Watch dogs performance problem?

bobbothner

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Hi, I just bought Watch_dogs today and tried it out on my PC. But running at medium quality and at 1080p, I only got 18-19 fps (measured by fraps) by just standing in on the road, not moving at all. Here are my PC specs:

Processor: intel i5-3350P
Motherboard: Gigabyte z77x-d3h
PSU: Seasonic G-650
Graphics: Gigabyte HD Radeon 7850 OC 2GB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2*4GB

Is it normal for it to run so slow?? I knew it was badly optimised, and I don't have a super high end PC, but that bad?

Also, which component would be the problem? CPU or GPU? Thanks!

 
Solution


It most likely would, yes, how much so, I don't know. If you were expecting same performance out of the 970 others are getting, you may be a bit disappointed. That is going to depend a lot on the games you play. Some are really demanding on the CPU. Others, not so much.

Between Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Haswell, no, not huge, but you don't need an i7 for gaming. You'd only be paying for HyperThreading (and excess heat if you leave it enabled), which does nothing for gaming.

The only...

bobbothner

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Really? Toms "best gaming cpu of the month" puts the i5-3350P in the same tier as all the new i7s though? (I'm reluctant to change CPU since that means I'd have to change both motherboard, cpu and probably RAM...).
 
Not necessarily, you could change to a more powerful ivy bridge CPU, such as the i7 3770k.
Tom's put them in the same tier as the performance is more or less same, and it's not really worth upgrading to a new CPU if the difference is less than 3 tiers.
You could look at upgrading to the 3770k; if that's not an option, the i5 3570k is also a pretty powerful CPU.
 

bobbothner

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Will the i7-3770k future proof though? I bought my PC 1,5 years ago, and being the first PC I built, I didn't take into account how it would perform later. I'd like to avoid having to build a new PC every year ;)

Does that cpu overclock easily? (I have never overclocked but plan on doing it sometime soon).

Thanks for the help!
 

whiteknights

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there is no big difference between processor i7 and i5 when it come to games , even in watch dogs :

CPU_01.png


this benchmarks proves it.

your first upgrade priority should be your GPU , i have i5 like you .. but HD 7870 XT and i get around 30-35 FPS average on High , so yes its around 10+ FPS difference between my gpu and yours.
 

bobbothner

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@whiteknights: Yeah but my CPU is only at 3.10 GHz, no overclocking possible. So is it really the graphics problem?

@deadsmoke: Is the worse mod basically making the game uglier? :/
 

deadsmoke84

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your cpu's fine. a core 2 quad is equivalent to a core i3 with hyper threading (at least that's what i heard) i can run watch dogs on a core i3 on the medium settings, so you should be able to run it on high settings easily. your gpu is fine also (high textures require 2gb vram)
 

deadsmoke84

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no, the worse mod is called that because it was made by a modder named worse. it makes the game look like it did at e3 2012(makes it look better), while keeping performance good also.
 

deadsmoke84

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it should give you better fps, while maintaining good visuals. it should allow you to run watch dogs on high maybe even ultra settings (not ultra textures). i could run it on medium with an core i3. it should work, because it worked for other people on youtube.
 


All i7 means is it has HyperThreading, which does nothing for gaming.

Your 7850 is a bit weaker than a PS4's graphics, and considering a PS4 has GDDR5 RAM and unified memory, it's pretty much ahead of your spec, and that is a very demanding game, esp whilst driving at speed with lots of people chasing you.

Normally people look for one of the more trusted performance mods, like MaLDo's Texture mod, but that is typically for people whom can run High but not Ultra. Might be worth trying though.

Your 2GB VRAM is not helping either. The only way to try and boost your performance with current spec and no mods would be to drop res. Maybe as low as 720p.
 

whiteknights

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my cpu is i5-3470 @3.20 GHz, Boost till 3.60 Ghz .. so maybe the difference will be in 3-4 FPS between both cpus
but between both gpus like i said its 10+ FPS difference .. so upgrading your gpu to something like HD 7970 will give you 20+ FPS more .. though i think your card is able to run watch dogs at higher settings than medium ... it may be a game copy issue or driver issue, whats your driver? you should upgrade to the latest one.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

at the bottom of the page you will see a graphics cards like GTX 750 Ti ( which is lower than your GPU) can run watch dogs on high with shader on medium and depth of field off , AA: SMAA
 


Well it certainly would boost performance a good deal, but you'd never get full use out of a 970 on that CPU. To give you an idea, even my old i7 950 might bottleneck a 970 slightly, and your CPU's 3DMark score is less than 2/3 of mine.

