Watch Dogs delayed till 2014

[dsheinem]

So, after all that, the game won't start because the GPU isn't capable of running the full DirectX 11 library (even though it runs a lot of it). Clearly this isn't meant to be.

So, what's a reasonable upgrade path for me? I have these shitty specs:

Processor - Quad Core Q66600 @ 2.4 GHz (is this a serious bottleneck at all?)
GPU - GeForce 8800 GTS 650MB (I know this needs to go - suggestions?)
GPU Slot - PCI-Express 16 (these still good?)
RAM - 4GB DDR PC2-5300 (can I just double this and be fine?)

[flex wood]

For video cards do you have a preference amd or nvidia? And how much are you looking to spend?

The amd 270x is probably the best bang for your buck card right now. Regularly going for 200 but popping up for under that all the time. I'm not really sure if you are going to try to future proof at all but I just saw newegg has a sapphire 280 for about 230 which has 3 gigs of vram. I would probably go with that myself.

[dsheinem]

For video cards do you have a preference amd or nvidia? And how much are you looking to spend?

The amd 270x is probably the best bang for your buck card right now. Regularly going for 200 but popping up for under that all the time. I'm not really sure if you are going to try to future proof at all but I just saw newegg has a sapphire 280 for about 230 which has 3 gigs of vram. I would probably go with that myself.

Some future proofing would be good, but basically I figure anything that is a few notches better than PS4/Xbox One specs should be fine for most if not all PC games for the next 4-5 years. A couple of hundred seems reasonable, but I am curious if I need to upgrade any of that other stuff (e.g. if I can just double the same kind of memory and be good with RAM, etc.) and price will fluctuate accordingly.

[noiseredux]

it's hard to tell if the CPU is a bottleneck. On one hand it's a quad, but on the other it's 2.4. I mean even my i3 is a 3.3, and the i3 is pretty lowly.

8GB of RAM would be legit for games in general, though not sure it helps this situation. In fact, probably overkill in most games right now unless you are concerned w/ future-proofing.

Sounds like your GPU is def the problem right? I'm the first to admit I've been out of the PC gaming scene for way too long. But it feels like most problems are CPU or GPU when it comes to running a game. And in this case it feels GPU.

What's your mobo and what's your case size? Can you support a nice new GPU? I'm not familiar w/ the specific model you have. But I'm betting the AMD flex suggests would help you a lot.

Heck, I'm running a 6900 series AMD and am able to support DX11. And this isn't a "new" card.

EDIT: Looking at Watch Dogs specs,

Minimum:
OS: Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8 (Please note that we only support 64 bit OSs.)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX 11 graphics card with 1 GB Video RAM - Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5770
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 25 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card with Latest Drivers
Additional Notes: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer mode. Supported Video Cards at Time of Release: nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series; AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200

it seems like you're good outside the GPU. That and you need 6GB RAM instead of 4.

[flex wood]

I know my gpu's pretty well but CPU's on the other hand I'm fairly clueless. One thing I didn't even think about is your power supply. The amd cards are kinda power hungry I wouldn't suggest a 280 with less then 550 Watts.

And yea doubling up the ram couldn't hurt. You can run the game with less then 6 GB according to ubi but it isn't recommended.

[Cronozilla]

The cheapest 4GB stick of DDR2 667 is $120.

It'd probably be cheaper to just build an entirely new system. You might spend $200 more than just trying to upgrade what you have. The most significant cost in a new system would be choosing between an Intel or AMD CPU. Either brand you choose will chew everything you throw at it and spit it out.

GPUs range. You can find multiple GPUs that all perform similarly, but have different amounts of VRAM. If you want the GPU to outlast the current console generation, then $200 isn't going to cut it. You also have to consider most developers don't really optimize on PC, and a lot of drivers and system software doesn't help that. GPU, really, has to do with how long you need it for and the resolution you plan on using.

Buying a new GPU, will require a new power supply, most likely. The RAM costs double what double the size in faster RAM would be.

And if you were going to spend all that money ... you might as well throw down another $220 to replace the CPU and motherboard too. Then you'd really be set for the future ... and it could actually be expanded later for very little.

[noiseredux]

Oh man I didn't even pick up that it was ddr2 RAM. YEAH. Pricey as crono pointed out. Might be time to build new.

[flex wood]

Oh man I didn't even pick up that it was ddr2 RAM. YEAH. Pricey as crono pointed out. Might be time to build new.

Or he could just wait for the Wii u version...

Yea I didn't even realize that either. So that really sucks man.

[Frag Mortuus]

When looking at CPU's the clock cycle isn't the end all stat you need to look at. IMO, it's actually the least important. The biggest factor for CPU performance is it's L3 Cache (or L2 depending on if you're running dual core). Cache memory basically store instructions waiting to be executed. This speeds things up significantly because the CPU doesn't have to access RAM as often to get the next set of instructions to execute. So, the bigger the Cache memory, the more instructions it can store. Also, for intel anyway, you want a processor that supports Hyper Threading, which takes your number of cores and effectively doubles them so that the CPU can execute twice the amount of instructions at once. Lastly, the clock speed comes into place. Which basically takes all of the other features that help with instructions and then executes them as quickly as possibly, the higher the speed, the faster they get executed. But, without the other features backing up the clock speed the CPU has to stop working to fetch more instructions or is more limited on the number of instructions it can execute at once.

RAM will help but only to a certain point. Anything more than 6GB is going to be a waste. Especially for gaming. The speed is what matters with RAM. Basically the speed determines how fast it can throw instructions at the CPU, and obviously the amount of RAM determines how many instructions can be stored.

The GPU is what is really paramount in a gaming PC. This is where there are a ton of specs to concern yourself with. The amount of RAM is helpful for things like textures. Textures are stored in the GPU RAM. So, the higher amount of RAM the higher quality textures that it can store. Shader Cores are important. These are basically pipelines that apply the textures and lighting effects to each pixel. The higher number of shader cores, the higher number of pixels at once. Then you have things like the core clock speed and the memory clock speed. Which act similar to the CPU speed. The faster the speed, the faster the instructions can be executed. But, again, the Shader Cores and RAM play a bigger role than clock speed.

Hope that helps a little.

[isiolia]

Some future proofing would be good, but basically I figure anything that is a few notches better than PS4/Xbox One specs should be fine for most if not all PC games for the next 4-5 years.

I think direct comparisons will be hard, since the consoles can rely on having eight cores to work with, and PC games still need to account for all the dual core systems out there. On a per-core level, your current CPU is probably more powerful, and it's barely at the minimum spec level now.

I'd agree with the notion of a new build. Whatever you don't upgrade will wind up being a bottleneck for what you do.
If you can find some parts for cheap/free, then more RAM, possibly overclocking your CPU (will likely do 3Ghz fairly easily with a non-OEM cooler), and upgrading the GPU would probably stretch it a little longer. Personally though, I'd look at a new gaming rig, and repurposing the Q6600 (it's still a solid machine for a lot of things).