Watch Dogs: Legion PC performance thread

Isee · Oct 31, 2020

golem said:
No benchmark of a limited segment of gameplay

Obviously, but also not what I am talking about.

In genral a good benchmark scene allows users to estimate gameplay performance. You are correct, there will still be variables left but it will give enough data to help with setting adjustments. RDR 2 has a good benchmark and is very representative of various game play scenes. The same goes for Far Cry New Dawn and GR: Breaking Point.
But the benchmark in this game is not helpful at all and relying on it pointless.

Deleted member 12323 · Oct 31, 2020

Dierce said:
The Nvidia driver update seems to have dropped my frame rate by around 5-10. Anyone else experiencing a reduction in framer ate due to the latest Nvidia driver update?

Quite the opposite actually. 2070 super

Deleted member 12323 · Oct 31, 2020

Have they stated if the November patch contains more perf improvements?

Deleted member 79451 · Oct 31, 2020

Relix said:
Not performance related but... does this game cause Xbox controller disconnections at random?

Someone asked this just a few posts up:

Agrizzlyadventure said:
I have a really weird glitch I can recreate every time, if I start watch dogs without my Xbox one controller on and then try to turn it on while the game is running. It will auto turn off my controller, and sometimes even freeze. If I boot the game with controller on it will freeze every single tike I try to quit the game as well. Anybody else experience this?

I had this happen too. Someone suggests turning off the Uplay overlay.

dex3108 · Oct 31, 2020

Jedi2016 · Oct 31, 2020

dex3108 said:

Yeah, that's fucking worthless. "Is your computer turned on? Well, we've exhausted all troubleshooting, too bad!"

Fatmanp · Oct 31, 2020

I was playing this on my LG CX this morning and had gsync flickering which could only be fixed by turning HDR off in windows. Turning HDR on in game activated it and works fine just fyi.

Bucca · Oct 31, 2020

How would these specs fare at 1080p on High/Very High?

GTX 1070
i7-7700K
16GB RAM

Temperance · Oct 31, 2020

I've had periodic freezes 2-3 seconds not enough to really worry about them until they happen. One was finally a real game freeze and just as i had made my way to a collectable hat (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ . I hope my save is alright and I don't get more of these more frequently.

Is the Cloud Save option in the main menu displaying "not available at this time" for anyone else. Haven't been able to utilized it since launch.

Stacey · Oct 31, 2020

Bucca said:
How would these specs fare at 1080p on High/Very High?

GTX 1070
i7-7700K
16GB RAM

Should get a good 45 to 60fps give or take a few frames.

Smokey · Oct 31, 2020

I've played about 2.5 hours of Legion. I didn't have any crashes, freezes, or any other weird issues. I'm on Windows 10 2004, and the latest driver.

My specs:

9900k @ 5ghz
32GB RAM @ 3600
EVGA 2080Ti
Game is installed on a SSD
ASUS PG27UQ (4k + HDR)

In game settings:

DX12
Geometry - Very High
Environment - Ultra
Texture Resolution - Ultra
Texture Filtering - Ultra
Shadows - Very High
Headlight Shadows - Your car
Reflections - Very High
Subsurface Scattering - High
Ray Traced Reflections - High
DLSS - Performance

With the above settings I averaged around 55fps.

The ray tracing is definitely noticeable and adds to the game. Pretty satisfied with this performance, especially since GSYNC makes it so that any drops aren't all that distracting. GPU was pretty much pegged at 99%.

Am I an outlier in this thread or do I need to keep playing for any potential issues to show up?

Galava · Oct 31, 2020

Smokey said:
ASUS PG27UQ (4k + HDR)

Didn't know there where 4KHDR G-sync monitors. What a beast, my god. You work in creative or just a "gaming treat" you got? Wish I had that haha

G-sync really makes this game very playable, but it's frustrating not being able to get 60 even by lowering settings, not compromising on RT on this game, it just adds so much.

