Assassin's Creed Unity Benchmarked
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Graphics
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Visually, Assassin's Creed Unity is definitely one of the best-looking titles for PCs we have come across in recent years. While some FPS games like Crysis 3, Battlefield 4 or Metro: Last Light have textures that are sharper still, Unity does look impressive for a third-person shooter game. One of the positive aspects is the richness of the details, as hardly any other current game is based on such an affectionately constructed and believable world. In almost any corner, there are nice decorative items (plants, furniture, etc.). Really impressive, for example, is the population density of virtual Paris. Because of all the fellow citizens, it never feels like you are stuck in a sterile "quarantine zone", which is an issue with some games. The visibility range of the new offshoot, combined with the freedom of movement inherent to the series, makes for a very satisfying ambiance.
Unfortunately, the game is still plagued by technical issues which mar the overall experience. One of the main problems, in our opinion, are the demands on the hardware. Even the official requirements allude to the fact that Assassin's Creed Unity needs plenty of CPU and GPU power: according to Ubisoft, it should be a potent quad-core CPU and a high-end GPU alongside 6-8 GB of RAM, 40 GB of hard drive space and 64-bit Windows with DirectX 11 support.
From a technical standpoint, it's an "all clear" for Intel CPUs: as long as the notebook in question contains at least a dual-core or quad-core processor with Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading, the GPU and not the CPU is the limiting factor. A main point of criticism: Unity just doesn't seem like it's been optimized well. Even with a top-of-the-line GPU, the frame rates sometimes unexpectedly (and inexplicably) drop and game play stutters as a result. The performance, of course, depends on many factors: depending on the time of day (light and shadows), the toll on the GPU varies greatly. We were unable to achieve more than 100 fps, no matter which graphics card we tried.
At this time, AMD-equipped notebooks - see Assassin's Creed III – are heavily disadvantaged. Even in version 1.2.0 of the game, equivalent Nvidia GPUs are simply faster, especially at moderate settings (example: R9 M290X vs. GTX 870M). Not really surprising, given the fact that Unity was co-developed by Nvidia. The game does have a few interesting features like HBAO+ (ambient occlusion), PCSS+ (soft shadows) and TXAA (anti-aliasing), which also partially work with "foreign" hardware.
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Let's revisit the performance one more time: Ubisoft is supposedly working on patches which will address the hardware requirements. This of course would mean that future benchmark results are not going to be comparable to our results here. We hope that Ubisoft will also fix the stability issues at the same time, since Unity crashed every once in a while on a few of our test systems.
The graphics menu, on the other hand, is without faults. Even though there are only a handful of options in the »Advanced« section, these options do have a profound effect on the quality. For our benchmarks we use the presets »Low«, »Medium«, »High« and »Ultra High«, which all require a restart of the game. A tip for those who don't like to play at the native resolution, but find that the game won't use the entire desktop: in this case, switching to windowed mode and then back to full screen rectifies the situation. Game load times are a mixed bag: the main menu takes a while to appear, but during the game play itself we didn't experience any significant delays.
Benchmark
To determine the frame rate, we use our own benchmark sequence. After the main character gets his watch back following a chase conducted at breakneck speeds, we are able to freely wander around Paris for the first time. Not just because of the sheer number of characters, the 50-second run through the city (see the video) is pretty demanding, although some scenes require even more processing power.
Results
To get the most out of Assassin's Creed Unity, an absolute high-end system is required. None of the notebook systems we tested with allowed for a stutter-free game play when we used a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, ultra-high details and 4x MSAA. It will probably take a GeForce GTX 970M or GTX 980M to achieve frame rates above 25 fps. A resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels with the settings on »High« (2x MSAA) is still quite demanding - we would recommend at least a GeForce GTX 870M or the GTX 780M.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M
A true gaming notebook is required even for medium details and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, as it takes at least a GeForce GTX 850M or GTX 765M to approach 30 fps. Owners of less powerful multimeda notebooks have to choose the preset »Low«. Graphics cards under the level of a GT 750M are simply not usable at all at any of the settings. Once Ubisoft has done some work optimizing the game, we expect Unity to run even on more entry-level notebooks.
Assassin's Creed Unity | |
1920x1080 Ultra High Graphics Quality AA:4x MS 1920x1080 High Graphics Quality AA:2x MS 1366x768 Medium Graphics Quality AA:FX 1024x768 Low Graphics Quality | |
GeForce GTX 980, 3770K | |
Radeon R9 290X, 4790K, Intel SSD 530 Series SSDSC2BW240A | |
GeForce GTX 880M, 4700MQ | |
Radeon R9 280X, 3770K | |
GeForce GTX 780M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 870M, 4700MQ | |
Radeon R9 M290X, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 770M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 860M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GTX 850M, 4340M | |
GeForce GTX 765M, 4700MQ | |
GeForce GT 750M, 4702MQ | |
Radeon R7 512 Cores (Kaveri Desktop), A10-7850K, Samsung SSD 470 Series MZ-5PA256/EU | |
GeForce GT 740M, 4200M | |
GeForce GT 640M, 2637M, Lite-On LMT-256M3M | |
GeForce GT 720M, 4200M, WDC Scorpio Blue WD10JPVX-22JC3T0 | |
HD Graphics 4600, 4700MQ | |
Iris Pro Graphics 5200, 4750HQ, Intel SSD 525 Series SSDMCEAC180B3 | |
Radeon HD 8650G, A10-5750M, Samsung SSD 470 Series MZ-5PA256/EU | |
GeForce GT 630M, 3720QM, Seagate Momentus 7200.5 ST9750420AS |
Test Systems
Four of our review notebooks are courtesy of Schenker Technologies:
- W504 (Core i7-4700MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 860M, GTX 870M, GTX 880M, Radeon R9 M290X)
- W503 (Core i7-4700MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 765M, GTX 770M, GTX 780M)
- M504 (Core i5-4340M, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GTX 850M)
- M503 (Core i7-4702MQ, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 750M)
All these notebooks feature Windows 7 64-bit.
Nvidia supplied the following systems:
- HP Envy 15-j011sg (Core i5-4200M, 12 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 740M)
- MSI CX61-i572M281BW7 (Core i5-4200M, 8 GB DDR3, GeForce GT 720M)
- Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3-581TG (Core i7-2637M, 4GB DDR3, Geforce GT 640M)
One notebook is courtesy of Intel:
- Schenker S413 (Core i7-4750HQ, 8 GB DDR3, Iris Pro Graphics 5200)
The desktop systems come with CPUs/APUs from Intel and AMD, Micron, Intel, and Samsung SSDs, motherboards from Intel and Asus, as well as GPUs from Nvidia and AMD.
GPU drivers: Nvidia 344.65, AMD 14.11.1 Beta, Intel 10.18.10.3960