Benchmarked - Assassin's Creed: Unity
by Jarred Walton on November 20, 2014 8:30 AM ESTImage Quality and Settings
In retrospect, I probably should have just skipped the Ultra quality setting and opted for some form of custom settings. The texture data just overwhelms most GPUs at Ultra, and even High still struggles in many cases. Even more problematic is that there are only three texturing options: Low, High, and Ultra.
I also want to point you to NVIDIA's Assassin's Creed: Unity Graphics and Performance Guide, because if you're wanting a better look at what some of the graphics options really mean in terms of quality that article has everything you need to know. One item particularly worth noting is that NVIDIA recommends 2GB cards use Low textures, 3GB cards can do High, and Ultra is for 4GB cards (or maybe 6GB/8GB cards).
Anyway, here's a quick look at what the various presets do for quality. Let me start with a table showing what specific settings are applied for each of the presets. Again, the NVIDIA page linked above has a good explanation for what each of the settings does, and more importantly it has image sliders to let you do A/B comparisons for each setting. (Disregard their AA images, though, as it looks like they used 2560x1440 and shrunk them to 1080p – oops.)
| Assassin's Creed: Unity Image Quality Presets | |||||
| Low | Medium | High | Very High | Ultra | |
| Environmental | Low | Medium | High | Very High | Ultra |
| Texture | Low | High | High | Ultra | Ultra |
| Shadow | Low | Low | High | High | Soft (PCSS) |
| Ambient Occlusion | Off | SSAO | SSAO | HBAO+ | HBAO+ |
| Anti-Aliasing | Off | FXAA | 2xMSAA | 2xMSAA | 4xMSAA |
| Bloom | Off | On | On | On | On |
-Low_thumb.jpg)
-Med_thumb.jpg)
-High_thumb.jpg)
-VH_thumb.jpg)
-Ultra_thumb.jpg)
-Low_thumb.jpg)
-Med_thumb.jpg)
-High_thumb.jpg)
-VH_thumb.jpg)
-Ultra_thumb.jpg)
-Low_thumb.jpg)
-Med_thumb.jpg)
-High_thumb.jpg)
-VH_thumb.jpg)
-Ultra_thumb.jpg)
The main things to note is that there's a rather noticeable difference between Low and High texture quality, but not so much from High to Ultra. Environmental quality has a generally minor effect on the appearance of the game, especially at everything above Medium (though there are a few areas that are exceptions to this statement). The difference between Low and High shadows is also quite small, but the Soft Shadows implement PCSS (Percentage Closer Soft Shadows), which do look quite nice while also causing a moderate performance hit.
Anti-aliasing has a ton of settings, but the most useful are generally the MSAA options; those are also the most demanding. FXAA is as usual nearly "free" to enable and can help remove jaggies along with some other image details, which might be the best solution. TXAA performance is pretty similar to 4xMSAA I think, which means it's mostly for high-end rigs. Bloom is pretty much always on except at the lowest setting. Finally, ambient occlusion has two options along with off: SSAO or HBAO+. NVIDIA developed HBAO+ as a better version of AO, and in general I think they're right. It's also supposed to be faster than SSAO, at least on NVIDIA GPUs, so if you have NVIDIA hardware you'll probably want to enable that.
Looking at the presets, the difference between Ultra and Very High is visible in the right areas (e.g. placese with shadows), but they're overall pretty similar. There's a more noticeable drop from Very High to High, mostly with the change in textures, and at least for our test images the Medium and High settings look almost the same.
There are a few last items to note on benchmarking, just by way of reference. First, Assassin's Creed: Unity uses "dynamic" day/night cycles. They're not really dynamic, but Ubisoft has four preset times: morning, noon, dusk, and night. The reason this is important is that benchmarking the same sequence at different times of day can result in quite different results. There's also "dynamic" weather (or at least clouds) that can throw things off. Second, if you change certain image quality settings (which I'll get to next), specifically Texture Quality, you have to restart the game for the changes to take effect. Last, the game has dynamic crowds, which means the runs aren't fully deterministic, but in repeat testing the variance is generally less than 3% and closer to 1%.
The good news is that when you load up the game is always at the morning time slot, so basically you have to exit and reload between every setting change. Yes, it's quite tedious if you're benchmarking a dozen or so GPUs….
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silverblue - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
There's been a rather intense furore following AC:U's launch. Essentially, Ubisoft have blamed AMD for poor performance, and then partially retracted said statement. Considering how closely Ubisoft works with NVIDIA, it would sound like they've only developed for GeForce cards... but some NVIDIA users are having issues as well. What's more, Far Cry 4 is also causing issues with AMD hardware. Both were developed by the same software house.All in all, it looks more likely that Ubisoft Montreal's internal testing and QA is not up to scratch. You can't simply blame one vendor's CPUs and GPUs for poor performance when you've not bothered to optimise your code for anybody barring NVIDIA. I've even heard that playing offline results in a HUGE performance boost across the board...
