Assassin's Creed (2008) - retro GPU test

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

 

Year: 2008
developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft Entertainment
Genre: Action / 3D / 3rd Person

The year is 1191. From the blessed struggle for the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher, the Third Crusade turned into a personal feud between the leaders of the Christian and Muslim worlds. After the capture of the port of Acre, Richard the Lionheart prepares to inflict final defeat on Saladin in the promised Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Holy Land is being devastated by numerous governors who have felt their power, having lost administrative control.

A series of targeted strikes can stop the bloody tyranny: if you eliminate all those who benefit from the war, then peace will come, and the goal of the assassin sect will be fulfilled. An impossible task, a mission for suicide - Altair gladly takes on dangerous work, because this is the only chance to regain his lost position in the hierarchy of the brotherhood and wash away the shame of his recent failure. In addition to dedication, the main character has the training of a professional killer: mastery of different types of bladed weapons to win in martial arts, mastery of his own body to move covertly in the urban landscape, mastery of intuition to choose the right victim and the right moment.

THE GRAFICAL PART

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.

Supported OS and graphics API

Assassin's Creed is supported by major Windows operating systems, which include Windows XP/Vista. Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported by developers.

 

The priority and main graphics API for Saints Assassin's Creed is DirectX 10. 

Game engine

The Assassin's Creed game is based on a game engineAnvil engine. Anvil engine is a game engine created by Ubisoft Montreal, a subsidiary of publisher Ubisoft. Anvil is a commercial, proprietary cross-platform game engine designed for use on the personal computer (Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X) and on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS and Wii game consoles. First used in the game Assassin's Creed.

The first game to use the Anvil engine was the third-person action game Assassin's Creed, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released in 2007 for game consoles, and in 2008 for PC. In this game, the engine was called "Scimitar".

The engine uses HumanIK subroutine components developed by Autodesk. HumanIK is used to correctly position the animation of the character's arms and legs during pushes and climbs in real time. As a physics subsystem, the engine uses the well-known Havok physics engine, which, in addition to simulating solid mechanics, also simulates tissue physics

Advanced Game Settings

Assassin's Creed has a rather meager arsenal of graphics settings, but it is quite enough to change the graphics settings in a wide range of performance of different systems.

 

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium and maximum graphics quality settings. 

Various quality modes

As we can see, the picture quality between different settings is simply colossal.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

In 4K, Assassin's Creed looks great.

Comparison of anti-aliasing modes

When anti-aliasing is activated, the picture improves noticeably, but surface unevenness is not completely eliminated. Below is our video review of Assassin's Creed at various quality settings:

General visual design and game physics

Assassin's Creed was a breakthrough in its time, both in gaming and graphical terms. The game had an unsurpassed plot, an innovative setting, and, of course, good graphics, supported by the capabilities of DirectX 10. Of course, the game had some problems, but in terms of optimization it allowed you to play on almost any gaming PC of that time without any problems.

 

    

Next, we will move directly to gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware. 

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average and minimum FPS were taken as performance indicators. Below is a video of the test segment:    

Our video cards were tested at separate screen resolutions of 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Assassin's Creed. SLI works without problems, but AMD CrossFireX has some glitches, such as a frame rate lock in a test scene around 110 FPS. 

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

      

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R7 260X or GeForce GTX 750 Ti level.

Testing at resolution 3840x2160

     

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2560

 

With these settings An acceptable FPS indicator was shown by video cards of the Radeon R7 260X or GeForce GTX 750 Ti level.

Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with different anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 768 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1600 - 1024 MB of video memory, and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 1536 MB of video memory. 

CPU test

  

We tested processor dependence on 16 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the video card value for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum graphics quality settings. Below is a video of the test segment:    

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

The CPU performance in the game is quite sufficient for all test models. But an old fact is that when the character is located in our tested segment above ground level, FPS drops significantly and is almost equal to the same level for all CPU models.

Loading of processor coresat maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel% 

 

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD% 

 

The game can support up to 6 computing threads, which is quite good for 2008.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 7 5960X@4.6 GHz with 16GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. The entire used operational memory was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, with various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Assassin's Creed is at the level of 600 megabytes.

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

On a 6GB system, Assassin's Creed consumes about 2GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 2 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, the total memory consumption was almost 2.5 gigabytes. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 3.4 gigabyte of RAM.