Watch Dogs PC System Reqs. - Next-Gen Is Here?

Base Specification

• Operating System: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8
• Note that we only support 64 bit OSs.
• DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM Dual Layer
• Hard Drive Space: 20 GB
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
• Internet: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer mode

Minimum Specification

• GPU: DirectX 11 graphics card with 1 GB Video RAM
• CPU: Quad core
• RAM: 4GB

example 1

• GPU: NVidia GTX 460
• CPU: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600

example 2

• GPU: AMD Radeon HD 5770
• CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9750

Recommended Specification

• GPU: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM
• CPU: Eight core
• RAM: 8GB

example 1

• GPU: NVidia GTX 560 ti
• CPU: Intel Core i7-3770

example 2

• GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850
• CPU: AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core

"Ultra" Specification

• GPU: Latest DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM or more
• CPU: Latest Eight core or more
• RAM: 8GB or more

example 1

• GPU: Nvidia GTX 670
• CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K

example 2

• GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7970
• CPU: AMD FX-9370 Eight-Core

Source

Don't panic about the "eight cores" requirement. That probably means 8 Intel threads or an AMD eight core CPU. The game being x64 and DX11 only is a great step for PC gaming, which is one hopefully more developers follow. Also, Watch_Dogs should be seen as merely the first game to officially drop dual core support. It won't be the last.

As far as the GPU requirements, I've been saying that the minimum was going to be raised greatly, as here we have the GTX 460 as such. That's going to challenge a lot of mobile graphics cards.

EDIT: UPDATE! Ubisoft has revised the System Requirements, as follows:

MINIMUM

Supported OS: Windows Vista SP2 64bit, Windows 7 SP1 64bit, Windows 8 64bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
RAM: 6 GB
Video Card: 1024 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 (see supported list)
Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible Sound Card
This product supports 64-bit operating systems ONLY

RECOMMENDED

Processor: Core i7 3770 @ 3.5Ghz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0Ghz
RAM: 8 GB
Video Card: 2048 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 or higher (see supported list)
Sound Card: Surround Sound 5.1 capable sound card

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:
nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series;
AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series
Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200 MINIMUM

Supported OS: Windows Vista SP2 64bit, Windows 7 SP1 64bit, Windows 8 64bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
RAM: 6 GB
Video Card: 1024 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 (see supported list)
Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible Sound Card
This product supports 64-bit operating systems ONLY

RECOMMENDED

Processor: Core i7 3770 @ 3.5Ghz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0Ghz
RAM: 8 GB
Video Card: 2048 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 or higher (see supported list)
Sound Card: Surround Sound 5.1 capable sound card

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:
nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series;
AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series
Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200

So not as bad, or even worse?

 

Better be with hyperthreading because I don't believe there are any octo-cores out in the mainstream at least.

 

HD5770 minimum ? that's a lot even a GT640M wont be enough for it then !!

 

I guess Ubi showed 4A Games how to make those sys. reqs.

 

And this right here is one of those moments when I feel very satisfied with the lappy I built, seeing as how I've been waiting for this game for a while now. Ultra, here I come.

 

I wouldn't try it with less than a GTX 765M.

 

High requirements, I just hope it's less buggy than the PC version of Splinter Cell Blacklist was at launch. Ubisoft lost some cred in my books with that effort.

 

These system requirements aren't that high, pretty much identical to what Crysis 3 and BF4 ask for. Still pale in comparison to Star Citizen, which will be Crysis 1 all over again.

 

Waiting to see memory usage. For BF4, 2 gigs of ram is not enough anymore for ultra settings. Wondering if it's the same for watchdog.

 

The GTX 460 is a bit more powerful than the 765M according to some benchmarks. You'd probably want a 770M to be safe. It's crazy that the min specs for this is almost the same for Sleeping Dog's recommended specs.

 

The minimum specs aren't that high, honestly. Those are decently old cards, ESPECIALLY since the GTX 280 and GTX 285 (not M) are better in terms of raw power than a GTX 460. The 5770 as well is a nice card, but it isn't any massive reign of power right now. The 560Ti and 7850 is what seems to me a bit mismatched. The 560Ti is still a good card, even better than a GTX 480 if you compare direct specs, but the 7850 should be a good deal stronger I think. Maybe I'm giving it too much leeway though.

