Benchmarked: How Well Does Watch Dogs Run On your PC?

How We Tested Watch Dogs

I wanted to test Watch Dogs in Surround and Eyefinity configurations, using three monitors, but wasn't able to get the aspect ratio correct using either GeForce or Radeon cards. Hopefully this is something the developers address in a patch. For now, we'll focus on single-monitor performance.

As always, we strive to represent results across a wide range of graphics hardware. Unfortunately, I don't have a GeForce GTX 780 Ti in our Canadian lab, so I did the next best thing and overclocked a GeForce GTX Titan to 780 Ti-like performance levels. This took a 1750 MHz memory clock rate (equal to the 780 Ti) and a 994 MHz GPU Boost clock to compensate for the CUDA core deficiency. I also set the power envelope to its maximum 106% setting in Afterburner. Resulting performance should come close to a GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

Drivers are a huge deal when a game first comes out, and we made it a point to test using the very latest software from both companies. Nvidia gave us early access to its 337.88 build, while AMD sent over Catalyst 14.6 Beta, both including optimizations for Watch Dogs. Indeed, AMD's performance went up quite a bit under the new driver; it was fairly dismal with 14.4.

Also, the texture detail setting is kept at Medium across our benchmarks, ensuring graphics memory doesn't affect our results too severely. The texture detail option is separate from the game's detail presets, so it's adjustable on its own.

Graphics cards like the Radeon R9 290X require a substantial amount of power, so XFX sent us its PRO850W 80 PLUS Bronze-certified power supply. This modular PSU employs a single +12 V rail rated for 70 A. XFX claims continuous (not peak) output of up to 850 W at 50 degrees Celsius.

We've almost exclusively eliminated mechanical disks in the lab, preferring solid-state storage for alleviating I/O-related bottlenecks. Samsung sent all of our labs 256 GB 840 Pros, so we standardize on these exceptional SSDs.