Watch Dogs: Legion rated at 1080p, 1440p, 4K on all new GPUs

introduction

SEE THE GALLERY – 19 IMAGES

Watch Dogs: Legion just launched with some really good graphics for open-world gaming, and in my reviews of the new GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards from NVIDIA – and in the middle of my testing the RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards, I thought I would refer to Watch Dogs: Legion.

I tested a stack of cards, including the new AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 graphics cards, as well as the newer GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards from NVIDIA. I threw in a few old cards from Team Red and Team Green, all at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K on Ultra graphics.

The game itself weighs in at 41GB, but there is an HD texture pack that you can download with it, for an additional 15GB. I have used this pack in the benchmarking below.

Graphics engine

Ubisoft uses an optimized Disrupt Engine, something that grew out of parts of AnvilNext and Dunia Engine, which were game engines used in Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry 2 and 3. Ubisoft uses open-world city management to from the AnvilNext engine, while the AI ​​mechanics and vegetation from the Dunia engine and Far Cry 2 and 3 are used in Disrupt.

What Ubisoft did with Watch Dogs: Legion was to combine the open-world action-adventure side of the original Disrupt engine from the original Watch Dogs – then used open-world city management, along with the mechanics and AnvilNext and Dunia Engine AI vegetation in an improved Disrupt engine.

The modified Disrupt engine uses dynamic simulation to realistically simulate physical interactions and seamless online connectivity. Ubisoft Montreal also uses Disrupt’s tweaks for the cross-gen and cross-platform game of Watch Dogs: Legion.

Disrupt uses DirectX 9 and DirectX 11, and is also capable of dynamically simulating particles and clutter, which are blown away. Meanwhile, the Disrupt Motor can simulate electricity as well, which is another great motor modification that allows players to create city-wide blackouts.

Graphics settings

Test system specifications

Last update:

Sabrent sent their massive Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new gaming install SSD inside my main test bench.

I have a new upgrade in my GPU test bench before moving on to a next generation test bench, where I will prepare for the next generation Ampere graphics cards from NVIDIA and the next generation RDNA 2 graphics cards from AMD.

Sabrent helped with new storage for my GPU testbeds, sending in a slew of blazing-fast M.2 2280 Rocket NVMe PCIe SSDs. I installed it in my GPU test bench as a new game storage drive because games are so big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I now have 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage.

Anthony’s GPU Test System Specifications

I recently upgraded my GPU test bench – at least for now, until AMD’s new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is released, the final update for 2020 will take place and we’ll all be good. for RDNA 2 and future versions of the Ampere GPU. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU benchmark upgrade for 2021, but Zen 3 was later announced.

Benchmarks – 1080p

1080p – Reflections on Performance

Right out of the door, AMD lifts the performance glove, with its not even flagship Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card, destroying the competition in Watch Dogs: Legion at 1080p. We have an average of 102FPS, compared to NVIDIA’s competing card in the GeForce RTX 3080 with 89FPS, damn it beats the RTX 3090 at $ 1,499.

You can get an average of 60FPS at 1080p on anything between the RTX 2060 SUPER and the GTX 1080 Ti, while the older Vega 64 and GTX 1080p drop below 50FPS. With a few detailed tweaks, you can hit 60 fps quite easily in Watch Dogs: Legion at 1080p.

Benchmarks – 1440p

1440p – Reflections on performance

Cranking things up to 1440p, the GeForce RTX 3090 makes its way to the top, averaging 84FPS compared to the Radeon RX 6800 XT behind it with 79FPS – and the RTX 3080 behind again with an average of 76FPS.

Staying above 60FPS (at least with Ultra Details enabled) will require the GeForce RTX 3070, while with a few tweaks to game details you will likely hit 60FPS on the RTX 2060 SUPER, GTX 1080 Ti, Radeon RX 5700 XT. and the RTX 2070 SUPER.

Benchmarks – 4K

4K – Reflections on Performance

NVIDIA leads at 4K in a big way, with the GeForce RTX 3090 bursting with an average of 57FPS – coming close to the 4K @ 60FPS mark you want in a game like this. The GeForce RTX 3080 sits at 51 frames per second, while the Radeon RX 6800 XT only manages 47 frames per second here.

Half the card stack can’t run 4K here at 60FPS, but you can easily override some of that detail and get 30-60FPS on some of the lower end cards on the market in Watch Dogs: Legion.

Final thoughts

The original Watch Dogs before it was watered down when it was released looked great – with the mods it was even better, and now Watch Dogs: Legion does a great job of creating a beautiful world for a game in open world.

If you want to play the game in 4K, you’ll need the Team Red side, at least the Radeon RX 6800 XT. As for NVIDIA, you’re going to want the GeForce RTX 3080 or the GeForce RTX 3090, but also remember that you have DLSS technology that you can enable (I have some numbers on those to come in a follow-up post. , still going as I type).

Watch Dogs: Legion is much easier to run above 60FPS at 2560 x 1440, while 1080p is even easier – but the entry point for 30FPS is something like the GeForce GTX 1080 for 1440p and 1080p.

The game looks great and runs on a PC that could be a few years old with no issues – you may need to lower the resolution to 1080p and details to Medium, but Watch Dogs: Legion will work. But I’m wondering how it will work at 8K … maybe I’ll try this once I’m done with this growing stack of graphics cards.

Right of reply

We openly invite companies that provide us with evaluation samples / that are mentioned or discussed to express their opinion. If a company representative wishes to respond, we will post the response here. Please contact us if you wish to respond.