less on straight 4 core CPUs such as the i5 series while the GHz speed differences are not great.

 

[garnerx]

Sounds like it's just a badly optimised game, so i5/i7 probably won't make much difference. According to the performance analysis on Eurogamer the framerate is unstable no matter what hardware you throw at it. They say the PC version can be vsync'd to 30fps or 60fps, but either way it still stutters, even with a very high end graphics card.

I downloaded it this morning so I'll have a look at it after work - I'm expecting to be disappointed.

 

[monokitty]

I played last night (on the iMac in my signature) using Windows 8.1 in Boot Camp. It automatically puts the textures to ultra (as that needs 3GB Video Ram) and everything else on the high preset. At the native resolution it's not amazingly smooth with those settings. I checked with Fraps and I was getting anywhere from 25-40. I didn't play for long enough to see it being a problem but I tend to prefer it running higher than that so I'll have a play around and find a sweet spot. Not that I'm saying it's happening in this thread but when discussing game performance I too often see people saying "oh, it runs perfect on my system" when it's pretty obvious that it won't and it's just a waste of everyone's time. I know now that I have a top end iMac for gaming so I at least have a decent understanding of what will and won't run great. It's a forum to help people, not to flex how your system is better than someone else's. That said, it's a nice looking game and I had fun for the hour or so I played last night. Have fun, everyone!

How's it run on Ultra at 1080p?

 

[Skylitfly]

Thinking about buying it. Not sure how well it will run on rMBP under BootCamp. Anyone tried yet?

 

[saturnotaku]

Thinking about buying it. Not sure how well it will run on rMBP under BootCamp. Anyone tried yet?

1 GB of vRAM is going to be a limiting factor. You'll probably want to start at medium settings, no FSAA, and go from there.

 

[MICHAELSD]

Thinking about buying it. Not sure how well it will run on rMBP under BootCamp. Anyone tried yet?

Which rMBP? Should run decently on a 650M+.

Will try in a few hours. Caved in and "Steamed" it. Probably first person to say that lol.

 

[Anarchy99]

watch dogs on rMBP

i have a the original rMBP with the 650m I'm wondering how well will watchdogs run in boot camp
has anyone tested it?

thanks

 

[matty1551]

I played at 1080P all HIGH settings.

Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad Core Xeon 4,1
32 GB RAM
2GB GTX660

 

[lucifiel]

The official minimum specs state that a GTX 460 is the minimum requirement.

The 650M has more pipelines/cores than the 460, so i think you should be able to run it. But I wouldn't try to go past low/med specs.

People with very powerful rigs are getting done over by the poor optimisation in the game...

 

[MICHAELSD]

The game runs at 2880x1880 at low settings with High textures. I'll be playing at 1080p on my TV but I think from my first few minutes I can do a mix of Ultra and Low on my rMBP at 1080p.

 

[MrXiro]

It looks great on the ps4, the only issue is the pop in of vehicles and peds when driving but it seems like the PC version has that too even on a high end rig. So that is a programming issue.

The game looks amazing at night in the rain on PS4. during the day it looks good but not nearly as good as at night.

Here are my quick pros and cons.

Pros

The hacking is very fun and a great addition to this type of game.
The AI is really great and the cops are pretty smart and the enemy Ai act like real humans, not like all seeing robots. So you can actually stealth pretty well.
I have been to Chicago quite a few times and its pretty spot on, it does feel like a living breathing city.
The GPS being on the road is a great addition so you can watch the road and not have to watch a dot on the map when driving. I can actual enjoy the beauty of the game.
There is a ton of side missions to so it seems like the game will never get boring or tedious like most open world games if you rotate the different types of side missions.


Cons
The driving is a little floaty and could be better. I do like the motorcycle the best to get around. It probably feels the best to drive.
The controls are good but they are more like AC than GTA so that isn't the best for this kind of game. Its weird not having a melee or jump button. But I hope I get used to it. It doesnt ruin the game, it just makes it feel weird.
Some missions are auto fail, which can be head scratching like of of the first missions i am chasing a car and the game thought he got too far away so I failed the mission even though I could still see his car in the distance.
The main character suffers from Bales Batman voice which can get grating just like batmans voice, but that is more of a nitpick.

This game isn't a disappointment at all. Most reviews seem to be in the 8 range and that is pretty accurate based on the two hours or so i have put into it.
The game is a good foundation for future games.

All they have to do is add more hacking options , fix up the driving and give us the ability to melee and jump. I also think the game looks great, sure its not as good as the 2012 E3 footage but I would rather they scale back the graphics and all in all this great AI living breathing city, than have pretty graphics and boring AI and a boring City.

One I was walking down the street just profiling people and this one guy rear ended another at a red light, the guy who got rear ended got out of his car and said dammit I don't need this *****.
It was pretty funny.

Another which is actually pretty damn cool, I was doing one of those gang hide out missions, and I was going between the cameras, and I guess I wasn't hidden well enough or I was taking too long, but one of the gang members spotted me and the next thing I knew I was getting shut up while I was hacking the cameras.

Its great to know that you are not invisible while hacking around inside the cameras the enemies can actually find you while you are doing that. Also, its great to see enemy AI flanking you and not just running straight at you like they do in a lot of open world games, the enemy AI actually work together to try and kill you.

Which is better, Infamous or Watch Dogs, can pick up either for around 35 bucks each on ps4. Wondering which to get.

 

[MICHAELSD]

These graphics maxed don't meet the hype, trailers, or even the recent commercials... Disappointment.