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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Cellar Door - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
The amount of less then intelligent comments in here is simply appalling! Do you realize how many PS4 and Xbox One games are locked at 30fps?In reality if you were put infront of a tv with one of those games, and not told about the 30fps, you wouldn't even realize what is happening.
Stable 30fps vs stutter now there is a difference, why people don't understand this is beyond me....
Death666Angel - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
You forget the abysmal controllers console gamers have to use. Using a controller and having low FPS is much different to using a mouse and having low FPS.TheSlamma - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
There is nothing 'abysmal' about it.. man it bothers me people are latching onto that word now and using it like candy. The 360 and Xbone controllers are wonderful controllers, you just don't have the skill to use them it sounds like. Good gamers can use all input types. After a 6 month break I hopped into BF4 the other day and still had a 2:1 KDR on my first match never even played the map so yes I'm good with KB/M, but I can also pickup my PS4 or Xbox 360 controller and crush it in games that play better with controllers.theMillen - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
and while we're on the topic of controllers as well as AC:U... this is one of those games that DEFINITELY plays better with a controller!inighthawki - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Yeah, like yours. 30fps is visually smooth, but the issue is with input. A controller is less sensitive to input due to the large disconnect from the screen. It's the same concept that makes touch screens feel unresponsive even at high smooth framerates.nathanddrews - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Halo: Combat Evolved was 30fps locked on Xbox and is considered by many to be a great game. While I PREFER to change settings in games to get the frame rate to match my monitor (144Hz), I still enjoy games that play at low frame rates. I can't tell you how many hours I put into Company of Heroes on my crappy laptop... that thing barely cracked 30fps when nothing was happening.nathanddrews - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
I forgot to add that my desire for smooth or higher framerates also varies greatly by game. RTS games can get away with 20-30fps as long as the jerkiness it doesn't interfere with my ability to select units. For action games, I prefer 60fps+ and for shooters or other fast-paced games, I want all 144.ELPCU - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
It really depends on game/person IMO.Here is my experience.
In one old game(SD gundam online : random korean gundam online game kappa), I was playing 40 FPS for a while. And it was playable experience and then I upgraded my gigs. .
After upgrade, I was able to push until full 60 FPS without any frame drop. Using full 60FPS fixed for a while. and then I had a technical problem of my upgraded gig. Thus, I go back to old computer and played with 40 FPS. There was a MASSIVE difference after downgrading.
Experience itself was horrible.
But it really depends on game and person. Again, depends how you accept 30 FPS. The game I mention was really sensitive. every move needs to be quick and responsive.
AC : Unity? I can agree these kinds of game is okay to have somewhat lower FPS. Though as I said it can be fairly bad if you are very used to using 60 fps for a while. Downgrade is way more feasible than upgrade, so it is more about how people accept it. If you downgrade straightforward from 60 FPS fully FIXED(using it for several months) to 30 FPS, you might say it was definitely horrible experience.
By the way, my problem of playing AC Unity was occasional freezing(Frame drop below 10 or 15FPS for about 1 sec.) for about 1 sec. Worse thing is after frame drop, my mouse cursor pops random place. I was playing with GTX 670 FTW SLI. 3930k OC, 32GB RAM.
This unity frame drop issue was the most terrible one. At first crash issue was even with frame drop, but Patch 2 fixs many crash problem. However, frame drop issue still persist. I was using LOW option for all graphic with 1600x900 resolution, which gives normally 60 FPS(70~80FPS if I turn my vertical sync off), but there was still this freezing issue. it intensifys when I put more graphic option or higher resolution. It forces me using 1600x900 with low graphic option, no AA or other random graphic sauce on it. Typically 60~80 FPS, but it was still horrible.
Murloc - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Easy answer: because that's just your opinion. I don't need more than 30 fps, most people can't tell the difference after that. I've played for years with 25 fps and it's fine. 23 fps is where it gets noticeable.Mr.r9 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
"a lot of people might want a GPU upgrade this holiday season". What about people who already have a 780 or 290/x coupled with a 120Hz FHD or 60Hz QHD monitors?Isn't it more reasonable to say: Don't buy this game for now, wait a few months. I don't believe that ACU is "tougher" to run than Metro or Crysis.