Games

Watch Dogs Legion Raytraced Reflections Actually Require RTX 3080 GPU and DLSS Performance Mode at 4K@Ultra

About three weeks ago, we reported the official Watch Dogs Legion PC system requirements as they had been revealed by Ubisoft.

However, it looks like they were not final as we previously thought. Earlier this afternoon, the developers shared an update on Twitter featuring significant changes, particularly for the specs recommended if you wish to play Watch Dogs Legion with raytraced reflections enabled.

Not only is there an extra tier for raytracing specs at 1440p and Very High Settings, but the actual requirements have also changed as well.

Comparing them to the previous set shows that the 1080p High Settings have been actually lowered, both in terms of CPU and GPU. However, it should be noted that the updated specs specify the need to enable NVIDIA’s performance-enhancing Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), too. They also clarify that with this configuration, you should only set the ray-traced reflections to Medium quality.

Meanwhile, the 4K/Ultra specs have taken a major hit, upping the CPU requirements from Intel Core i7 9700K to i9 9900K and the GPU requirements from NVIDIA’s Turing-based GeForce RTX 2080Ti to the brand new, almost-top-of-the-line Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. Additionally, Ubisoft recommends setting DLSS to ‘Performance Mode’, which means Watch Dogs Legion will be effectively upscaled from 1080p to 2160p. That’s not necessarily going to be a major con if the quality of the DLSS implementation rivals what we’ve seen in Control, but it’s still a measure of how heavy rendering is going to be when pushed to its maximum.

We feared as much after early performance reports but hoped Watch Dogs Legion could prove out to be much more optimized in the final version. Anyway, Ubisoft hasn’t mentioned the expected frame rate for any of these specs. We’ll soon be able to check it all out ourselves, with the game only about two weeks away from its launch date.

Ray Tracing On – 1080p / High Settings / Ray Tracing Medium / DLSS Quality