Assassin's Creed Shadows technology and performance review: High-fidelity visuals, next-gen textures and brutal demands on your hardware ^↺

Shadows isn't built with low-end GPUs in mind – it's demanding across the board. Integrated solutions barely stand a chance, unless you're running at the lowest possible resolution and settings. For 1080p with low detail, you'll need at least an RTX 3060. For high settings, an RTX 4070 is the minimum. Even at 4K, an RTX 5090 just about manages to stay above 60 fps, though not consistently. DLSS can help ease the strain, but overall, serious power is required.

That does narrow the potential audience from a hardware standpoint. Whether Ubisoft can still deliver the hit it's hoping for remains to be seen.

Ubisoft continues to rely on its in-house Anvil engine, but in Shadows it takes a noticeable step forward. After the somewhat underwhelming visuals of recent entries, the 3D team has really stepped up for this one. The result? Shadows is without doubt one of the visual highlights of the gaming year so far.

A big part of that comes down to the full seasonal simulation. Your character trudges through knee-deep snow, explores dense forests and jungles, and pauses beneath stunning cherry blossoms or watches autumn leaves drift through the Japanese countryside. The vegetation is lush, the draw distance is impressive – distant ruins rise on the horizon, mountain ranges and valleys stretch into the distance, and far-off towns appear on the edge of the map.

Our colleague Alex has already produced a YouTube video on the game. It offers a clear look at the graphical quality, showcases parts of our benchmark results, and provides some early gameplay impressions.

The opening introduces the two playable protagonists from opposing factions, each with their own distinct style, while easing players into the combat and parkour systems. Just be prepared for a slow start. In the first 20 minutes, there's not much to do between cutscenes and automatically played dialogue. But once that's over, the action kicks off fast.

The graphics menu is split into display and scalability settings. In the display section, you can adjust the resolution, HDR, upscaling type, dynamic resolution, and even the field of view. The scalability options cover ray tracing effects, texture quality, and light and shadow settings. Any new settings take effect immediately without the need for a restart.

Fortunately, Assassin's Creed Shadows includes a built-in benchmark that we used for our measurements. To access it, click on the Animus icon (or press F1) at the top of the Memories screen, then select "System." In the main menu, you'll find the benchmark option. It would have been better if this had been integrated directly into the video settings.

Assassin's Creed Shadows places considerable demands on hardware. Even current, high-performance integrated GPUs struggle with Shadows. For example, Intel's new Arc 140V iGPU reaches just 18 fps in Full HD at low settings. The same holds true for older dedicated GPUs.

An RTX 3060, by contrast, manages over 50 fps at low settings in FHD. At high settings, performance drops to around 37 fps, with dips down to 30 fps. For Ultra settings in FHD, you'll need at least an RTX 4070 laptop GPU or an RX 9070, which achieves 42 fps without DLSS. Even the RTX 4060/RX 6700 XT can handle high settings, but not Ultra, at this resolution. With DLSS enabled, the RTX 4070 climbs to 49 fps. With all AI-based features active, including Frame Generation, DLSS and RT GI, it reaches 67 fps.

QHD is already reserved for top-tier GPUs. We recommend an RTX 4080 or RX 9070 and above for native QHD and maximum details. Even the RTX 4070 reaches its limits here, and frame rates can briefly fall below 30 fps, even with DLSS enabled.

At 4K, Shadows runs smoothly in Ultra settings only on today's absolute top-tier GPUs. You will need at least an RTX 5070 Ti, though a higher-end GPU is advisable. Interestingly, the RX 9070 can just about keep up here. With FSR enabled, it handles things well, but even in native resolution it manages an average of 38 fps and a minimum of 30 fps, just managing to stay within playable range.

In addition to the test devices listed below, we also tested Shadows on a separate desktop PC. This system used an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor. For the Shadows benchmark, we combined the CPU with various GPUs, including an RTX 4060, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, Radeon RX 6700 XT and Radeon RX 9070.