After a year-long Uplay (Ubisoft Connect) exclusivity, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage has joined its predecessors on Steam. The game is priced at half its launch price and still requires the Ubisoft launcher. As expected, the concurrent player counts are fairly low, peaking at 7,870 players two days ago. If you’re one of these gamers, here’s our comprehensive optimization guide for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage with comparisons.
Windows/System Settings to Optimize
- Enable Resizable BAR.
- Turn on Game Mode.
- Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
- Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
- Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
- Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
- Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
- Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: System Requirements
Ubisoft recommends a Core i7-8700K or a Ryzen 5 3600 alongside a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti for 1080p “High.” You’ll also need 16 GB of main memory and 40 GB of storage. At least 6 GB of VRAM is required to play the game at 1080p “High.”
Contents & Testing Methodology
- Benchmarks at a glance:
- Resolution and upscaling.
- Graphics quality presets.
- World detail and clutter density.
- Shadow quality and volumetric clouds.
- Water quality and SSR.
- Textures.
- VRAM usage.
- CPU bottlenecks.
- Optimized graphics settings for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage.
- Hardware setup used:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
- Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti FE.
- Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
- Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: Resolution & Upscaling
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage scales fairly well with resolution, averaging 70 FPS at 4K, 86 FPS at 1440p, and 103 FPS at 1080p. This indicates a mild CPU bottleneck at 1080p which isn’t surprising considering the game’s scope.
Consequently, Mirage sees modest performance uplifts with upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR. The quality preset is 15-17% faster than native, while the performance mode nets an average gain of nearly 35% at 4K “Ultra High.”
DLSS performs the best on NVIDIA RTX GPUs, followed by AMD FSR 2 and Intel XeSS. Interestingly, Ubisoft’s in-house TAA shader is worse than native in “Quality” mode, while the “Performance preset is even slower than the “Quality” preset of the other three temporal upscalers.
Graphics Quality Presets
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage features five quality presets, ranging from “Low” to “Ultra High.” The average framerates vary from 68 FPS at the highest to 89 FPS at the lowest quality preset at 4K. Not much of a change considering the resolution.
LOD & Geometric Detail: World Detail & Clutter Density
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage features two settings to modify the LOD and polygon complexity of in-game objects, namely “World Detail” and “Clutter Density.” The former delivers roughly similar framerates across the three higher settings, with medium offering a 12% boost over ultra.
Clutter density doesn’t notably impact performance, yielding 69-70 FPS across the four quality settings at 4K. Likely also the result of a CPU bottleneck.
Shadow Quality & Volumetric Clouds
Shadow quality sets the range and resolution of shadow maps, rendering more defined shadows at the higher quality settings. We recorded an average of 74 FPS at the lowest setting which is ~8-9% faster than the ultra setting.
Volumetric clouds don’t notably impact performance. We observed framerate differences of just a couple of FPS between the four quality presets at 4K.
Water Quality & Reflections
Water quality adjusts the complexity of water textures, with higher-quality options producing more detailed ripples and waves. Low also reduces the draw distance of ripples, rendering still water in the distance. The performance hit is almost negligible.
Screen space reflections render dynamic reflections on water bodies. The performance impact is only evident when you’re beside a river or a lake. Otherwise, framerates remain unchanged.
Texture Quality: Environmental & Character Textures
Environmental textures set the resolution of buildings, vegetation, clutter, and other in-game meshes. Baring the lowest setting which improves framerates by 9%, this option doesn’t substantially affect the performance.
Like most other settings, character textures have a nominal impact on performance, granting a ~2 FPS boost at the lowest option.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: VRAM Usage
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage uses up to 11.5 GB of graphics memory at 4K, averaging 11.2 GB at the highest settings and gradually scaling down to 7 GB at the lowest preset. Lower resolutions like 1080p and 1440p use about 10 GB of VRAM at the ultra-quality preset.
We recommend a 12 GB graphics card for “Ultra,” while 8 GB should suffice for lower settings at 1080p and 1440p.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: CPU Bottlenecks
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is quite CPU-bound, with a GPU-Busy deviation of ~30% across all three resolutions at the “Ultra High” quality preset. Reducing the graphics settings eases the CPU overhead to about 20-24%.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: Performance Summary
Best Graphics Settings for Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Optimized Settings | High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |
---|---|---|---|
Resolution | 4K (3840×2160) | 1440p (2560×1440) | 1080p (1920×1080) |
FPS Target | 120 FPS | 90 FPS | 60 FPS |
Upscaling | DLSS/FSR Quality | DLSS/FSR Quality | DLSS/FSR Quality |
World Detail | Ultra | Ultra | Very High |
Clutter Density | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
Shadow Quality | Ultra | Ultra | High |
Volumetric Clouds | Ultra | Ultra | High |
Water Quality | Ultra | Ultra | Ultra |
Screen Space Reflections | On | On | On |
Environmental Textures | Ultra | Ultra | Very High |
Character Textures | High | High | High |
CPU | Core i7-13700K/Ryzen 7 7800X3D | Core i5-12600K/Ryzen 7 7700X | Core i5-12400/ AMD Ryzen 5 5600 |
GPU | RTX 4070 Ti Super/RX 7900 XT | RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT | RTX 3060/RTX 3060 Ti/RX 6600 |
Memory | 32GB (dual-channel) | 16GB (dual-channel) | Less than: 16GB (dual-channel) |
High-end | Midrange | Low-end PC |