Watch Dogs is finally arriving next month, after what seems like 65 years (give or take) of hype, delays, doubts, and discussion. It will be on last-gen and next-gen consoles, but it will also be on PC. What kind of PC must you have to run it? Well.
Today the game went up for pre-order on Steam, with its minimum and recommended PC specs laid bare for all the world to see. Here goes:
Minimum:
OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 1 GB Video RAM – Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5770
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
Recommended:
OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.)
Processor: Eight core – Intel Core i7-3770 @3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 X8 @ 4 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 2 GB Video RAM – Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
A lot of fairly straightforward stuff in there, though that recommended processor speed sticks out to me. Hope this game runs ok on my more modest rig.
(via NeoGAF)
Comments
60 responses to “Your PC Must Be This Burly To Play Watch Dogs”
seeing such high spec demands gives me hope that this isnt going to be another shitty port which alot of games have been of recent, i have the hardware to play stuff and make it look pretty, just a lack of games with many technical graphical options
Cmon watch dogs! dont let me down!
It’s Ubisoft, so don’t get your hopes up. Remember how badly Far Cry 3 was optimised?
Huh? FC3 was a great port, AC4 was the crap one
The compromises that had to be made to make it run on consoles was ridiculous! Which translated to a shitty port for pc! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqnAbRpyqfI
To be fair, by the time I played it, they had actually done a bunch of patches that vastly improved the PC version. Looked better on PC than anything I’ve seen on PS4 or Xbone to date.
Oh it ran well and look good, however you can still see the compromises that had to be made for consoles… and that concerns me in regards to Watchdogs. However I believe they have said in the past, PC was their primary platform for this game!
Hm that said, the xbox one and ps4 both have 8 core processors.
Eight cell*
Hmm no I am pretty sure its an 8 core processor. AMD but is basically 2 quad core processors.
more cores doesn’t not always mean it is more powerful, My quad core i7 is more powerful than the 8 core in the xbox one/ps4
Hmm not really, it just works differently. It really depends how the software is written to take advantage of this fact. All I was saying was that, after someone saying about the indication of 8 cores means its not simply a port from console game. I was simply pointing out that the new gen consoles actually run an 8 core processor.
Technically in AMD terms it’s an 4 Module/8core processor, because each module has 2 cores, which share resources (so not a true 8 core setup). Not to mention the games can only use a maximum of 6…
They are also running very low powered AMD jaguar core with low IPC (instructions per cycle) at a lowish clock speed. A modern core i5 with only 4 cores would demolish the cpu used in both the xbone and ps4 easily.
eg…if you have a 4 core processor at say 2 ghz but it does 3 ipc, where the 8 core processor at say 2 ghz will do 1 ipc (because it’s less efficient) even with a really highly multi-threaded application the 4 core processor will be way faster.
Since the xbone/ps4 both use x86/64 processors, and AMD gpus, it’s very easy to compare the raw performance of the cpus and gpus to modern computer cpus and gpus.
It’s a bit of a grey area – the AMD CPUs they’re based on share a floating-point unit and I believe the L2 cache between each pair of cores. So it’s not a full 8-core.
The hope for cleaner ports this gen comes from the x86-64 architecture of the APUs as much as the extra horsepower.
…which use the jaguar architecture, designed for phones and ultrabooks. All 8 of them combined are about as powerful as a single core on that 3770. Both of the recommended CPUs are immensely more powerful than the console ones.
Hm thats a fair point, but i am guessing it has been written to use 8 cores if it can, Which is why they probably said optimal for that, As then it can use all 8 cores, much like it probably will on the xbone, that said one or 2 will allready be used by the OS on either PC or console. And am not saying you are wrong at all, but as well the OS on the consoles would be optimized for the hardware to run at maximum efficiency, however now that I have said that, it is Microsoft so who knows. hahaha
Thats why I just have a standard PC for all my pc gaming these days. Few games are actually customizable enough to actually make the investment into high end tech worthwhile.
Save money and spend it on a next gen console. Get the best of both worlds
Damn, mine only has six cores…
only
I’m building a new PC soon so I know I can play it 😀
CPU: AMD FX-9370 4.4GHz
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB
Storage: Western Digital BLACK 1TB
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 3GB
Pretty keen for when it’s done
Um… yay?
To save yourself a bit of money I suggest the FX-8350, its an excellent overclocker, the 9370 is practically a overclocked 8350. The rest of the setup seems fine, same some $$$ get the 8350 and through in 16gb of ram.
I upgraded for this and AC4 last November. AC4 runs pretty nicely, I’d think that would be a fair benchmark.
I wonder if the game is actually optimised to actually use all those cores – or if they’ve simply put the recommended specs that high so people don’t freak out because the game is not optimised for PC.
It won’t be optimized for 8 cores.
Most PC software is barely optimized to use mutli cores at all, let alone 8. They are just brute forcing the processes.
I’m hoping so, I have a AMD FX-8350, thinking in mind about the nextgen (current gen) consoles having 8 core cpu’s.And the only game to date that takes advantage of the cpu is bf4. I’m hoping I made the right choice as I only put my build together nov last year.
Didn’t even realise this was coming to pc, was planning on waiting for the Wii u version. Not anymore! Sorry Nintendo 🙁
Edit: Also by the time this is released I’ll have my new top of the line alienware laptop, so I should have no trouble running this.
Ps it’s great to know that the game is optimised for x64, I hope it will use at least 8gb of my 32gb of ram.