The ultra spec kind of set me aback a bit, because it wanted the hexacore intel, but the quadcores should still do. Honestly if you NEEDED a hexacore with hyperthreading or an ultra strong 8 core CPU to run a video game, I think your optimization is screwed. I think the 2600k and up should still be good and they're just messing with our heads a little. You don't jump from a "core 2 quad is fine for this!" to a "yeah go buy intel or AMD's new $500-$1000 flagship CPUs for this".

That said, it is nice to see people abandoning the old gear now. As much as I hated not being able to run some games with my 280M (which I was using literally four days ago) because they were in DX11, it bothered me more to see good, new games limiting themselves to DX9. Like Skyrim, Rage, Payday 2 (even though PD2 is SUPREMELY optimized). I'm glad we can move on to needing the real big rigs for gaming, but the stuff we've got now is super strong, everything needs some optimization here and there =D.

 

Well guys, just lower some levels of AA and you will be fine.

 

With Ubisoft, I expect nothing less than a difficult to run game with visuals you'd expect running smoothly on half the hardware if it was actually developed well for PC.

Next gen console gaming? Maybe. But probably also, next-gen PC crapping.

Visually I haven't seen anything impressive from either gameplay videos or screenshots. NOTHING.

Just another obnoxiously glossy, plasticky, reflective game to me. With as much lense flair and bloom possible. I just see a whole lot of crap to hide how bad the visuals probably really are.

In fact I think Sleeping Dogs looks better visually than this.

 

Sleeping Dogs looks realy good though.

 

Watch_Dogs isn't a port though, as Ubisoft has revealed that the PC has been the lead development platform.

I agree with a lot you said. But the asked for specs are pretty high in mobile GPU terms, given that the the GTX 485M is the mobile equivalent to the minimum GPU spec. So that's people would spent at least $1.8k a couple years ago, and today the 765M is just edging that out.

 

Those minimum system requirements don't seem accurate though. 460 is minimum and 560 ti is recommended?

Well lets wait for it to release, only then will we see the actual performance

 

A 560Ti is stronger than a GTX 480, far less a 460. The first set of Fermi cards really sucked compared to the revamped models, honestly.

 

Yeah, true. I think the 485M was better than the 460 though... let me go run some calculations.

------ checking nvidia site and doing math ------

Back! Okay, the 485M was indeed weaker than the 460. Just by a tad, but it was. The 580M is stronger though, but not by much. This current gen of mobile cards really closed a huge gap between higher end desktop cards. Still though, the fact that minimum and recommended are so close together says a good bit about the game; it's a lot more CPU heavy. I wonder what it'd be like when it comes out. I do think though, that the 460 is ONLY the minimum card BECAUSE it is the lowest end DX11 only gaming card that nVidia brought out. The game wants DX11, so it's not that it needs the power of a 460, but that it just wants the dx11 card. That might explain the mismatching of the power of the cards.

 

GTX480 is around GTX570 level and still had more vram, so not 560ti is not faster.

 

GTX 570 = GTX 480, GTX 560 Ti = GTX 470, GTX 460 = GTX 285. That's how it stacks up.

 

The 480 had better memory clocks, yes, but the 560Ti had better core and shader performance (at stock anyway). It's like comparing the 660Ti versus the 760. The 660Ti has more cuda cores and better clocks but less memory bandwidth. In performance, memory-bound applications should perform better on a 480, but the core and shader clock performance should be a good bit worse than the 560Ti.

As for the GTX 285, on paper it should beat a 480. By a decent amount, too. Well, I wish I had those cards specifically to check myself, but unfortunately I never had them. I do know someone with a 480 and another with a 560Ti and the one with the 560Ti often gets better fps in-game though.

 

How? They're on the same basic architecture and GTX 480 had more of everything, so logically it must be faster. But it had the first-gen Fermi downsides of extremely high heat and power consumption. The main improvements of second-gen Fermi were in these in these two areas.

GTX 480
Core: 480/60/48 (shaders/TMU's/ROP's) @ 700 MHz/1401 MHz (core/shader)
Memory: 1.5GB 3696 MHz 384-bit GDDR5 @ 177.4 GB/s
1344.96 GFLOPS single-precision

GTX 560 Ti
Core: 384/64/32 @ 822 MHz/1645 MHz
Memory: 1GB/2GB 4008 MHz 256-bit GDDR5 @ 128.26 GB/s
1263.4 GFLOPS single precision

480 doesn't lose to 560 Ti in any of these tests:



Regarding your friend with the 480, are you sure his card isn't overheating and/or throttling? There's no situations where a 560 Ti should be faster than a 480.