Perf on my machine i7-6700k 4.5GHz, 32GB RAM @ 2400 (speed cap of my "old" mobo-cpu setup :/) and a 3070 that arrived yesterday. I play on 1080p g-sync, but tried it on the 4K TV and got 30-40fps (before patch I think). Might give it another try and use your settings to see how perf is like at 4k.

Your CPU really helps this game I think.

shadowhaxor · Oct 31, 2020

Smokey said:
I've played about 2.5 hours of Legion. I didn't have any crashes, freezes, or any other weird issues. I'm on Windows 10 2004, and the latest driver.

My specs:

9900k @ 5ghz
32GB RAM @ 3600
EVGA 2080Ti
Game is installed on a SSD
ASUS PG27UQ (4k + HDR)

In game settings:

DX12
Geometry - Very High
Environment - Ultra
Texture Resolution - Ultra
Texture Filtering - Ultra
Shadows - Very High
Headlight Shadows - Your car
Reflections - Very High
Subsurface Scattering - High
Ray Traced Reflections - High
DLSS - Performance

With the above settings I averaged around 55fps.

The ray tracing is definitely noticeable and adds to the game. Pretty satisfied with this performance, especially since GSYNC makes it so that any drops aren't all that distracting. GPU was pretty much pegged at 99%.

Am I an outlier in this thread or do I need to keep playing for any potential issues to show up?

Any drops when driving?

Smokey · Oct 31, 2020

Galava said:
Didn't know there where 4KHDR G-sync monitors. What a beast, my god. You work in creative or just a "gaming treat" you got? Wish I had that haha

G-sync really makes this game very playable, but it's frustrating not being able to get 60 even by lowering settings, not compromising on RT on this game, it just adds so much.

Perf on my machine i7-6700k 4.5GHz, 32GB RAM @ 2400 (speed cap of my "old" mobo-cpu setup :/) and a 3070 that arrived yesterday. I play on 1080p g-sync, but tried it on the 4K TV and got 30-40fps (before patch I think). Might give it another try and use your settings to see how perf is like at 4k.

Your CPU really helps this game I think.

Nah I don't work in creative, just a regular dude lol. I've had it for about 2 years now. Still a top tier monitor. When you tried it on your 4K TV, did you have DLSS enabled?

For reference I didn't play this before today, so I guess the patch is "baked in" so to speak.

shadowhaxor said:
Any drops when driving?

Yeah that's when I noticed the dips happened the most. But It still held above 50 even during these moments.

Galava · Oct 31, 2020

Smokey said:
When you tried it on your 4K TV, did you have DLSS enabled?

Just tried again, played a bit at night and I get around 40fps with DLSS on performance. Capping it to 30 makes it smooth, not a g-sync TV :/
I think your CPU and maybe RAM speeds is what's giving you the edge on this one. It's very cpu-bound

Smokey · Oct 31, 2020

Galava said:
Just tried again, played a bit at night and I get around 40fps with DLSS on performance. Capping it to 30 makes it smooth, not a g-sync TV :/
I think your CPU and maybe RAM speeds is what's giving you the edge on this one. It's very cpu-bound

How far are you in the game?

MotherFan · Oct 31, 2020

I really think the reason we are not seeing DLSS help in the world any is due to the game being CPU bound. With DLSS in the benchmark I got 10-20 fps gains, in the open world nothing. I also didn't see any improvement going from 1440p to 1080p, so this is consistent with the above.

Kawngi · Oct 31, 2020

I'm hoping the 5900x I plan to buy this coming week saves my performance, or makes it more manageable.

gsync is carrying hard, but was hoping for better fps with a 7700k and RTX 3080.

Resident Guru · Oct 31, 2020

Kawngi said:
I'm hoping the 5900x I plan to buy this coming week saves my performance, or makes it more manageable.

gsync is carrying hard, but was hoping for better fps with a 7700k and RTX 3080.

