The Latest VRAM Glutton: Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs 2

After writing about Watch Dogs 2 support in NVIDIA’s latest GeForce driver earlier, I decided to give the game an install and see what it offered on the graphics front – namely to see if it’d be worth benchmarking in the near-future. Well, before I could even see the game world, I was left a little impressed at two things: 1) the fact that there are a ton of settings to tweak, and 2) the fact that the game requires a lot of VRAM.

After loading the game up on a PC using a GTX 1080, I didn’t have to adjust anything to see that the game’s settings required 5.2GB of VRAM. What’s perhaps a little crazy is that this wasn’t at 4K or any other truly exotic resolution, but rather 1440p. Increasing the resolution to 3440×1440 bumped the use to 5.8GB, and I suspect 4K would push it even higher than that.

In the aforementioned post, I mentioned that NVIDIA recommends a GTX 1070 for 1080p resolution at “Very High” detail. Well, while that might have been the case for the exact configuration used (or NVIDIA refuses to dip below 60 FPS), it’s a little misleading as Gamers Nexus managed to eke 60 FPS out of a GTX 1060 at 1080p, using “Very High” detail as well. Clearly, there’s a difference in settings used (the differences in CPU miiight have played a role, too), but it’s nice to know that you don’t need a $400+ GPU to enjoy the game with good detail at a modest resolution.

Nonetheless, if the in-game VRAM monitor is correct, then that means that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to consider 4GB a good framebuffer nowadays. If you already have a 4GB card, then you’re fine – you’ve probably been enjoying the card for a while. But if you’re in the market for a new GPU, we’d have to recommend opting for a 4GB+ card – or 6GB+ if we’re talking about top-end resolutions.

For that matter, if VRAM is really a big issue, then this game will undoubtedly become a stature in our next GPU test suite update (coming soon).