Assassin’s Creed Shadows - PC performance graphics benchmarks of Graphics Cards and Processors
We have tested the latest game Assassin’s Creed Shadows on maximum graphics settings with GeForce RTX and Radeon RX series video cards. We also evaluated the performance and quality of the game's graphics during our tests.
| 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 Shadows is developed on the basis of modern rendering technologies under DirectX 12 control and is designed for 64-bit operating systems Windows 10 or 11. The game supports ReBAR (Resizable BAR) on compatible platforms, which may improve performance in certain scenarios. Below are the official system requirements, as well as the difference in visual quality of the game on minimum и maximum (Ultra) settings.
System Requirements Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Minimum system requirements
- Operating system: Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen™ 5 3600
- Memory: 16 GB
- Video card:
- Nvidia® GeForce GTX™ 1070 (8 GB)
- AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 (8GB)
- Intel® Arc™ A580 (8GB, ReBAR enabled)
- DirectX: Version 12
- Disk space: 115 GB (SSD recommended)
Recommended System Requirements
- Operating system: Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-11600K / AMD Ryzen™ 5 5600X
- Memory: 16 GB
- Video card:
- Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti (8GB)
- AMD Radeon™ RX 6700 XT (12GB)
- Intel® Arc™ B580 (12GB, ReBAR enabled)
- DirectX: Version 12
- Disk space: 115 GB (SSD recommended)
(Some configurations may require more VRAM for higher resolutions and enabling additional graphics effects.)
| DEVELOPMENT HISTORY |
Assassin’s Creed Shadows — is a new part of the legendary Assassin's Creed series, developed by Ubisoft. The game was first officially announced in 2024 and became the most anticipated project of the series due to its setting in feudal Japan. The development is carried out by the Ubisoft Quebec studio, known for such projects as Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Immortals Fenyx Rising. This means that the game will be focused on a large-scale open world with deep elaboration of locations, non-linear plot and improved parkour mechanics.
Discussions about creating an Assassin's Creed set in Japan first began in 2016. However, Ubisoft only officially took on the project after the success of Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring, which showed high demand for Japanese themes. The first concepts of the future game appeared in 2021, and even then the developers decided to completely update the Anvil Engine to meet the requirements of the new generation of graphics and technologies.
One of the main challenges in creating Assassin’s Creed Shadows was the development of a dynamic ecosystem. Now the environment will change depending on the seasons, weather and time of day. This will dramatically affect the player's tactical capabilities. For example, in winter, snow muffles footsteps, making it easier to move stealthily, and in rainy weather, puddles and wet surfaces can give away the character's presence. This level of interaction with the environment is one of the main innovations of the game.
В Assassin’s Creed Shadows The player will have access to two storylines with different protagonists: a traditional assassin and a samurai, each with their own unique fighting styles, weapons, and approaches to completing missions. The player will be able to switch between characters at certain points in the story, opening up new perspectives on the events of the game.
| GRAPHICS |
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be the most graphically advanced game in the series, as it is the first to feature fully non-disabled Ray Tracing, which works on all aspects of lighting, reflections and shadows. This means that only graphics cards that support RT will be able to run the game.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the most technologically advanced game in the series thanks to a major update to the Anvil Engine. All aspects of the graphics have been reworked using cutting-edge rendering technology. The main change was the integration of full ray tracing in all aspects of lighting, shadows and reflections. This means that the game's lights and shadows are calculated in real time, creating a realistic environment that interacts naturally with objects and characters.
Unlike previous parts of the series, where lighting partially used pre-recorded effects, now each scene is formed dynamically, depending on the light sources. This allowed us to achieve incredible depth of the picture and detail of shadows, which now have natural boundaries and blur depending on the density of the air and weather conditions.
The game's object materials now use physically based rendering (PBR), making the textures more realistic. Wood displays scuffs, metal reflects sunlight depending on the angle of incidence of light, and fabric reacts to the movement of characters and the wind. The environment has become interactive, now walls, buildings and other surfaces can be damaged during combat, and the destruction remains throughout the game, creating the effect of a living world. NPC artificial intelligence also uses advanced graphics processing technologies, allowing enemies to dynamically change their behavior depending on lighting conditions and obstacles in their path. Now they can react to glare, search for the player by reflections in water or on glass, and adapt to changes in the environment.