Yeah good move that 7700k just isn't going to cut it for this new gen.

Kaldaien · Oct 31, 2020

Galava said:
Didn't know there where 4KHDR G-sync monitors. What a beast, my god. You work in creative or just a "gaming treat" you got? Wish I had that haha

I own one of those. I thought it was a good monitor, then I got an LG HDR OLED and now I haven't touched that monitor in over a year :)

On paper it sounds nice, but there aren't enough local dimming zones on that monitor for it to be a good HDR experience. Basically it's just blinding bright in Ubisoft games (since they seem to forget about clipping white scene transitions to ... paper white), the good HDR has all come from not using a computer monitor.

Kaldaien · Oct 31, 2020

dgrdsv said:
Yeah, BattleEye will prevent this.

It's trivial to turn BattleEye off in this game. SK can measure the VRAM usage with it off, so can Afterburner. Same technique used by both software.

thisismadness · Oct 31, 2020

Kawngi said:
I'm hoping the 5900x I plan to buy this coming week saves my performance, or makes it more manageable.

gsync is carrying hard, but was hoping for better fps with a 7700k and RTX 3080.

Yeah, same here. I'm shelving this until I get my 5800x

GangWarily · Oct 31, 2020

Smokey said:
I've played about 2.5 hours of Legion. I didn't have any crashes, freezes, or any other weird issues. I'm on Windows 10 2004, and the latest driver.

My specs:

9900k @ 5ghz
32GB RAM @ 3600
EVGA 2080Ti
Game is installed on a SSD
ASUS PG27UQ (4k + HDR)

In game settings:

DX12
Geometry - Very High
Environment - Ultra
Texture Resolution - Ultra
Texture Filtering - Ultra
Shadows - Very High
Headlight Shadows - Your car
Reflections - Very High
Subsurface Scattering - High
Ray Traced Reflections - High
DLSS - Performance

With the above settings I averaged around 55fps.

The ray tracing is definitely noticeable and adds to the game. Pretty satisfied with this performance, especially since GSYNC makes it so that any drops aren't all that distracting. GPU was pretty much pegged at 99%.

Am I an outlier in this thread or do I need to keep playing for any potential issues to show up?

I wonder if the game somehow running better on last gen cards? I'm on a 3090 (and 9700k @ 5ghz) and wish I was averaging 55 fps lol.

Smokey · Nov 1, 2020

GangWarily said:
I wonder if the game somehow running better on last gen cards? I'm on a 3090 (and 9700k @ 5ghz) and wish I was averaging 55 fps lol.

I have played a bit more and at night it definitely dips into the upper 40s. Still playable. I attribute that to Gsync, but for the most part I'm definitely in the 50s the majority of the time with the settings I posted above (about 5 hrs in, now).

No crashes or lock ups yet.

Kaldaien said:
I own one of those. I thought it was a good monitor, then I got an LG HDR OLED and now I haven't touched that monitor in over a year :)

On paper it sounds nice, but there aren't enough local dimming zones on that monitor for it to be a good HDR experience. Basically it's just blinding bright in Ubisoft games (since they seem to forget about clipping white scene transitions to ... paper white), the good HDR has all come from not using a computer monitor.

I've got a 77'' CX as well :)

The PG27UQ I find to deliver a very good HDR experience. Different than OLED, but that's ok.

GangWarily said:
I wonder if the game somehow running better on last gen cards? I'm on a 3090 (and 9700k @ 5ghz) and wish I was averaging 55 fps lol.

What res?

Are you mixing different settings at High/Ultra, or are you just going for Ultra? Not that you shouldn't with a 3090...

