Assassin's Creed: Shadows PC performance analysis: Ray tracing, upscaling, and frame generation are all optional, but only two of them are worth using, though not the ones you might think

After years of fans asking—nay, demanding—that Ubisoft chose old Japan for the historical setting of a major game in the 17-year-old series, Assassin's Creed: Shadows is finally here. I should have been saying that back in November, but the game has been postponed twice (first to January, then to March), with adjustments made on how well Star Wars: Outlaws fared and to implement further changes.

It's the first major game to not be ported to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and is exclusively designed with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in mind. That also includes the humble PC, of course, but as you'll soon see, it's still very much a console game at heart—despite sporting all the latest PC rendering technologies, such as upscaling, frame generation, and ray tracing.

In the case of the latter, Ubisoft posted a technical Q&A in which it said that, for the PC, there are three levels of ray tracing: Selective, Standard, and Extended. The first option employs ray tracing only in the Hideout, the central home base.

A shader-based algorithm is used for GPUs without ray tracing hardware. The other two options implement ray tracing for global illumination (GI) and GI+reflections, respectively.

However, in the graphics menu in Assassin's Creed: Shadows, these options are labelled in a section titled RTGI (ray tracing global illumination) as Hideout Diffuse Only, Diffuse Everywhere, and Diffuse & Specular Everywhere. It's a minor niggle but you'd think Ubisoft would be a little more consistent about how it's naming things.

It's worth noting that the RTGI options are only available for GPUs with hardware support for ray tracing (i.e. AMD RX 6000-series, Intel Arc A-series, and Nvidia RTX 20-series or newer). The Hideout is still ray traced on gaming PCs with older GPUs without RT units, but it's all done via a shader-based algorithm.

But even without the RTGI maxed out, Assassin's Creed: Shadows is a good-looking game. The overall lighting and shadowing, along with weather effects, vegetation, and animations, are all visually pleasing—even when using its lowest quality settings.

The downside to this is that Shadows is pretty demanding on your PC's hardware and it's clear that Ubisoft has targeted 30 to 60 fps as the expected performance window, for consoles and PCs alike.

Test PC specs

• Acer Nitro V 15 (Gaming mode), Ryzen 7 7735HS, RTX 4050 Laptop (75 W), 16 GB DDR5-4800
• Core i7 9700K (65 W), 16 GB DDR4-3200, Radeon RX 5700 XT
• Ryzen 5 5600X (65 W), 16 GB DDR4-3200, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
• Ryzen 7 5700X3D (105 W), 32 GB DDR4-3200, Radeon RX 6750 XT
• Core i5 13600K (125 W), 32 GB DDR5-6400, GeForce RTX 4070
• CyberPowerPC/MSI, Ryzen 7 9800X3D (120 W), 32 GB DDR5-6000, Radeon RX 7900 XT, GeForce RTX 5080

To gauge the performance of Assassin's Creed: Shadows, I've used a range of gaming PCs, from old, entry-level setups that just about meet Ubisoft's system requirements for the game, all the way up to one of the most powerful rigs you can buy right now. I picked an early location in the game, a coastal village called Sakai, and recorded the performance of multiple runs through the settlement.

Assassin's Creed: Shadows offers five different quality presets. I've tested each one and explored how well upscaling and frame generation improve the performance and how well the RTGI options do the opposite.

One test platform that I commonly use is missing from the above list: my Asus ROG Ally. It does run the game, but in its 15 W 'handheld' mode, it barely achieves an average of 23 fps at 1080p, with the lowest graphics settings and FSR Balanced upscaling.

The 1% low frame rate is a little over half that figure and Assassin's Creed: Shadows isn't very playable like this. However, Ubisoft has said that the game will run on the Steam Deck at launch so I'll try the ROG Ally again at some point in the future.

Ever since Assassin's Creed: Origins, Ubisoft has included a built-in benchmark, and I have to say that it's pretty detailed in Shadows. It's not perfect, though, and on PCs with older or lower-tier processors, the benchmark gives somewhat higher performance results to what you actually get in the game. It's also quite stuttery in places, something that's very uncommon in actual gameplay.

The only reason I mention the benchmark is that for a variety of reasons, we couldn't test a setup with a Radeon RX 7900 XT using the game save employed on all the other test rigs.

Basically, your save game is tied to your Ubisoft account, so you can't swap them around easily enough. So in the performance charts below, the 7900 XT results are marked with an asterisk to indicate that the figures are from the built-in benchmark and not the game itself.