Effects of weather conditions in Assassin’s Creed Shadows look realistic and have an impact on the gameplay. During rain, puddles reflect the environment, making the lighting more saturated and dynamic. Windy weather makes leaves swirl in the air, which can both help and hinder stealth. Fog now creates a natural scattering of light, changing the color palette of the environment and adding depth to the picture. Support for HDR and 4K resolution allows you to reveal all these details, making the image rich and realistic.
| GAME ENGINE |
The updated Anvil Engine that powers Assassin’s Creed Shadows, has become one of the most modern technological solutions in the industry. The developers completely rewrote the lighting system, abandoning old technologies and implementing full ray tracing. This made it possible to achieve realistic interaction of light and materials, which makes the gameplay more exciting. The new rendering system made it possible to create a seamless world without loading, in which every change in the time of day is reflected in the entire environment. Ubisoft uses advanced artificial intelligence technologies to optimize the engine, which allows for a stable frame rate even in complex scenes.
The physics of object interactions have been significantly improved. Now buildings, bridges and other structures can be partially destroyed, and the surrounding objects react to impacts and collisions in real time. This has made battles more tactical, allowing players to use elements of the environment to attack or defend. Engine optimization also concerns character animation. Assassin’s Creed Shadows uses Motion Matching technology, which analyzes the player's movements and selects the most natural animations. This made parkour smoother, and the fights realistic and cinematic.
Ubisoft has confirmed that the game will support advanced performance enhancement technologies, including DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. This will allow users to fine-tune the balance between image quality and frame rate. With the introduction of DirectX 12 and Vulkan, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will receive advanced capabilities for using multi-threaded processing, which will ensure high performance even in the busiest scenes. The engine is designed for the new generation of consoles and powerful PCs, which means using advanced graphics technologies without compromise.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be not only a technological breakthrough, but also a new stage in the development of the series. Ubisoft intends to offer players one of the most rich and vibrant worlds in the history of the franchise, using all available modern technologies. The game promises not just improved graphics, but a completely new level of interactivity and depth, making the journey through feudal Japan as realistic and unforgettable as possible.
| QUALITY |
Minimum settings
The game reduces texture resolution and lighting detail, removing or simplifying a number of effects such as detailed shadows, volumetric fog, and water reflections. Objects in the distance are rendered in a simplified form, and shaders for leaves, water, and other surrounding elements operate in a basic mode, due to which the picture looks less saturated and more “flat”.
Maximum settings
Detailed character and environment models, high-quality shadows, and a fully functional lighting system with advanced post-processing effects (depth of field, diffuse light, rich reflections) are included. The world becomes more alive and cinematic: vegetation looks denser, water and metals accurately reflect the environment, and the transitions between light and shadow acquire a natural softness.
В Assassin’s Creed Shadows implemented support DLSS, FSR и TAA, which allows you to choose the optimal smoothing and scaling of the image. However, there are significant differences in quality between these technologies.
DLSS-4 from NVIDIA provides the best picture quality thanks to the use of deep learning. This technology improves the clarity of objects, reduces the number of artifacts and increases the detail of small elements of the scene. Picture with DLSS looks as close to native resolution as possible, especially at high settings.
FSR3.1 from AMD also improves performance, but is inferior DLSS in quality. The game is noticeably more noise, blur и artifacts, especially on moving objects. Texture details and fine lines are lost, and the overall clarity of the scene is worse.
TAA Provides anti-aliasing without upscaling, but creates a blurry image effect that can be unpleasant when the camera is moving.
Eventually DLSS-4 - the best option for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It allows you to get high definition, excellent quality of detail and minimal artifacts when scaling the image.
| TEST PART |
Below you will find a table of equipment that was kindly provided by our sponsors: GIGABYTE, ASUS, Kingston и Deep Cool. It reflects the list of motherboards, video cards, memory modules and cooling systems used in the tests, and also indicates the current configuration of the operating system and drivers.
| Test configuration | |
| GIGABYTE | |
| motherboards | |
| ASUS | |
| motherboards | |
| Video Cards |
ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC |
| KINGSTON | |
| RAM |
16 GB DDR4 4600 CL19 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR4 3600 CL16 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR4 4000 CL18 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR5 5600 CL40 Kingston Fury Beast 32 GB DDR5 6000 CL30 Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB DDR5 7200 CL36 Kingston FURY Renegade |
| Storage devices |
Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD |
| Deep Cool | |
|
Cases and cooling |
|
| Software configuration |
|
| Operating system | Windows 11 24H2 |
| Graphics driver | |
| Monitoring programs | MSI Afterburner 4.6.6 Beta 5 Build 16555 |
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. Below is a video of a test segment from the game:
Our video cards were tested at different screen sizes 1920x1080, 2560x1440 и 3840x2160 with Ultra High default graphics quality settings. For video cards NVIDIA upscale was used DLAA NativeAnd for AMD- FSR Native.
| TEST GPU |
In the video card test, the default resolution is 1920x1080; other resolutions are added and removed manually. You can also remove and add any positions of video cards. You can also select any of our test processors from the list in the drop-down menu, comparing its performance with the given video card tests (by default, the most productive solution is selected). The test is carried out on the most powerful CPU in this game and is scaled to other processors, taking into account their testing on NVIDIA and AMD video cards.