Linus815 · Nov 1, 2020

GangWarily said:
I wonder if the game somehow running better on last gen cards? I'm on a 3090 (and 9700k @ 5ghz) and wish I was averaging 55 fps lol.

nah i have a 2080 oc'd and playing on high settings + rtx + dlss at 1440p and getting like 30-40 fps with some instances of sustained close to unplayable (20 fps) performance

its just about generally playable thanks to gsync but its not really what id call good performance especially given the fidelity. RTX carries it most of the way, without it though, eh

Tahnit · Nov 1, 2020

anyone with a 2080 super have recommended settings? tempted to try this but wanting to get some decent RTX performance at 4k if possible. if not ill play at 1440p.

GangWarily · Nov 1, 2020

Smokey said:
What res?

Are you mixing different settings at High/Ultra, or are you just going for Ultra? Not that you shouldn't with a 3090...

Playing at 3440x1440 but resolution seems to make very little difference for me. I turned on DSR on the Nvidia Control Panel and turned it up to 2x super sample and got pretty much the same framerates! The GPU usage went up from 50 to about 80% though.

I'm mostly using Hardware Unboxed's HUB Quality set which is a mix of high and ultra. I think it's a smidge below the settings you're running. I'm also using medium RTX and Quality DLSS.

chrominance · Nov 1, 2020

Ryzen 3700x
32GB RAM @ 3600
RTX 3080 (Gigabyte Eagle OC)
457.09 drivers
Running off an SSD

1440p
DX12
Geometry: Very High
Environment: Very High
Texture Resolution: Ultra
Texture Filtering: Ultra
Shadows: Very High
Headlight Shadows: Your car
Reflections: Very High (doesn't matter when RT is on)
Subsurface Scattering: High
Raytraced Reflections: Medium
DLSS: Balanced

That gets me 50-55fps on average. Fast driving in traffic or the occasional view down a very long street or alley drops this to a 40fps floor. DLSS settings don't seem to change this much, tinkering with shadows/geometry/environment settings makes a difference of maybe 5fps at most. Turning off raytracing gets me back about 10-15fps, which means the game still doesn't quite lock at 60fps without RT. Weirdly, I only sometimes get the GPU to hit 95+%; for long periods the GPU will instead show ~60-70% usage in MSI Afterburner. CPU is pretty steady at 60% as well.

In practice it feels fine to play, probably thanks to Gsync, though once you get to 40fps it's pretty noticeable. I think most of my disappointment is not with the performance in general, but that I'm getting this performance after spending $1000 on a cutting-edge graphics card.

Alexandros · Nov 1, 2020

chrominance said:
In practice it feels fine to play, probably thanks to Gsync, though once you get to 40fps it's pretty noticeable. I think most of my disappointment is not with the performance in general, but that I'm getting this performance after spending $1000 on a cutting-edge graphics card.

Maybe Nvidia is bundling Ubisoft games on purpose, to make buyers feel that they need even more performance all the time. Don't worry about it, some Ubisoft games simply won't hold a steady 60 fps because they hit the CPU like a truck. Your card is being held back by the processor, as ridiculous as that sounds for a 3700x. This is the reason I haven't bought a Ubisoft game since Assassin's Creed Black Flag, I won't play them until Ubisoft fixes its shit or I can eventually brute-force 60 fps with a new CPU.

Twenty Three · Nov 1, 2020

chrominance said:
Ryzen 3700x
32GB RAM @ 3600
RTX 3080 (Gigabyte Eagle OC)
457.09 drivers
Running off an SSD

1440p
DX12
Geometry: Very High
Environment: Very High
Texture Resolution: Ultra
Texture Filtering: Ultra
Shadows: Very High
Headlight Shadows: Your car
Reflections: Very High (doesn't matter when RT is on)
Subsurface Scattering: High
Raytraced Reflections: Medium
DLSS: Balanced

That gets me 50-55fps on average. Fast driving in traffic or the occasional view down a very long street or alley drops this to a 40fps floor. DLSS settings don't seem to change this much, tinkering with shadows/geometry/environment settings makes a difference of maybe 5fps at most. Turning off raytracing gets me back about 10-15fps, which means the game still doesn't quite lock at 60fps without RT. Weirdly, I only sometimes get the GPU to hit 95+%; for long periods the GPU will instead show ~60-70% usage in MSI Afterburner. CPU is pretty steady at 60% as well.

