Ubisoft has lifted the review embargo for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Powered by the latest version of the AnvilNext Engine, it’s time to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 572.70, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.3.1 drivers. And yes, you read that right. We have bought an AMD Radeon RX 9070XT.
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, we’ve used it. From what I could see early in the game, it does represent the in-game performance. However, I don’t know if later areas can be more demanding than it.
Ubisoft has included a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Characters, Clouds and more. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 3 (and 4 via the NVIDIA App), AMD FSR 3 and Intel XeSS.
I should also note that the game supports Ray Tracing. Contrary to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars: Outlaws, AC: Shadows does not require an RT GPU. When you set the RT setting to “Hideout Only” the game won’t use any RT effects while playing. You’ll get RT in your Hideout. So, with that setting, you can consider AC: Shadows a rasterized game.
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is a GPU-bound title. Even at 1080p with DLSS 4 Performance Mode, we were bottlenecked by our GPU. So, there was no point at all testing different CPU setups. All of you will be limited by your GPU in this particular game.
At 1080p/Ultra High Settings/No RT, you’ll need an AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX, an NVIDIA RTX 4090 or an NVIDIA RTX 5090 for gaming with constant 60FPS. As you can see, AC: Shadows runs SIGNIFICANTLY better on AMD’s GPUs. The AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX is able to match the performance of the NVIDIA RTX 4090. Similarly, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT trades blows with the NVIDIA RTX 5080.
At 1440p/Ultra High Settings/No RT, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and NVIDIA RTX 4090 can provide a smooth gaming experience. However, for a constant 60FPS experience, you’ll need an NVIDIA RTX 5090.
As for Native 4K/Ultra High Settings/No RT, there is no GPU that can provide a smooth gaming experience. Even the mighty NVIDIA RTX 5090 can drop below 50FPS. And again, that’s WITHOUT any RT effects. I do not understand why this game runs so horribly on NVIDIA’s hardware. We’ve already informed the green team so hopefully, they’ll be able to work with Ubisoft in order to improve performance.
Sadly, the game cannot scale well with the in-game graphics settings. By dropping the settings to Very High, we were able to get a minimum of 67FPS. Pretty good, right? Well, for some odd reason, we did not see any major performance improvements on High settings. Normally, this hints at a CPU bottleneck. However, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 was used to its fullest. Our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D was used at around 30%, with most CPU cores being used at 30-50%. So, I don’t really know what the hell is going on here. And then, on Low Settings, we only saw an average framerate of 96FPS. Ouch.
Graphics-wise, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows looks great. However, without its RTGI setting, the game can look really flat at times. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the game has a real-time time of day (and that’s where RTGI comes in to save the day). All characters are highly detailed, and there are a lot of high-quality textures. For a rasterized game, AC: Shadows looks great. However, in terms of visuals, it cannot, in any way, compete with all the UE5 games that use Lumen, or with the games that take advantage of RTGI. So, stop with that clickbaity crap that RT is useless. Unless, of course, you prefer old-gen-ish-looking games.
All in all, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows does not justify its huge GPU requirements, especially on NVIDIA GPUs. For a rasterized game, we were expecting it to run way better than it currently does. I’m not saying that it looks bad. But, to give you an idea, AC: Shadows right now runs WORSE than Hellblade 2. Not only that but Hellblade 2 looks SIGNIFICANTLY better than it. And that’s with Hellblade 2 using Nanite AND Lumen. Let this sink in. Without any Ray Tracing effects, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows runs and looks worse than a ray-traced game.
Tomorrow we’ll publish a new article for Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, in which we’ll have some Ray Tracing and DLSS 4 benchmarks. So, stay tuned for more!
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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