Watch Dogs 2 APU test

Release date: November 29, 2016
Genre: Action (Shooter) / 3D / 3rd Person
developer: Ubisoft Montréal
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment

The technical requirements for the game make me wonder - will my computer handle it? And if you have such concerns, then you should check out the gaming cloud service playkey.net, which allows you to play cool games even on old hardware with Windows or on MAC (Minimum technical requirements for PC when playing on Playkey: Processor from 1.5 GHz, from 2 Gigabytes RAM и Video card from 256 MB with support for DirectX 9.0c and higher).

All this happens thanks to modern technologies, streaming and a wide network of remote powerful servers. You can buy and play without any problems by clicking on the following link.

Watch Dogs 2 is the acclaimed sequel to the famous Watch Dogs game. The plot continues the main goal of its predecessor: hacking and hacking in a huge, endless space for exploration. The main protagonist of the game, Marcus Holloway, is a capable black twenty-five-year-old guy originally from Auckland. Arriving from his home state in San Francisco, Marcus contacts the hacker group DedSec to confront the corrupt system and corrupt government. The protagonist lived in a poor family, and everything changes dramatically when the ct_OS system made a mistake and identified him as a dangerous offender. All of Marcus' expectations and prospects for a prosperous life were shattered. Now Holloway’s goal is to fight the greedy corruption and corrupt power of the country. The protagonist is an ideal fighter and masters the skill of parkour. His arsenal includes a homemade meteor weapon and an unknown model pistol. Marcus does not pursue personal revenge; he, along with members of the group, acts for the purposes of DedSec. The main task of the guys is to fight the updated system.

This subsection of our review highlights the main graphical aspects of this game. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphic settings and the quality of development of the main visual aspects.

Watch Dogs 2 is only supported Windows 7/8/10 Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers and are unlikely to receive support. 

The priority and main graphics API for Watch Dogs 2 is DirectX 11.

The game is based on the Disrupt 2 game engine, a modified engine from the first part of the series. After the French publisher presented one of its most ambitious projects, Watch Dogs, at E3, it was believed that the game was being developed on an old but modified engine - Anvil Engine (Assasin's Creed). On February 24, 2013, the technical director of the game wrote on his Twitter that the game was being developed on a completely new engine - Disrupt, specially developed for the Ubisoft Montreal department. According to the developers, none of the technologies available at that time (CryEngine or Unreal Engine) met the requirements and were not suitable for creating open-world games.

The main feature of Disrupt Engine is its dynamism. Many real phenomena have been recreated in the city. How people drive cars, the behavior of water, wind, electricity. Everything reacts to all, interacts with each other and you get "branching reactions". 

Take the rain for example, when the sky becomes gloomy the townspeople take out umbrellas. Lights reflect from a wet surface. You can see how the wind changes the direction of the rain, blowing away debris and leaves. Clothes are also affected, as Aiden puts his hands in his pockets or a gust of wind causes a passerby to tighten his jacket. These are not big, but important details. Heavy traffic or an accident will make citizens nervous, honk their horns, or even leave their cars to find out what’s going on. Random witnesses to incidents can call an ambulance.

Such engine capabilities certainly affect the attractiveness of the city and immersion in its atmosphere. And intervening in the flow of events and looking at the consequences will be interesting for the gameplay. And this is another feature of the engine - your influence on the world. How people around you treat you depends only on your actions. Moreover, according to animation director Colin Graham, the character’s reputation will be somewhat more complex than just “good-evil.” Simply put, if you display weapons on the streets of the city, open fire and cause “mayhem,” people will be more likely to recognize you and call the police. As a result, you can generally become a famous person whose face does not disappear from the news. At the same time, silently killing an ordinary NPC will not add “+1 to the renegade” to you. 

And saving an innocent victim will not bring people's love if before that you rushed through the city center with a machine gun at the ready. The third important point is that the engine is designed for a constant transition from multiplayer to single player and back, without additional downloads, transitions and other seams. Switching to multiplayer will have absolutely no effect on the world around you. According to the developers, the presence of each player in multiplayer will be invisible. You can only intentionally connect to another player's “world” in order to track him down. But until a certain moment you won’t know if someone is watching you. From here it becomes clear that in one “world” there can only be two real players - the “hunter” and the “prey”. The one you are hunting will no longer be present in the world of the one who is hunting you. This is the clever way that Disrupt Engine protects the virtual city from massive online madness.  

The difference between AMD and Intel solutions is almost invisible.

Our APUs were tested at resolution 1280x720 with low quality settings graphics allowed by Watch Dogs 2.

Testing at low quality settings 1280x720 

With these settings, an acceptable FPS indicator was shown AMD 7870 and the latest Intel i7 5775C.

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on systems  Core i 7 5775С and AMD A10-7870K for separate screen displays 1280x720 and 1920x1080 with low quality settings.

Testing at low memory quality settings GPU

At a resolution of 1280x720, APU video memory consumption is 800 MB of video memory. 

Loading of processor cores at low quality settings 1280x720%  

When using built-in graphics solutions, the game can support up to 8 computing threads. 

The test was carried out on the basic configurations of Core i 7 5775C and AMD A10-7870K with 8 GB DDR3/4 2666 MGz pre-installed memory. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing system RAM consumption  

If there is a system with Core i 7 5775C Watch Dogs 2 consumes all 7.8 gigabytes of RAM. If there is a system based AMD A10-7870K RAM consumption of all RAM was also 7.8 gigabytes.