Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 G1 Gaming review - DX11: Watch Dogs

DX11: Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective. Players complete missions — linear scenarios with set objectives — to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world of Chicago. In the game, players take control of a vigilante named Aiden Pearce, who can hack into various electronic devices tied to the city's central operating system (CtOS), allowing various methods for the player to solve numerous objectives. The hacking mechanic in the game is performed directly from Aiden's in-game smartphone, which is equipped with multiple applications, namely the "profiler" and the "crime prevention system"; the former allows the player to access information on any citizen in the city, while the latter notifies the player when a crime is likely to occur in the vicinity. The phone is also equipped with applications that interact directly with the environment around the player; for example, players can hack into NPC's phones to retrieve bank data and steal funds, or they can hack into traffic lights to cause collisions. Players can also receive information on civilians via augmented reality feeds, providing them with information on demographics, health and potential behaviour. 

Quality settings:

• High quality textures 
• High image quality
• FXAA
• Buffered Frames 3
• MHBAO

For Watch Dogs you will need to tweak image quality settings as its graphics memory requirements are a tad complicated. Our general rule would be:

• For the guys with a cheaper mid-range 2 GB card, switch to high quality settings and FXAA as maximum. Your playable resolution will be be 1920x1080 (Full HD). 
• If you have the better mainstream to expensive high-end graphics cards like the R9 290(x)/295 or the GTX 780 series, then 2560x1440 (WQHD) will be your domain, but here again use your graphics settings with caution, Ultra quality settings can be used when you use lower AA quality like FXAA. If you want MSAA at say 2x then you need to stick at HIGH image quality settings and textures.
• Ultra HD Gaming - Even in Multi-GPU modes like the R9 295 and 780 Ti SLI offer, it would be a no-go with Ultra image quality & textures as you will run into a freak-fest of stuttering. Here the same rule applies, use High quality settings with High Quality textures. You can play with AA a bit, but we'd suggest you leave it disabled.