All Performance Tweaks so far

[Engicop]

UPDATE; 03/11/2014
With this wave of unoptimized products coming recently, I shall share all the tweaks I've found so far to you and hopefully help someone...

Solution 1:
Make a shortcut to the game and add "-disablepagefilecheck" without the quotation marks after the target and the stuttering should be extremely minimal (essentially just when driving very fast and loading new environments).
Example (under target): "X:\Games\WD\watch_dogs.exe" -disablepagefilecheck
If you are using Steam, just right-click Watch_Dogs, Properties, Set Launch Options and type -disablepagefilecheck.
Please note: since the game has been patched this method may not work anymore but you can still give it a try.

Solution 2
Marduk has made an useful performance fix. What it does is you can set the draw distance to Medium from the LoD option in-game while all the rest remains the same, so you get an FPS boost with only a few loss in visuals. Also check his graphic mod which is awesome.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=392653
You can also check other graphic mods, there are a couple of them around.

Solution 3:
On uPlay, go to settings and disable the following options:
-Enable in-game overlay for supported games
-Allow uPlay to use a proxy connection to access the internet

Solution 4:
Play around in the Nvidia Control Panel, or Catalyst if you use AMD cards. Try to set Clamp and Threaded Optimization ON and Adaptive V-sync.

Solution 5:
Now, with the in-game settings: in the Display section, play around with the "Max Buffer Frame GPU". I changed it from 3 to 1. Try disabling motion blur and depth of field too.
Textures are also the main cause of stuttering so decrease texture quality if necessary.

Solution 6:
Some people reported that disabling HyperThreading (for Intel users only) reduces the stuttering a lot. Go to google to see how to disable it.

Solution 7:
Remove mouse smoothness:
1. Go to C:\Users\<your username>\Documents\My Games\Watch_Dogs\<some odd number>
2. There should be a file named "GamerProfile.xml". Open it in a text editor of your choice.
3. Look for the following settings and change their values respectively:
4. Set "Sensitivity=" to 1.
5. Set "UseMouseSmooth=" to 0.
6. Set "Smoothness=" to 0.
7. Save and Close the file. Your ingame cursor should now move without accelaration
Apparently, turning off v-sync increases mouse-responsiveness quite a bit.

Solution 8:
Disable SLI if you use it.

Solution 9:
Something worth checking out.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=389072

Solution 10:
Use the turbo mode included in softwares like TuneUp Utilities, it may help.

Solution 11:
This is not really a fix, but this is a useful website from Nvidia about graphics: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
It shows you all the graphic comparisons and it also tells you how many frames-per-second you'll get by adjusting graphic options, so take a look.

And then there's the usual "update drivers, clean your pc, scan for viruses" etc. The basic stuff.

I'm using a GTX 650 with AMD-FX 6300 six-core processor and 8 GB of RAM, in case you wanna know, I currently get microstuttering when playing on high textures and everything else on high with Marduk's Merged Mod.
I can't guarantee all those steps can work flawlessly because it depends on what rig you are using, but hope I helped.

[Chris_GR]

Done all of them, but nothing works as it should...I am well over recommended settings...The best sollution is to wait for this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ patch...

[Bad Whippet]

There is no evidence to support that solution 1 has ever made any impact. Leave it until last.

Solution 2 is not needed at all. Geometry is the Level Of Detail setting which can be reduced in-game easily - and should be the first setting anyone reduces as it only impacts on the distance that highest poly models are loaded (ultra means that even hidden and distant assets are rendered in highest poly - totally unnecessary and very expensive on VRAM).

Solution 5 is fine. nVidia's GEForce Experience gives the same recommendations.

Textures on Ultra works fine if Level Of Detail and AA settings are yielded. Shadows will make a less noticeable sacrifice than textures. MSAA should be avoided by all but the most powerful of graphics cards. Even then, MSAAx4 should be used (for some peculiar reason it performs better than MSAAx2). People with less than 2Gb VRAM should use FXAA as this consumes no VRAM.

[Engicop]

Solution 1 worked for me and it helped other people as well, but obviously it depends on someone's rig, so it doesn't work for everyone.
Also I believe the Geometry is just one part of the Level of Detail setting. It's about poly count, isn't it? I may be wrong, but I reduced the stuttering with Solution 2 anyway.

[Foxpass]

Originally posted by BadWhippet:

Solution 2 is not needed at all. Geometry is the Level Of Detail setting which can be reduced in-game easily - and should be the first setting anyone reduces as it only impacts on the distance that highest poly models are loaded (ultra means that even hidden and distant assets are rendered in highest poly - totally unnecessary and very expensive on VRAM).