Friendly0Fire - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
More like a yearly release schedule is untenable for a game of this scale. Corners had to be cut somewhere.silverblue - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Logical, but even then, it's poor form for UbiSoft to slate AMD for what is most likely their fault as opposed to poor drivers.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
That's amazing how it's never AMD's fault no matter what. No matter how poorly they do. No matter how many features they do not have or only have as a ridiculed braggart's vaporware. No matter how long it takes them to continue failing and not delivering, it's not their fault.Never AMD's Fault should be their saying since Never Settle is the opposite of the truth with AMD.
ppi - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
While I would agree with you AMD has been relagated to ultra-low-budget-inconsequential player on the CPU on front, with respect to GPUs I am not certain where you have been living last couple years, whether on Mars or under some rock.Since HD 4000 series, AMD has been running neck-for-neck with nVidia, sometimes kicking it in the rearside soundly, e.g. Radeon 5870 vs. rebadged GeForce 8800, sometimes being a bit behind, until the Maxwell 980 and 970 parts came couple months ago. But even now, the fastest AMD offering is still at least on par with 2nd fastest nVidia offering performance-wise (the issue is rather power consumption). And drivers-wise, there's lot of games coming out with very good graphical fidelity that have no issues on AMD cards.
Who failed here big time are Ubisoft's managers, who (probably wishing to please the shareholders) wanted to rush the games before the December holiday season to get extra bucks, and allowed proper Q&A to be skipped. There is absolutely no no excuse whatsoever for neglecting GPUs that still make 1/3 of the market (and mind you, nVidia performance is reportedly far from perfect as well). If the AMD cards did not work, they either should not have released the game at all, or release it nVidia only/AMD beta-only.
I do hope it backfires them at Ubisoft in such a way, that instead of now, these games will be rather bought a year later, in 2015 Steam sale season.
D. Lister - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Imagine what the nvidia hardware could do with the same power budget. And it isn't just power, but also temps and noise. How come AMD default coolers are the worst in the market yet the nvidia default coolers, esp. for the higher-end models are some of the best? How come it took AMD more than a decade to address the multi-gpu micro-stutter issue in the drivers? And how about the alleged speed boost in CPU performance that AMD promised with Win 8, that never quite took off?
AMD hires from the same talent pool as their competition, but ultimately, it is their consistent corner-cutting and false promises that hurt their business and relegates them to a lower tier.
I apologise if I offended any AMD fans, but please understand this, you aren't on AMD's side and I'm not on nvidia/intel's side... it is us, the consumers who are all on the same side, and unless we demand the quality that we are paying for, every now and then someone would try to get away by BSing us out of our hard-earned cash.
FragAU - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
You are kidding right? I have been fortunate enough to essentially own every top-end GPU since the days of 3DFX Voodoo (and before!). AMD has certainly released some absolute monster cards and has been responsible for keeping Nvidia in check since all other competition ceased to exist. Both companies have had their fair share of the performance crown.Currently I own 2x 290X and have since their launch - I run every single game without issue (aside from the topic of this one) at Ultra settings with no issues (Both watercooled so nice and silent too). Ubi soft is just plain rubbish these days, heck look at the status of their cruddy GTA wannabe watch dogs? That game had issues on any PC. Tell me how black flag can run flawless and then this game just run like absolute crud? Sure a 980 should be in front but the 780ti/290x shouldn't be that far behind.
I will freely admit that Nvidia usually do have more solid drivers in early releases but nothing that has been a deal breaker. Having run SLi and CF since early days I can tell you that both have share of issues .. Anyway all I can say is you better hope that AMD keep on the heels of Nvidia or you will be paying $700 for the same GPU for 3 generations.
silverblue - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
CrossfireX was only introduced in September 2005. Granted, the time from then to a viable fix was about 8 years (which is still a very long time) but there's two factors to consider here - how long has it been a problem, and how long has it taken AMD to acknowledge it themselves? The discrepancy between the two is what they really need to be judged upon, not how long it took for a solution to reach the user base. Promising fixes is one thing, burying your head in the sand and flat out ignoring your customers is quite another.FlushedBubblyJock mentioned it never being AMD's fault for this, that and the other. You'd have to be blinkered to subscribe to that particular theory. AMD's biggest problem is delivery - VCE support was a joke for a long time; some might say their DirectX drivers are in need of serious work; TrueAudio doesn't appear to be having any impact... to name a few. Team Green is in the ascendency right now, and AMD can't release a counter quickly enough, so they look to have no answer for Maxwell. It's almost all down to delivery, and we can only hope they improve in this area. It's not about being a fanboy, but bringing some objectivity to the discussion.
ppi - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Yes, right. But my point was mainly that graphical glitches and poor performance in ONE PARTICULAR GAME, sponsored by AMD's competitor, should be blamed on Ubisoft Q&A and them rushing to get the game out for x-mas, rather than on AMD.AMD do disapoint me though. Case example: When LCDs came out, I thought - great, now we will be able to get variable refresh rates. But lo and behold, 10 years pass and nothing, until nVidia comes with G-Sync. And then we learn AMD had done it, they had it RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES, and they did not see the benefits, but instead tried to sell it as some crappy energy saving thingy. *facepalm* It is clear their development lacks some people who would focus on improving *game experience*.
(btw, from my last 6 gfx cards, 3 were nVidia, 3 AMD/ATI)
D. Lister - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
@ silverblue"CrossfireX was only introduced in September 2005..."
I'm sorry, -almost- a decade then. Because it is really inconsequential how long a particular phase takes in the entire process of solving a problem - what matters is how long it took the end-users to get their money's worth.
Secondly, the defence that they just didn't know any better, while the competition apparently did, to the point that the competition had to develop a tool (FCAT) for AMD to actually see (or recognise) the problem, merely suggests that if they weren't being deliberately callous, they were just outright incompetent. Either way, the point is that they need to step up their game, because their customers and fans deserve better than what been bringing forth, and because the free market needs good competition.