A couple of days ago, we informed you about a crack for Assassin’s Creed Mirage that removed both Denuvo and VMProtect. So, the big question is: did these protections affect the game’s performance? And does the cracked version run better? Let’s find out.
For these benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080. I also used Windows 10 64-bit and the GeForce 616.92 driver.
I’ve benchmarked the cracked RUNE version and the Ubisoft Connect version at three resolutions. Those were 4K, 1080p, and 720p. I also used the Ultra High settings.
Before continuing, the reason you see “Custom Settings” is because the default “Ultra High” settings set Adaptive Quality to 60 FPS. To avoid any issues, I set Adaptive Quality to Off.
At 4K/Ultra High settings, we are GPU-limited. So, it should not surprise anyone that both versions ran similarly on the NVIDIA RTX 5080. Still, I wanted to include it because I wanted to cover both 1080p and 4K.
At 1080p/Max Settings, things get more interesting. You would expect the RUNE version to be much faster than the protected version. However, that’s not the case. Both versions ran about the same.
For the ultimate test, I lowered the resolution to 720p. At 1080p, I was mostly CPU-limited. At 720p, I was CPU-limited all the time. So, if Denuvo and VMProtect were hurting performance, this is where I should have seen it.
Well, did the cracked version run faster? No, it did not. The Ubisoft Connect version, which has Denuvo and VMProtect, ran with a minimum of 79 FPS and an average of 212 FPS. The cracked RUNE version ran with a minimum of 82 FPS and an average of 218 FPS. Both of these versions also had traversal stutters.
So, there you have it. Even with a weaker CPU than the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, you should see similar results. Why? Because we were 100% CPU-limited at 720p. If Denuvo and VMProtect added extra CPU load, we would have seen it here. In that case, the cracked version should have run faster. It did not.
In conclusion, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is not the game to use when criticizing Denuvo and VMProtect. The RUNE cracked version runs EXACTLY like the official Ubisoft Connect version. From what I’ve seen online, only one video shows a big performance difference between the cracked and protected versions. All the other tests show results that are similar to ours. So, I’m skeptical of that one video. If Denuvo and VMProtect were causing a big performance hit, we would expect to see it in more tests, but we do not see anything like that!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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