Watch Dogs - My Performance And Thoughts (PC)

CPU: i5 3570K @4.2 GHz
RAM: 16 GB
GFX: GTX 660 Ti 3GB VRAM
Windows 7 64-Bit
Resolution: 1920x1080
7200RPM HDD
Pagefile On Another HDD (Also turned it off before with no performance difference)
Nvidia Shader Cache: Off/On makes no difference for me

Average FPS: 30-40 (30-35 mostly when driving, 40-45 mostly on foot)
30-45 Overall (See edit below)


Currently, the hot topic about Watch Dogs is the performance issues.

I've been playing the game for a few days and most of my performance issues are dealing with Level Of Detail (see Edit at bottom of post) and Reflections ( Reflections on High settings for now). Unlike a lot of others, I don't have much of a problem that I can see running the textures at Ultra settings. All of the other settings are enabled and set to Ultra as well. No Vsync.

I still mess with my Anti-Aliasing setting from time to time so I don't have one used option for that yet, but I don't use any TXAA or MSAAX options. I've been playing around with Temporal SMAA, SMAA, and FXAA. Temporal SMAA is a good option so far and I'm just trying to get a good quality/performance balance with the AA settings overall.

Level Of Detail adds some extra object in the player's surroundings and further in the distance. Going between Low and Medium has been pretty smooth. I'll stick with Medium for now. I also noticed in some parts of Pawnee, framerate can drop around 26-28 in areas.

I'll wait on a patch to see if anything gets good performance-wise.


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Edit: Before I finished writing this, I figured something was wrong because I used to run most of these settings on Ultra. Turns out, it was something with the latest Nvidia drivers and my card was running at mid-level performance and wouldn't fully hit max performance. It was when checking the 'core parking' feature in Windows and doing a benchmark that I knew something was wrong. I had to reset the drivers and things were back to normal.

Everything is on Ultra settings and running smooth. AA is on FXAA at the moment. Still, if you want the most out of your performance or you have older PC parts, try dropping Level Of Detail and Reflections down and that should help. If you don't have a lot of VRAM (2GB or less), than Textures on High is probably the better solution.