 

According to nvidia's website (where I got the info to calculate from) the 480 is supposed to have 607 memory clock. If it's 700 that changes things; because that'd be essentially a 18% or so overclock.
As for his card overheating, I really have no idea.

 

That's because GeForce.com lists the specs for GTX 480 completely wrong, it's actually listing the GTX 470 specs.

Compare: GeForce GTX 480 | Specifications | GeForce vs. AnandTech | NVIDIA

 

Huh. I stand corrected then. Why in the world is their own website wrong? I noticed it lacks information of some of the mobile cards... but still. Why.

 

They are too lazy to update it, it does not matter to them anymore.

 

Don't tell me you actually believe that! Everytime we've heard this from any publisher, we've discovered that was not the case. Including BF3. Even Skyrim is an obvious console port.

ESPECIALLY from UBISOFT. Name one game that ran well on PC from Ubisoft. They still refuse to fix FC3 for PC, they simply don't care.

 

Holey moley. I'm feeling vulnerable with even a GTX 780M here :S

That's a huge leap over most other games. Only Crysis 3 can really compare. Even then they only ask for GTS 450 which is a fair lot slower than a GTX 460. And a quad core CPU at bare minimum? Crysis 3 only wanted dual core CPU minimum. Yikes!

Next gen is indeed here and I'm scared.

 

Dat sheet better run on 768p medium, that's all i'm askin

 

FC3 runs fine on my PC. You sure do love to complain.

 

It's not just him. It microstutters like a madman for me as well, on both my laptop and my desktop which is running a single AMD card. Frame times are all over the place. This game has been out for a long time but this problem has never been fully resolved.

 

FC3 is plagued with peformance bugs. It's one problem after another with that game. I can't say I hold high hopes for any Ubisoft product to work properly day 1, let alone 1 year later.

 

Far Cry 3 runs brilliantly on my laptop. I can max it out (without MSAA) and get over 40fps in almost all situations. I've found it to be one of the most smoothest games I've played on my laptop, with a very consistent framerate.

(Maybe an AMD issue, or sli issue)

 

Watch Dogs Your Questions Answered - YouTube

This is gonna be so god damn awesome! I wonder of you have a safehouse in this game though.

 

I can hold on to my G73jh for another year or so, ...may even wait until Fallout4.

 

It could also reflect an overly cautious publisher. For example, Dishonored also had desktop GTX 460 as the minimum and yet it runs beautifully at 1080p on my three year old laptop with a much weaker card.

Dishonored Minimum Specs

OS: Windows Vista / Windows 7
Processor: 3.0 GHz dual core or better
Memory: 4 GB system RAM
Hard Disk Space: 9 GB
Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 512 MB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850)
Sound: Windows compatible sound card

 

I wonder if my 8870m can play this if not am gonna be rly pissed

 

Pretty sure GTX 460/5850 is only supposed to be the recommended GPU for Dishonored. They goofed on the minspec because they listed the same GPU requirement for it as they did for recommended spec.

Thought you got a desktop with a Radeon 7770?

 

Which mobile cards would be equivalent to a desktop 460?

765m? 8870m?

 

Yeah around that seems to be the case

 

I'm noticing a pattern here. AMD...

 

My laptop has Nvidia though and it does the same thing. It's not because of SLI microstuttering, because I feel it even when FPS is high like at 60, and when I disable the second GPU.

 

Yes the pattern, I also have Nvidia now and I know Deagleson also found FC3 problematic on his 680M. And I know Ubisoft Montreal staff who worked on FC3 have said publicly, Ubisoft management are very well aware that FC3 is broken for many PC gamers and have absolutely no interest in fixing it. They know what it is and don't care. This attitude towards PC gamers has been plastered all over the web, various forums, reddit etc and more. Hell, ask your Quebec friend who may know a Ubisoft employee, no doubt will verify this sentiment exists.

As I said before, name ONE game that runs beautifully on PC from Ubisoft. One game. Having a game run terribly say on AMD, that means it does not run well on PC since AMD users are nearly half of PC gamers.

Name ONE game...

As for PC first. Whatever. BF3 is the perfect example for me. DICE and EA said for over a year about how it was PC first and it's use of DirectX 11, etc. And yet it's clearly, so clear that it's a console port.