However, having compared the RTX 4070 and RTX 5080 in-game frame rates to those from the benchmark, I'd say that the 7900 XT numbers are certainly indicative of what you'd get in actual gameplay. The worst case scenario is that they'll just be a little higher than reality.

Low quality preset

Starting with the lowest quality preset, we can see that a modern high-end gaming PC has no problem dealing with Assassin's Creed: Shadows, but older or lower-tier systems aren't able to hit 60 fps at 1080p. Ubisoft said this would be the case when it published its system requirements for the game, but getting 49 fps on the old RX 5700 XT system isn't too bad at all.

However, the fact that a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5080 combination can't exceed 120 fps at 1080p Low doesn't bode well for the rest of the quality settings.

At this level, the RTX 5080 is barely doing anything, so the performance must be limited by the CPU and/or rest of the system. However, that Ryzen chip isn't doing an awful lot either—at no point are any of the cores being utilized more than 50%.

But at least the game looks pretty decent with the Low quality setting. There's remarkably little object or texture pop-in, and even shadows look pretty good. What you don't get is much in the way of environmental detail and richness, though one could hardly expect the world to be replete with little things on the lowest settings.

Medium quality preset

Where some games show a notable jump in visual fidelity by switching between the lowest and next-lowest quality settings (Avowed being a prime example), Assassin's Creed: Shadow has some of the best detail scaling across presets that I've seen in a long time.

Each preset improves the graphics in a way that's immediately obvious but without anything being starkly different. Going from Low to Medium improves the texture filtering and rendering distance, for example, but not so much to make the Low preset look awful. The upshot of this is that there isn't a massive drop in performance when using the Medium preset.

However, it's not perfect—Medium induces some shimmering on shadows cast by foliage and the crepuscular rays effect (aka god rays) is somewhat overdone. In some places, it's like passing in and out of a lighthouse beam.

The Medium quality preset is the highest one that the RTX 4050 laptop copes with, without exhibiting any signs of stutters or lag. An average frame rate of 49 fps might not sound great but it's surprisingly playable. All of the other test rigs are absolutely fine at 1080p and only a little down at 1440p. Naturally, 4K is too much for all but the top two PCs.

High quality preset

The High preset improves the graphics in small increments and decreases the performance by a similar measure. However, it's too much for the RTX 4050 laptop due to its 6 GB of VRAM. It's not that the frame rate drops off a cliff or anything dramatic like that, but it's the only time that I experienced any stutters in the game.

In fact, I have to say that Assassin's Creed: Shadows is one of the smoothest games I've played in a long time and I didn't notice any shader compilation or traversal stutter in my tests and several hours of normal playing.

It's a good job that it is so smooth because the frame rates aren't exactly stellar, unless you happen to have a seriously capable gaming rig.

It's a shame that the native performance on the lower-end test rigs isn't brilliant with the High quality preset, even at 1080p, as Shadows really does look very nice with this graphics setting. One might think that the obvious solution to this is to apply some upscaling and we'll take a look at how well that all works shortly.

One last thing to note about using the High preset or anything greater than this, is that switching to this setting requires a full game restart. Changing between Low and Medium only requires a 'reload' and I wish Ubisoft did the same for the other presets.

Very High quality preset

Moving to the Very High preset continues the theme we've seen so far—slightly better graphics, slightly worse performance. Well, I'd say that the shadows and lighting are more than just slightly better but you really have to look for the differences.

Although you'd never expect to game on an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6750 XT at 4K, neither card copes at this resolution in Shadows, when using the Very High preset. It's certainly not a VRAM problem, apart from at 4K, it's just the sheer workload of shaders grinding the GPUs down.

This preset also marks the point at which upscaling is completely optional for the RX 7900 XT and RTX 5080 test rigs, assuming one is happy with 60 fps. The former hits this comfortably at 1440p, whereas the latter can just about manage it at 4K.

Ultra High quality preset

The very highest quality preset naturally produces the best-looking graphics (although there's one more option to improve things further). It's also out of reach for the RTX 3060 Ti and even the RX 6750 XT struggles; the RTX 4070 is okay at 1080p but 1440p pushes the 1% lows down too much.