Geometry is a component of the Level of Detail setting, which you can adjust by itself in the .xml file, but not in the in-game settings.

[Francis_Mallman]

I don't understand #2.

It says that turning down 'Geometry' in the config utility will net substantial gains... without loss of visual fidelity.

Okay, turning down 'Geometry' just turns down the 'Level of Detail' setting in the graphics options. And yes that does have a significant effect on the 'visual fidelity'. In fact, Level of Detail has the single biggest impact on the graphics.

What's up with this?

[Engicop]

Originally posted by Schumy:

I don't understand #2.

It says that turning down 'Geometry' in the config utility will net substantial gains... without loss of visual fidelity.

Okay, turning down 'Geometry' just turns down the 'Level of Detail' setting in the graphics options. And yes that does have a significant effect on the 'visual fidelity'. In fact, Level of Detail has the single biggest impact on the graphics.

What's up with this?

GeometryQuality is just a portion of the Level of Detail setting, not possible to change it without changing the rest in-game.

[Francis_Mallman]

Originally posted by TheEngiGuy:

Originally posted by Schumy:

I don't understand #2.

It says that turning down 'Geometry' in the config utility will net substantial gains... without loss of visual fidelity.

Okay, turning down 'Geometry' just turns down the 'Level of Detail' setting in the graphics options. And yes that does have a significant effect on the 'visual fidelity'. In fact, Level of Detail has the single biggest impact on the graphics.

What's up with this?

GeometryQuality is just a portion of the Level of Detail setting, not possible to change it without changing the rest in-game.

Okay, then what's the point?

[Foxpass]

Originally posted by Schumy:

Originally posted by TheEngiGuy:

GeometryQuality is just a portion of the Level of Detail setting, not possible to change it without changing the rest in-game.

Okay, then what's the point?

Supposedly it's a performance bottleneck.

[Alpha]

Originally posted by Schumy:

Originally posted by TheEngiGuy:

GeometryQuality is just a portion of the Level of Detail setting, not possible to change it without changing the rest in-game.

Okay, then what's the point?

The point is you set Level of Detail to ultra in the game and save it. When you do that it changes a number of settings to ultra in the GamerProfile.xml. Then you go into the GamerProfile.xml and change Geometry to low. So you are basically keeping a lot of the ultra details, except for the draw distance and detail of buildings, or something like that.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/1481-watch-dogs-performance-optimization-guide-fps

[Trevor Philips]

Thanks for the guide,but nothing really works :( Even on the lowest settings I get stuttering while (fast) driving despite I have got a GTX 780,i7 3770 and 8 GB RAM. Only solution 1 helped a little bit.

[Francis_Mallman]

Originally posted by aidenman:

Thanks for the guide,but nothing really works :( Even on the lowest settings I get stuttering while (fast) driving despite I have got a GTX 780,i7 3770 and 8 GB RAM. Only solution 1 helped a little bit.

Yeah, I would've thought a GTX 780 would've handled this game easily.

Two questions:

1) What setting is your Textures on?
2) What's your V-ram usage.

If I set Textures above Medium (which really should be called Low), then driving is a stutter-fest. I can enable the High setting (should be called Medium), but in that case the game is really only somewhat playable when I'm on foot. If I set my Textures to Ultra the game is completely unplayable.

My Vram usage is continously at 2GB no matter what I do.

4830k - GTX 680 SLI

A bunch of people have said to me, dude, SLI is your problem. SLI is not my problem. This game actually scales pretty well in SLI. My problem really seems to be a Vram issue. This game has massive issues with loading stuff into memory. Even people with Titans are complaining.

The engine is a mess. Good looking game, which appears to be a lot of fun to play. But the engine just ruins everything.

[Engicop]

The only thing we can do now is wait for the patch... Hurry up Ubisoft.
Odd that people with less powerful PCs like mine can handle this game easily with the tweaks.

[Francis_Mallman]

Originally posted by TheEngiGuy:

The only thing we can do now is wait for the patch... Hurry up Ubisoft.
Odd that people with less powerful PCs like mine can handle this game easily with the tweaks.

I don't believe that that is the case.

I believe that people with low-end systems also have low expectations. People with high-end hardware, on the other hand, KNOW what a maxed-out game running at 60 FPS actually looks like.

It's amazing how many people simply don't understand the importance of matching your FPS count with the frequency of your monitor.

[USA]

Thanks for the post...even though did not have to do any of them...game runs beautifully.