At the end of the day though, a temporary GPU solution is money lost, whereas the 970 could hang in there with your next CPU upgrade. Just don't expect a 970 on that rig to perform up to the norm.

The 970 is about the only high end GPU near the top of the performance per dollar list though, IF you can find one in stock.

 

bobbothner

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@Frag Maniac: So you're saying my CPU would bottleneck the 970?

Also is there a big difference in performance between the old i7 cpus (example i7-3770k) compared to the newer ones? What's the difference? I'm really reluctant to change mobo+CPU+GPU...
 


It most likely would, yes, how much so, I don't know. If you were expecting same performance out of the 970 others are getting, you may be a bit disappointed. That is going to depend a lot on the games you play. Some are really demanding on the CPU. Others, not so much.

Between Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Haswell, no, not huge, but you don't need an i7 for gaming. You'd only be paying for HyperThreading (and excess heat if you leave it enabled), which does nothing for gaming.

The only time it makes sense IMO to go i7 is if it comes with a hefty clock difference, like the i7 4790k, which is Intel's only CPU that runs at a stock speed of 4GHz. And that speed is nice to have even if you plan to OC, because not all CPUs OC well. The 4790k runs hot though.

IMO 2016 will be THE year for big hardware changes. Nvidia will have Pascal with stacked DRAM, unified memory, and NVLink. Intel will have Skylake smaller die budget platform CPUs compatible with DDR4. MS will have W10 and Dx12. And the DDR4 RAM by then will be lower in price and latency.

One alternative to the 970 would be a 760, which start at around $180 new and is more suited to your CPU, but it's barely 50% more powerful than what you have if that, and prices on them anymore are not nearly as good bang for buck as the 970. The 970 is roughly 2.4 times as powerful as the 7850, and even if the bottleneck knocks that down to 2 times as powerful, it's still a HUGE leap in performance and you'd already have a GPU good enough for your CPU upgrade when you get around to it.

Bottlenecks aren't as bad as some think, I just wanted you to know what to expect. Prior to my 7970 I was running a mere GTS 250 on my i7 950 CPU, but it played games pretty well anyway. Well, until they went into graphics overload a couple years ago anyway.

 
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bobbothner

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Thanks for your answers, all of you!

@Frag Maniac: last question, I promise!
I ran a couple of potential benchmarks with futuremark, and adding a gtx 970 to my rig almost doubles my 3dmark score. So you would recommend upgrading the GPU now, and then waiting for 2016 for new intel CPUs and platforms to make it worthwhile?

Thanks for the help!
 


Yeah I'm not surprised, and that is right in line with my estimations. Roughly twice the power, probably more without that bottleneck.

I say go for it. It's been a LONG time since such a high end GPU has released being near the top of the performance per dollar list at launch prices, esp an Nvidia one.

Just be careful what brand and vendor you choose. The 970 is a great card, but there's been a few quirks, mostly coil whine and such.

And one more thing, don't be surprised if you have to update your MB BIOS to the latest version if you haven't. Some have had to do that on older MB chipsets to get the 970 to work.
 

whiteknights

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a side question: when updating the MB bios, do it have to be exactly the same revision number of my MB?, because i have gigabyte h61m-s2p , and not sure about the rev. number 2.0 or 3.0, etc..

also in CPU-Z it says Rev. B3 , while on the MB box there is no "B3".
 


Don't worry about Rev #. All Rev # means is what iteration of BIOS it released with. The physical board is still the same and all MB releases within a given model should update to the latest BIOS.

As far as tools like CPU-Z not listing the exact version, that is common and nothing to worry about. It's often just the tool needing an update. The rule of thumb is if you run into compat issues, just go ahead and update to the latest BIOS version.

You're better off worrying about your method of BIOS flashing. Always choose the safest method, not the install from desktop way. ASUS has a great BIOS flashing tool called EZ Flash for many years now. I'm sure others do too.

You just DL the BIOS version you want, boot into the BIOS, locate the install location, and it installs it without having to even boot into the OS. No USB flash drive necessary. This is by far the easiest safe method to use.