Only the RTX 5080 test rig copes with the Ultra High preset but even then, at 4K things are a little on the sluggish side. Once again, this isn't a VRAM issue, although it is for the 3060 Ti—it's 8 GB of memory isn't quite enough and although it doesn't stutter, traversing through certain areas induces a treacle-like result in the frame rate.

Within the graphics menu, there's a built-in VRAM gauge and although it's not super accurate (I recorded slightly higher figures in my testing), Ubisoft says its day 1 patch will improve how well it judges the memory usage.

As things currently stand, 8 GB is enough for most presets and resolutions—it's only when using Very High and Ultra High do things become a little too tight (and at 4K, it's just not enough full stop).

If you do have the hardware, the Ultra High preset is the one to use, though, as the lighting, shadows, and textures are all glorious to gaze upon. It's a shame that some of the NPC animations aren't as luxurious and I have to say that water surfaces, while decent looking, aren't spectacular.

Anvil ray tracing

Contrary to what some may think, Assassin's Creed does not use ray tracing everywhere by default. The only part of the game that does is the Hideout base and Ubisoft says that this is because the location is so customizable, using pre-baked lighting just wouldn't work.

However, if you do wish to use ray tracing throughout the game, then it's simply a case of enabling 'Diffuse Everywhere' or 'Diffuse & Specular Everywhere' in the RTGI options. The former implements RT global illumination, while the latter adds RT reflections on top of the GI.

In both cases, the graphical enhancements are subtle but still noticeable. Where RTGI really comes to the fore are regions that are partially lit—for example, the large shadows cast by buildings are a little too dark without RTGI, but with it enabled, they're less opaque and fine details on the ground can be more easily made out.

Given the nature of the game (and its title!), being able to make out stuff better in shadows, really makes ray tracing worth enabling.

Depending on the GPU, using fully ray-traced global illumination (with or without ray-traced reflections) is quite demanding. The RX 6750 XT loses up to 32% of its average performance, but Nvidia's RTX chips can handle RTGI quite well, within reason.

The RTX 4050 and 5080 drop up to 22% of their average frame rate, whereas the RTX 3060 Ti loses just 11%. However, it's very dependent on resolution and preset quality, so those performance losses aren't set in stone.

But even so, compared to when games first started using ray tracing, Assassin's Creed: Shadows does a pretty good job of it all. You get better looking graphics without an enormous frame rate penalty.

The exception to this is any GPU that doesn't have any RT hardware units, such as the Radeon RX 5700 XT, because there's no way to enable RTGI everywhere. Only the Hideout remains ray traced, but the performance isn't great, so if you are going to use an older GPU in Shadows, make sure the RT settings are set to the lowest values.

Upscaling performance

If you've read this far and taken onboard all of the performance figures, you'd be forgiven for thinking that upscaling and/or frame generation will greatly improve the frame rates.

However, one only needs to look back at the native resolution results for each quality preset, comparing 1440p to 1080p, to see that decreasing the render resolution doesn't always give a significant uplift to the average or 1% low frame rates.

Only the higher end ones appear to really benefit from reducing the number of pixels to render, with the biggest gains to be found from dropping from 4K to 1440p, or lower. This suggests that upscaling is only going to help systems that don't really need it, but the truth of the matter is more complicated than that.

DLSS quality upscaling + frame generation
Ryzen 7 7735HS, GeForce RTX 4050, 1080p, Medium preset

Starting with a good example of upscaling and frame gen really helping the performance, the Acer RTX 4050 laptop gains up to 39% more fps on average when using DLSS upscaling.

However, at 1080p, DLSS Performance is too blurry to really use. You're better off sticking with DLSS Quality and its 24% boost to the average frame rate.

Frame generation works well on this platform, with the average fps and 1% lows both enjoying a significant boost. If you play on a controller, rather than keyboard and mouse, the increase in input latency is barely noticeable and as long as you use DLSS Quality, there's little in the way of stand-out rendering glitches.

There are some, but there will be a day 1 patch when Assassin's Creed: Shadows launches and Nvidia will have a new driver with support for the game, scheduled for release with the game. Hopefully both will nix the minor rendering niggles with frame gen.

DLSS Quality upscaling + FSR frame generation
Ryzen 7 5700X3D, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 1080p, High preset, Diffuse Everywhere RTGI

Nvidia's Ampere family of RTX GPUs don't support DLSS frame generation but as Ubisoft has used the latest version of DLSS and FSR, one can enable Nvidia's upscaler alongside AMD's frame generator.