In practice it feels fine to play, probably thanks to Gsync, though once you get to 40fps it's pretty noticeable. I think most of my disappointment is not with the performance in general, but that I'm getting this performance after spending $1000 on a cutting-edge graphics card.

Interesting.

I get 55fps at 4K on the RTX with 16GB RAM and a 2070 super, everything on high (except medium raytracing and no DLSS). It drops to 40 fps if I raise raytracing or environment settings. So, despite the CPU bottleneck, there is still merit in the GPU, as clearly you can get very high/ultra on the 3080 alone.

dex3108 · Nov 1, 2020

DX12 has some serious issues in this game. With same settings with DX12 my CPU is at 30% usage and GPU at like 75% usage and I have 10FPS less than with same settings and DX11 on. Also with DX11 game uses GPU entirely.

WindsHowling · Nov 1, 2020

The performance on a 3080 is seriously a bummer, can't get framerates im happy with at any dlss setting with 4k and rtx enabled. Guess I'm waiting to play this till I get a 3090 one day or patches iron it out.

Nooblet · Nov 1, 2020

Ok people, absolutely make sure your memory is running at full speed. Simply making sure that my RAM was running at 3200MHz (the max speed of my RAM) instead of 2133MHz (which is what it was set to by default for my CPU)....I did the change through the XML in Bios and it made a TON of difference.

This game seems to like RAM speed like no other game. I used to basically run at mid 30ish FPS in gameplay before with spikes to 40s here and there, and it'd often dip below 30FPS as well. But after this change (and a slight CPU overclock of about 8%) I basically never drop below 40FPS and average 50-55FPS in general gameplay even on my aging i7 6700K now and get a consistent 90%+ GPU utilisation, whereas before my GPU would sit at 60-70% a lot and I'd think it was my CPU holding it back but most of it was actually my RAM speed.

Spoit · Nov 1, 2020

Nooblet said:
Ok people, absolutely make sure your memory is running at full speed. Simply making sure that my RAM was running at 3200MHz (the max speed of my RAM) instead of 2133MHz (which is what it was set to by default for my CPU)....I did the change through the XML in Bios and it made a TON of difference.

This game seems to like RAM speed like no other game. I used to basically run at mid 30ish FPS in gameplay before with spikes to 40s here and there, and it'd often dip below 30FPS as well. But after this change (and a slight CPU overclock of about 8%) I basically never drop below 40FPS and average 50-55FPS in general gameplay even on my aging i7 6700K now and get a consistent 90%+ GPU utilisation, whereas before my GPU would sit at 60-70% a lot and I'd think it was my CPU holding it back but most of it was actually my RAM speed.

Is just turning XMP to auto sufficient, or should we be looking up guides on how to upclock it?

Nooblet · Nov 1, 2020

Spoit said:
Is just turning XMP to auto sufficient, or should we be looking up guides on how to upclock it?

Auto is what keeps it to default which was 2133MHz in my case. I changed it to "Profile 1" on my Gigabyte board which set it to max speed of 3200MHz. Check the relevant setting name for your motherboard.

Nintendo · Nov 1, 2020

Spoit said:
Is just turning XMP to auto sufficient, or should we be looking up guides on how to upclock it?

XMP should be fine. You can check ram speed in task manager performance tab.

Deepo · Nov 1, 2020

Alexandros said:
Maybe Nvidia is bundling Ubisoft games on purpose, to make buyers feel that they need even more performance all the time.

Well, this is certainly working on me if that is the case. Chasing 60 in Ubi games has been behind so many of my PC upgrades in the past. And now I'm doing it all again by buying a 5900X.

