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Ubisoft’s latest game, Watch Dogs has been the center of attention the past few days, especially when it comes to PC gamers. For the fortunate gamers who have had access to the game prior to its official release, they've been experiencing a myriad of frame rate issues. Looks like it’s just one issue after the other for the master race.

I personally am not an avid PC gamer, but I have high expectations in place for the way that PC games operate, specifically referring to frame rate. With access to hardware that is more advanced than consoles, and easier to update, I wouldn't expect to see an issue of this caliber arise in a "next-gen" game. However, software will always have its bugs, and fortunately, they can always be fixed without too much of a hassle. I can only imagine that Ubisoft may get some criticism for this, but it is apparent that it won't last too long, since this isn't a large scale issue (only the gamers with an early copy have seen the issue first hand, not everyone wanting the game). I have played the console version of Watch Dogs, and it doesn't seem to have this issue at all, but then again, the console version is on its own scale, referring to way the game itself operates with the hardware at hand.

Let's talk a little bit about what gamers have been experiencing regarding this frame rate issue. Gamers have been reporting that they have been experiencing large drops in frame rate whilst playing the game. According to Explosion, one gamer reported dropping as low as 13 Frames per Second (in some scenarios) on his NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780Ti 6GB. Now that’s something you don’t see very often, especially for a 780Ti with 6GB of on-board memory. Personal friends of mine have even said that when they’re playing the game, they've experienced these frame rate drops as well. This will most likely be fixed with a quick patch either released by Ubisoft, or an update for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX software after the game is officially launched. These frame rate drops can be re-created by doing various things in the game, such as driving at high speeds, causing a lot of explosions, and/or running from the cops. In the video below, provided by Zao Tech on YouTube, you can witness the frame rate drop, first hand:


There hasn't been an official statement regarding the issue, and it will most likely remain this way until the game has official released on May 27th, 2014 for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The game will be released sometime in Fall of 2014 for the Wii U console.

EDIT: As of recent, an update has been pushed for various graphics drivers to resolve this issue with the game. Just in time for the release tomorrow! If you haven't already done so, I would suggest updating your drivers so that you can continue to enjoy the game. Thank you to the members in the thread who notified me of the update being released.

With the recent release of these drivers, AMD and other graphics card producers seem to be left behind. Due to Watch Dogs being developed under Ubisofts partnership with NVIDIA and using the GameWork software. This evidently will create possible issues for other companies to create compatible driver updates to address frame rate issues, and other possible issues in the future. Becuase GameWork belongs to NVIDIA, it's only natural that a company that is not NVIDIA would have access to direct information regarding that software. In other words, without direct access to more information about the issues with the game, it becomes increasingly difficult for AMD to produce fast and effective updates for it's users. Of course this does not mean that AMD does not have it's own technology at hand to make the best of a bad situation. If you'd like to read more indept into this particular issue, you should check out the link to Source 2 at the bottom of the article.

What do the members of 7s think about this frame rate issue?

Source
Source 2 (Thanks to Monopolyman for the link)