As for developing a game PC first, what does that even mean for Ubisoft? Using DX11? Big deal. Using 64bit? Big deal, the terrible WarFrame uses 64bit. Crysis years ago used 64bit and it had no impact in game, slightly in benchmarks.
- Who develops a game on console? I've never seen a dev using a 360 console hooked up to a keyboard, mouse, whatever artist tools they need etc, and developing a game in a console environment.

Saying it's PC first from Ubisoft means nothing to me.

You know what PC first means for me? The game is completed on PC first. They work on porting the game to console AFTER it's been finished on PC. Seems to me that's how console ports on PC work. Game is completed on console, then hire a third party to port it to PC after or release the game a year later on PC. But considerign Watch Dogs will be released simultaneously on all platforms... Far as I'm concerned, Ubisoft is lying to everyone.

Are you really scared? Really? Name one game that can't be run fantastically well on high very high on far less specs than 780M and looks nearly identical to Ultra/Maxxed? I can't think of any and that includes Metro 2033, Last Light, Crysis 3/2, Witcher 2 and more.
- I finished Witcher 2, Metro 2033 and Crysis 2 on a 5870M with high settings and for screenshot purposes, ran on Ultra just to compare, I didn't see any significant differences except a difference of 30 FPS or more.

I highly doubt Ubisoft staff are even half as capable of producing a game with as much detail and texture and artistry as CD Projekt or CryTek. Do you really believe that Watch Dogs won't just have a whole lot of stupid gimmicks to try to hide the numerous shortcomings of Watch Dogs graphics? Turn those off and I bet you'll have Watch Dogs running fine on 3-4 year old laptops and likely look nearly the same on 780M, 770M, 680M and 675MX.

 

I haven't had a single issue running Far Cry 3 at close to max, runs between 45 and 60ish without a hitch. 680m here.

 

Not really. I mean the desktop GTX 460 has a 256-bit memory bus and a large advantage over most mobile GPU's in memory bandwidth. You would actually need a recent high-end mobile GPU like a GTX 675MX or 770M to surpass it. The older top-of-the-line ones like 6990M and GTX 580M/675M are close in performance to the GTX 460. Cards like the 765M and 8870M are really crippled by the 128-bit bus. It's telling how even though mobile GPU horsepower has improved by leaps and bounds over the last several generations, they're still way behind desktop cards. Even some of the fastest current notebook GPU's are just beginning to reach the performance of mid-range and high-end desktop GPU's from several generations ago.

Here is a comparison of the desktop Radeon 5850 (similar in performance to GTX 460) against some of the most popular high-end mobile GPU's today. As you can see, it's only matched or surpassed by the 192-bit and 256-bit laptop GPU's.

 

Has anybody tried this site: GPU Database | techPowerUp...

According to the site a gtx 460 is about equal to a 8870M or 760m based on raw clock speeds.

Seems like mobile cards are going to be the most affected next-gen.

 

I think we're forgetting the point here that the GTX 460 was likely listed as the min spec card as it's the WEAKEST gaming-class card from nVidia to use DirectX 11. The 560Ti was listed alongside a 7850 for recommended specs, while the AMD side of things had the 5770 for its minimum spec, which is a decent shade weaker than the 460, far less the 560Ti/7850. I really think that they're just making sure we KNOW it's a DX11 only game, and won't run even on DX10 supporting hardware, even if the hardware would be as good as or succeeding a GTX 460 (aka a GTX 285, GTX 285 SLI, GTX 290, etc). If I remember correctly, Crysis 3 did the same thing; would *NOT* run on any card that did not have DX11.

Basically, I think everyone will be fine. As far as the OPTIMIZATION of the game goes, I have faith in Ubisoft to do one thing and one thing only: Screw over PC gamers. Sure, there's been one or two exceptions in the last 4-5 years or so, but mainly? Screw over PC gamers.

In closing, I say we simply wait till it comes out, watch one of the 50+ day 0 or day -5 reviews (and by day -5 I mean early copy reviews for some journalists) to decide whether it'll run on our stuff. That being said, anyone with an i7 and a 7970M or better from this forum ought to be able to cakewalk it.

 

Meh, I`ll be fine

 

Let me try this again

 

Well, if you are feeling vulnerable with your 780m, imagine how questionable is my manhood with me ol' 240m right now .