Watch Dogs Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance

Set in an alternate reality techno-dystopian Chicago, Watch Dogs hit every gamer's holiday wishlist later on appearing at E3 2022. The open world hackfest wowed onlookers with its urban stealth action and its seemingly 'next-gen' graphics. Unfortunately, a month earlier its November 2022 release the game was delayed for some other six months -- the short-term blowout of which caused Ubisoft'southward stock to drop some 40%.

Being a long-term company with a long-term vision, Ubisoft says Watch Dogs is a long-term play then it was postponed because information technology simply wasn't prepare. That's commendable considering how oft games are released in an unfinished state just to meet deadlines and make sales. Battleground 4, for example, was amid the buggiest blockbusters to transport in recent memory yet it grossed well over $200 1000000 dollars concluding yr.

Making a bad first impression wouldn't have been the smartest fashion to begin a new franchise, specially when the alternative is having fans wait two quarters. Withal, with that extra development time and about two years having passed since the game was unveiled, many people are wondering if Lookout man Dogs can live upwards to the hype.

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same group behind Assassins Creed, Watch Dogs has been built by the studio'southward new 'Disrupt' engine, which was generally synthetic from scratch but includes parts of AnvilNext and Dunia, two Ubisoft engines used in the Assassin'due south Creed series also every bit Far Cry ii and 3. Specifically, Disrupt'south open world city management comes from AnvilNext while its vegetation and AI are from Dunia.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding Watch Dog's graphics approaching its launch merely it appears to have been based on a few videos, not firsthand gameplay. Some gamers believe Watch Dogs looked better back in the 2022 E3 trailer versus more recent gameplay trailers or the graphics seen in the beta, but the onetime used console gameplay instead of PC and the latter was downgraded to reduce the size of the download.

Whatsoever the case is or was, the game looks amazing when set to ultra on the PC. The visuals are spectacular and I found myself frequently being drawn away from the gameplay to admire how bang-up it all looked. Before we swoop in, it's worth noting that we're also taking this opportunity to look at the latest round of R9 200 serial cards from HIS, which are mill-overclocked and outfitted with the company's custom coolers.

Testing Methodology

For testing, we settled at the first save indicate in one case Aiden Pearce reaches his hibernate out and takes a well-deserved nap. Wakened from his sleep, he surveys the area effectually the hideout for criminals. Nosotros started the benchmark when we opened the door to exit.

The start one-half of the benchmark is a rendered scene where the perimeter of the hideout is viewed from fixed cameras so we accept a 45-second walk before the test ends at 90 seconds.

We used Fraps to tape the average frame charge per unit and the game was tested at three resolutions (1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600) and two quality settings (Ultra with Temporal SMAA and High with FXAA) across 31 dissimilar graphics cards and 20 processors. The latest AMD and Nvidia GPU drivers were used in all tests.