Forceflow · Nov 1, 2020

Something I discovered - maybe not well known - in the last tab of the video options, the game has a sharpening slider. That helps to counter some of the blurriness added by DLSS.

dragn · Nov 1, 2020

would be great if dev's added nvidia smp for triple monitor. actually playable in 7680x1440 with a 3080 but the stretching on the sides are awful -.-. i think only iracing has this feature

dgrdsv · Nov 1, 2020

WindsHowling said:
The performance on a 3080 is seriously a bummer, can't get framerates im happy with at any dlss setting with 4k and rtx enabled. Guess I'm waiting to play this till I get a 3090 one day or patches iron it out.

3090 is not a significant upgrade over 3080.

kami_sama · Nov 1, 2020

Can't find a way to get a fps counter in the game.
Ubisoft Connect doesn't work, and no setting in rtss works either.
Any idea on why?
Also, what's the difference between Ctrl+Add and Shift+Add?

Vuze · Nov 1, 2020

kami_sama said:
Can't find a way to get a fps counter in the game.
Ubisoft Connect doesn't work, and no setting in rtss works either.
Any idea on why?
Also, what's the difference between Ctrl+Add and Shift+Add?

MSI Afterburner/RTSS overlay (I use the beta versions fwiw) works fine for me in both, DX11 and DX12 without any special settings.

kami_sama · Nov 1, 2020

Vuze said:
MSI Afterburner/RTSS overlay (I use the beta versions fwiw) works fine for me in both, DX11 and DX12 without any special settings.

I'll reinstall then.
I hope I don't need to redo my uv lol

Deepo · Nov 1, 2020

kami_sama said:
Can't find a way to get a fps counter in the game.
Ubisoft Connect doesn't work, and no setting in rtss works either.
Any idea on why?
Also, what's the difference between Ctrl+Add and Shift+Add?

Latest version of GeForce Experience, enable experimental features, Alt-R in-game. (Assuming you have a Nvidia card)

Kaldaien · Nov 1, 2020

Nooblet said:
This game seems to like RAM speed like no other game.

Probably because its DRM spends much of your CPU's idle time checksumming executable memory, lol. If Ubisoft used only half of the stuff they do for anti-debug and DRM in their games, they could make better use of the GPU.

Galava · Nov 1, 2020

Smokey said:
How far are you in the game?

DOind the Kelley quests, is that relevant? Does the game get worse later on?

Galava · Nov 1, 2020

Kaldaien said:
I own one of those. I thought it was a good monitor, then I got an LG HDR OLED and now I haven't touched that monitor in over a year :)

On paper it sounds nice, but there aren't enough local dimming zones on that monitor for it to be a good HDR experience. Basically it's just blinding bright in Ubisoft games (since they seem to forget about clipping white scene transitions to ... paper white), the good HDR has all come from not using a computer monitor.

Speaking of HDR, I can't seem to be able to enable HDR inside the game on my 4K HDR TV, it is enabled in Windows, but WD doesn't recognize it.

kami_sama · Nov 1, 2020

WTF, I am getting 75fps with everyting on low and dlss performance on 1440p.
That shouldn't be normal.
3080 with a 8600k.

Kaldaien · Nov 1, 2020

Galava said:
Speaking of HDR, I can't seem to be able to enable HDR inside the game on my 4K HDR TV, it is enabled in Windows, but WD doesn't recognize it.

The game does HDR backwards. It uses NvAPI and AGS (driver APIs) and thinks there's an artificial limitation to HDR that requires the game to be in fullscreen exclusive mode.

For the D3D11 version of the game, Special K can now fix this problem for the game and allow you to use HDR in windowed mode. For the D3D12 version, you're stuck with that behavior.

Oracle · Nov 1, 2020

Should I bother on a 6700k ? What can I expect with a 3080 and ssd?

Watch Dogs: Legion PC performance thread

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