Looks like they’re releasing an under-optimized port. What they’ve shown so far shouldn’t recommend an 8-core i7 to handle, that’s just nuts.
Honestly, are there any RENDERING programs out there that require Eight Core cpu’s!?!?!?!
Rendering programs? Like CG rendering? Most don’t REQUIRE a certain amount of cores, but the more the better. But you’re really comparing apples to oranges there..
Most games and programs out there could run on a dual core if they optimized things well enough. PC software is highly under optimized. PC devs got used to not needing optimization a long time ago.
The theory I’m hoping is true is that the new gameplay is from consoles, and PC will be more like the old videos. Why they would do this, I’m not sure, but fingers crossed.
I think it’s a mistake, cos i7-3770 is a 4 core processor.
Yes and no.
The i7-3770 is a 4 core processor, but it comes with hyper-threading enabled. This allows for 2 threads per physical core to perform different tasks, so it effectively appears as 8 logical cores in the task manager.
The AMD FX-8350 X8 on the other hand genuinely uses 8 physical cores.
So while it’s technically true that the i7-3770 has 4 cores, I doubt it’s a mistake.
Yet the i7-3770 is more powerful
Indeed.
I’ve been very happy with the performance I’ve been getting from mine. =P
You’d be surprised, I have a little graphics experience and those highlights around the bollard and all the lines of data visualising the network are rather intensive.
You sometimes have to redraw 112 copies of the screen in order for them to look right,
Yeah, but that’s graphics. If that was the limiting factor they wouldn’t recommend only a 560 Ti – that’s a fairly low-end card and is now 3 generations old as well.
And GPU is same-or-less than what consoles have. Therefore, I can only assume: PC visuals will be shitty console port and generally shit; and the code is fucking terrible and won’t run smooth regardless.
No worries then. 😉
Think this is the first time I’ve seen a minimum of 6GB, such a strange number to have as most people would have 4 or 8, not 6
6GB of ram is not as uncommon as you might think,
Generally with what iv seen, the 6GB combo generally comes in triple channel and was very popular on the old 1366 chipsets which can still pack a mighty grunt these days!
as my i7 920 @ 4.0GHz with 24GB of ram will prove that, not the best but plenty of power to keep up with the big boys
The most common standard is dual channel which you will see in most and with the socket 2011 boards you will see quad channel!
I’ve got everything for the minimum bar the RAM (though I’d be getting this on console nonetheless)
Just a question as a PC noob – when they say ‘graphics card x or better’ is there some sort of list you can look up to see what is better or worse?
There is lots out there, a good place to start would be here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html
You could also try http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
Should give you a good idea of where your card sits performance wise to recommended specs.
I need a better CPU. I’ve been saying that for a year or two though.
So do I got i7 870 2.93ghz with stock fan runs at 100+degrees on most games lol
I got a i7 920. The lower end of the first batch of the i7’s that came out. It’s totally bottlenecking my gpu. I will upgrade for Witcher 3.
That’s weird you guys, my i7 870 has been going strong for years. I got 60+fps on BF3 Ultra and I frequently get 45-60fps on Ultra BF4. Which GPU vendor do you both go with? My CPU generally only messes up on CPU intensive encoding, but rarely ever decoding. Note: I have disabled hyperthreading on my CPU because it has terrible support for this range.
Dammit,
Everything is good for recommended, except I have a i7-3770 @3.4 GHz not a 3.5GHz
lol
On Ubisoft, – from the AC games, FC3 etc. They aren’t great at optimizing for PC.
One would hope that us in the master race get something closer to those videos released a year or more back. PC is dumbed down. But yeah Ubi make good looking games, but I think rely on brut PC force, over optimisation.
It’s been confirmed that these are not the final specs, article below
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/watch_dogs-available-for-pre-order-on-steam-system-requirements-are-still-not-final/
I’m not too worried about the ‘eight core recommended’ part, I think it’s just Ubisoft showing off that they finally have a game that will use more than four cores. I’d be interested to see the performance different on an i7 with and without hyperthreading.
Guys, I need some help. Would I be able to run it on an AMD Phenom II X4 840 @ 3.80 Ghz?
Hopefully this port is more a Far Cry 3, and less an AC4
You really didn’t like Black Flag? I think I got a lot more hours of fun out of the latter than the former. Reviews are in FC3 favour but not by a lot..
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/far-cry-3
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag
Without sounding rude… A) he was talking about ports not which is a better game and B) Never judge a game by its meta critic score, or any review score for that matter!
Those specs have been on the official watch dog site for months and months.
How is this news?
Still above recommended specs, But not by much. its about bloody time games started taking advantage of big boy hardware.
Goody, another game to use as an excuse to upgrade the old i5 2500k
Won’t be surprised if they are actually not that at all, just Ubisoft trying to appeal to PC gamers will expensive rigs. “Hey look at those huge requirements, those make you happy right?”
Good. My 780 Ti is really hungry.
going to call slight BS on the i7 requirement… would like to be proved wrong but i’d say a recent i5 will be more than sufficient for this… like i said… happy to be proved wrong!
I always though i5 (current gen) was more than enough/ideal for gaming now days?
What the hell happened to PC games over the last year?
I can run Crysis 3 on high on my current PC, however, according to the minimum specs for any of the games released in the second half of 2013, I have no where near the specs needed for even minimum.
Like 2GB video ram? What the funk? Since when has a game needed this? I bought the HD 5770 3 years ago and it was 3x more powerful than ANY game required on high specs.
8 core processor tells me this game must be highly unoptimized, which is no surprise, since it is PC.