Assassin’s Creed Mirage PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide
Conclusion – A solid, but unambitious PC version
A solid PC release that lacks technical ambition
With 2023 being filled with so many sub-par PC releases, it is refreshing to see Ubisoft release Assassin’s Creed Mirage in such a solid state. Honestly, there is very little for me to complain about with this PC version, though there are improvements that can be made.
It is a shame that a modern AAA PC game release from Ubisoft lacks support for Frame Generation, the latest feature to rock the worlds of PC gamers. While it is a little early to see AMD’s FSR 3 frame generation technology in this game, it would have been nice to have seen DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Limiting DLSS to Super Resolution exclusively denies Nvidia users a much-wanted option. Another improvement that we would like to see is a change to the game’s built-in benchmark to make it less stuttery. As it stands, the benchmark is a stuttery mess where the game itself is stutter-free. The benchmark makes the game look worse than it is on PC.
Another change that we would like to see is a option to disable chromatic aberration within this game. This is a feature that is seen as a negative by many gamers, as it can often have a negative impact on a game’s visuals. Chromatic aberration is a visual artifact that filmmakers and photographers often seek to minimise in their work. As such, it can be argued that game developers shouldn’t add this artifact into their works. Yes, it can make games look more filmic, but when filmmakers don’t see this effect positively, why are game developers trying to emulate it?
GPU Testing – AMD VS Nvidia
Unfortunately, we were unable to test Assassin’s Creed Mirage on an Intel graphics card. We simply do not have an Intel ARC GPU to test new game releases with, though we hope to change that in the near future. Overall, Nvidia graphics cards appear to outperform their Radeon counterparts in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, at least right now. AMD has not released an optimised driver for this game, so there is a change that new drivers will give Radeon users a significant performance bump.
Upscalers – DLSS, XeSS, and FSR 2
With Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s graphical presets offering gamers limited scalability, most PC gamers will need to rely on resolution upscaling to deliver a larger performance boost. Thankfully, Assassin’s Creed Mirage has plenty of upscaling options to choose from. If you are playing at lower resolutions, XeSS and DLSS provide better results than FSR 2, though all upscaling options deliver better results than Mirage’s TAA upscaler. Some AMD users will have a better experience using XeSS over FSR 2.
As mentioned before, Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC lacks support for Frame Generation. This could change with future updates, but as it stands DLSS and FSR are limited to resolution upscaling.
CPU & Memory Performance
Even when we limit our CPU to four cores and eight threads, our i9-13900K can deliver solid 60+ FPS performance in Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC. In fact, this is one of the few games where downgrading from a 24-core to a 6-core has a smaller performance impact than downclocking our memory from DDR5-6000 to DDR5-4800. Mirage clearly showcases the benefits of having faster DRAM in your system, so much so that it makes us want to test out some faster memory modules.
Closing thoughts
As a cross-generation title, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is designed to run on low-spec last-generation gaming systems. With this in mind, it is easy to see why this game runs so well on PC. Modern PCs are incredibly powerful when compared to 2013’s PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It makes sense that PC gamers will have a relatively easy time getting this game to run at 60 FPS.
It is a shame that Ubisoft did not decide to push Assassin’s Creed visuals much further ahead of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla on PC and current-generation consoles. With Mirage, we see no support for ray tracing or any advanced visual effects that only current-generation systems are capable of. We will have to wait for future Assassin’s Creed games to see such features. While Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a good looking game, it would have been nice to have seen Ubisoft push some boundaries.
You can join the discussion on the PC version of Assassin’s Creed Mirage on the OC3D Forums.