Out of curiosity, I ran the 3060 Ti at 1080p with the High preset and with Diffuse Everywhere RTGI. Natively, this produced a borderline playable frame rate—the average isn't too bad, but the 1% lows aren't high enough to prevent the game from feeling sluggish when moving the camera rapidly.

After the success of improving the RTX 4050's performance with upscaling, I had expected that the same would be true for the RTX 3060 Ti, but surprisingly, it doesn't.

At best, DLSS Performance gives a 17% and 26% uplift to the average and 1% low frame rates respectively, but the game looks far too blurry to use this, due to the low resolution.

Apply FSR frame generation lifts the average fps to a decent level, but the 1% lows barely shift, which suggests that the minimum frame rate isn't pixel limited but possibly geometry limited.

FSR Quality upscaling + frame generation
Ryzen 5 5600X, Radeon RX 6750 XT, 1440p, Very High preset

The application of upscaling and frame generation to the RX 6750 XT follows a similar pattern to the RTX 3060 Ti, apart from the fact that the 1% lows barely improve with upscaling but greatly improve with frame generation.

Now, you might think that an average frame rate of 80 fps, with a 1% low of 67 fps, is very nice and that I'd recommend anyone with an AMD graphics card to use FSR Quality with frame generation. However, if you look at the above video, you may notice that all is not well.

Both aspects of FSR induce a notable degree of shimmering and pixel crawling, and frame generation acts like an anti-foliage agent in some places.

Compared to DLSS, it's a bit disappointing, so let's hope Ubisoft adds FSR 4 in the near future, so owners of RX 9070 cards can enjoy a decent frame rate and decent graphics.

We also tested the 7900 XT with upscaling and frame generation, via the built-in benchmark, and while it showed significant improvements to the average and 1% low frame rates with both systems enabled, the same visual glitches that spoiled things for the 6750 XT reared their head with the 7900 XT.

DLSS Quality upscaling + frame generation
Ryzen 7 9800X3D, GeForce RTX 5080, 4K, Ultra High preset, Diffuse + Specular Everywhere RTGI

My biggest disappointment with upscaling and frame generation, though, is with the RTX 5080. While one might think it's unfair to use a 4K resolution, with the Ultra High preset and the highest RTGI setting, I would argue that a combination of a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and an RTX 5080 should be able to cope with it when using the full DLSS suite.

However, an average frame rate of 107 fps and a 1% low of just 45 fps when using DLSS Performance and frame generation isn't great news, regardless of whatever caveats one wishes to suggest. Nvidia will have a new driver available with full support for Assassin's Creed: Shadows, when the game is publicly released, so I hope things are improved in this instance.

At least, DLSS upscaling and frame generation look very good when used together. Even the increased input latency isn't very noticeable and I spotted very few rendering glitches.

Overall, the performance gains from using upscaling are a bit of a mixed bag, and you're just going to have to experiment yourself to see what gains you can get. The native anti-aliasing used in Assassin's Creed: Shadows is pretty good and unless you have plenty of spare performance, I wouldn't bother using DLSS, FSR, or XeSS in AA mode.

That said, using their Quality mode with frame generation is certainly worth trying out. The former might only give a small boost to the frame rates, but the latter can really improve things. Well, apart from the RTX 5080 system.

Final thoughts

Taking everything I've covered into account, I think it's fair to say that the PC performance of Assassin's Creed is okay. It's not great but it's not terrible, to coin a certain phrase, and if you're happy with 50 to 60 fps, then all is well. The game is more than playable at lower frame rates than this, too.

However, that performance window tells me that when Ubisoft is talking about giving the PC version of Assassin's Creed: Shadows a host of extras beyond the console versions, they don't mean frame rate.

Just as with Star Wars: Outlaws, PC gamers get things like an uncapped frame rate, ultrawide monitor support, fancier ray tracing, and various other options, but you're not getting much in the way of a faster running game. Unless you have a top-end gaming PC, that is.

Perhaps more can be squeezed out of this version of Anvil with future patches to improve how well upscalers raise the frame rate, but I suspect that any changes we do see are likely to be about fixing rendering issues, rather than outright performance.

But if you don't mind using a lower quality preset (and the game does look fine at Low or Medium), then Assassin's Creed: Shadows will run well enough on most gaming PCs.

At the very least, it doesn't really stutter and in this day and age, that's really saying something!