- Ultra High
- Ultra High+AMD FSR Frame Generation
- Ultra High + NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation
When resolved 1920x1080:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Achieved on Radeon RX 6700 XT or RTX 2080 Ti level graphics cards.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with Radeon-level video cards RX 7900 XTX or GeForce RTX 4080.
When resolved 2560x1440:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Achieved on Radeon RX 6700 XT or RTX 2080 Ti level graphics cards.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the Radeon RX 6750 XT or RTX 3080 level.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with Radeon RX 9070 XT or GeForce level graphics cards RTX 4090.
When resolved 3840x2160:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached on video cards of the level of Radeon RX 7800 XT or GeForce RTX 5070.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon Radeon RX 7900 GRE or GeForce RTX 4070 Ti S.
FSR Frame Generation
When resolved 1920x1080:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached on video cards of the level of Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 3060.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 3060.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the Radeon RX 6750 XT or GeForce RTX 3080 level.
When resolved 2560x1440:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached on video cards of the level of Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 3060.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 3060.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the Radeon RX 6800 XT or GeForce RTX 4070 level.
When resolved 3840x2160:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached on video cards of the level of Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon Radeon RX 6750 XT or RTX 2080 Ti.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the Radeon RX 9070 or RTX 5080 level.
DLSS Frame Generation
When resolved 1920x1080:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached the level of GeForce RTX 4060 Ti on video cards.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the GeForce RTX 4070 level.
When resolved 2560x1440:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached the level of GeForce RTX 4060 Ti on video cards.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the GeForce RTX 4070 level.
When resolved 3840x2160:
- Average FPS (25 frames): Reached the level of GeForce RTX 4060 Ti on video cards.
- Minimum FPS (25 frames): Provided by video cards of the level of Adeon GeForce RTX 4070.
- Comfortable average FPS (60 frames): Possible with video cards of the GeForce RTX 4080 level.
| VIDEO MEMORY CONSUMPTION |
Testing of video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the program MSI Afterburner. The indicator was based on the results on video cards from AMD and NVIDIA with separate screen sizes 1920x1080, 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 with various anti-aliasing settings. By default, the graph displays the most current solutions. Other video cards are added and removed from the chart at the request of the reader.
- Ultra High
- Ultra High+AMD FSR Frame Generation
GameGPU
Resolution 1920x1080:D
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 9 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 9 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
Resolution 2560x1440:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 10 GB
Resolution 3840x2160:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 11 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 11 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
Frame Generation
Resolution 1920x1080:D
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 11 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 11 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 11 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 11 GB
Resolution 2560x1440:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
Resolution 3840x2160:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 12 GB
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 13 GB
| CPU TEST |
Testing was carried out at a resolution of 1920x1080. In the processor test, you can remove or add any processor positions. You can also select any tested video card from the list in the drop-down menu, comparing its performance with the given processor test results (by default, the most productive solution from NVIDIA is selected). Testing takes place on the most powerful NVIDIA and AMD video cards and scales to low-end models.
- Ultra High
- Ultra High+AMD FSR Frame Generation
- Ultra High + NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation
When using NVIDIA video cards:
- Processors for acceptable FPS (not lower than 25 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 3 3100
- Intel Core i3-10100
- Processors for comfortable FPS (at least 60 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 3 3100
- Intel Core i3-10100
When using AMD video cards:
- Processors for acceptable FPS (not lower than 25 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 3 3100
- Intel Core i3-10100
- Processors for comfortable FPS (at least 60 frames per second):
- AMD Ryzen 3 3100
- Intel Core i3-10100
- Ultra High
Loading and using streams:
- Maximum load: The game can load up to 16 streams.
- Optimal loading: Uses up to 12 threads as efficiently as possible.
| RAM TEST |
The test was carried out on the basic configuration of Core i 9 13900K with 32 GB DDR5 6400 MHz pre-installed memory. All used RAM was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various video cards without launching third-party applications (browsers, etc.). In the graphics, you can add and remove any resolutions and video cards as desired.
- Ultra High
- Ultra High+AMD FSR Frame Generation
GameGPU
Resolution 1920x1080:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
Resolution 2560x1440:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
Resolution 3840x2160:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
Frame Generation
Resolution 1920x1080:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
Resolution 2560x1440:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
Resolution 3840x2160:
- Video cards with 12 GB of video memory: consume 15 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 16 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 24 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
- Video cards with 32 GB of video memory: consume 14 GB of RAM
| SPONSORS TESTS |
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