Watch Dogs PC performance patch planned to reduce lag and stuttering issues

It's a fun quirk of PC gaming that, going into a new game, you're never quite sure what will happen. Take Watch Dogs: I've had no issues with it, whereas, if Tom drives fast enough, this can happen . It can be hard to gauge exactly how prevalent a problem can be, but enough are experiencing lag and stuttering issues that Sebastien Viard, the game's graphics technical director, issued a series of tweets explaining the problem and committing to an upcoming performance patch.

Watch Dogs can use 3+ GB of RAM on NG consoles for graphics, your PC GPU needs enough VRAM for ultra options due to the lack of unified mem May 29, 2014

If you are having problems, Viard suggests reducing those settings that have a more dramatic effect on VRAM usage, including texture quality, anti-aliasing and resolution. It's not an ideal solution, but it should tide you over until a PC patch is deployed.

And finally, our PC progs are also currently working on a patch to improve your experience thanks to your reports, stay tuned :) #WatchDogs May 29, 2014

Of course, all that advice ignores the perverse excitement that veteran PC gamers may feel on encountering a game that doesn't work on their system. It's been a while since we've had a reason to upgrade our machines, and the call of a new, shiny graphics card is strong. What makes it somewhat disappointing is that, even on Ultra settings, Watch Dogs isn't the graphical tour-de-force you'd hope from the game upsetting your rig.

Thanks, PCGamesN .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.