Assassins Creed 3 PC performance thread
- Thread starter hlhbk
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Well they better patch it good.
I just had a look at the AO comparison. That's a really really impressive AO implementation. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that alone takes a few ms of frame time at high resolutions, even with a 680.
I love it when developers include "ultra" options like this. I sometimes wonder if people would complain a lot less if they only included the flat console lighting and therefore the game had great framerates at "maxed out" settings. Basically, do you need to keep your "maxed out" settings from being truly great to stop people complaining since they believe they should be able to play everthing with all settings at maximum at launch?
I love it when developers include "ultra" options like this. I sometimes wonder if people would complain a lot less if they only included the flat console lighting and therefore the game had great framerates at "maxed out" settings. Basically, do you need to keep your "maxed out" settings from being truly great to stop people complaining since they believe they should be able to play everthing with all settings at maximum at launch?
captainnapalm
Member
That moment won't be as cool for me now as it was for you, because I'll see it coming. Anyway, at least it's early on.
Yes it will because I already knew it was coming, as people had posted screenshots in the High-res thread. It's the music and the view that makes it stunning, not the surprise of it. It's not that special. Think I've even seen it posted in ad material for the game.
New drivers are always worth a try. The game is not terribly well.. optimized it seems, but it may be time for an upgrade. I had the same setup except with a 5870 and upgraded recently.
Also, I loved the slow intro, it gives me much more interest in all the characters. It makes it more personal and sets the scale well.
This is also true. On my 670, i5 3570k stock and 16gb ram, I get the same 50-60 in most places and 40-60 Boston. It is a pretty nice looking game though.
I got shadows on high instead of very high though, because very high triggers windows 7 complaining and going into basic theme, and looks basically the same.
An upgrade would be nice, but I'm going to hold out another 6-12 months. Considering I have zero problem with most games, I imagine there won't be a huge graphical leap until the next console generation kicks up the PC ports a notch or two.
I'll give the drivers a shot. I know it's bad, but generally I'll stay on the same set of drivers forever just because I know they work with what I'm already playing.
It's kinda weird that I could run highres sleepy dogs just fine, as well as the witcher 2, as well as Brotherhood. And nothing really strikes me as being much more demanding than anything in any of those games (with the exception of Brotherhood were there are some incremental graphical upgrades).
The difference is actually pretty significant if you look closely, the Very High adds the highest AO and it looks great. Especially in grass and building details the added AO really shines. I can see an immediate difference switching from High to Very High, however my GPUs also start to heat up pretty good on Very High.
It adds a ton of depth to the image.
I came here to post that Nvidia link myself, because hot damn that's mighty fine AO work, and I'm tired of people saying the game looks crappy.
P.S. The .com version of the Nvidia site has a comments section, so if you're having issues with the game you can poke nvidia directly: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/ar...nches-on-the-pc-with-impressive-tech-and-txaa
P.S. The .com version of the Nvidia site has a comments section, so if you're having issues with the game you can poke nvidia directly: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/ar...nches-on-the-pc-with-impressive-tech-and-txaa
Oh, I don't talk out of experience for AC3 (got it, but only finished the opera house to make sure it ran properly, didn't go further yet). But ACII, Brotherhood (a bit less, with the Monteregionni assault) and Revelations were all "slow" to get in motion. Now, it was also to let the settings grow on you, which is good. But a bit dull gameplay-wise.
http://international.download.nvidi...s-creed-iii-ambient-occlusion-comparison.html
Looks great on grass up close and when in Boston.
Perhaps it's just me.
It's very subtle compared to other AO uses (which is a good thing, considering the godawful AO in Sleeping Dogs and Far Cry 3) but it does look very good, especially (in that comparison) on the trees and the rocks on the left.
Trying to get rid of the drab effect, get some colours going.
Vanilla
SweetFX test settings
Too much?
Vanilla
SweetFX test settings
Too much?
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Too much? I wish the people who normally posted screens using it were that restrained.
I'll give it another look then, I was just afraid because of Windows complaining, but the performance of the game was fine.
Yeah, people do have a tendency to go way overboard. The setting I posted there is already pushing it for me but I think it's a sweet spot.
On another note, apparently the game has SLI issues that will cause flickering, something which I learned the moment I saw my first patch of snow - Flickering like hell.
What? This is one of the most perfectly threaded games I've ever seen on PC:
http://benchmark3d.com/assassins-creed-3-benchmark
This is on a Sandy Bridge core. Just imagine on some weakly ARM core on a next gen console. I don't think they're going to patch this, but future games should have it fixed.
Also check out this article: http://www.computerbase.de/news/2012-11/eigene-benchmarks-zu-assassins-creed-iii/
In the CPU scaling tests, it scales very well from 1 to 2 to 4 cores on a 3.5 Ghz Sandy Bridge. It also scales almost perfectly with clock speed.
In the CPU scaling tests, it scales very well from 1 to 2 to 4 cores on a 3.5 Ghz Sandy Bridge. It also scales almost perfectly with clock speed.
Same image
But I have messed around with it in-game and honestly, TXAA doesn't really strike me as special compared to the "Normal" option, however it does come with an FPS drop.
Gen.Grievous
Member
Is there a way to reduce the horrendous pop-in? Especially in Boston it is pathetic. People constantly popping in and out of view, mostly noticeable when riding a horse but also when you start free running.
Same image
But I have messed around with it in-game and honestly, TXAA doesn't really strike me as special compared to the "Normal" option, however it does come with an FPS drop.
In the Nvidia video, the difference was massive to say the least.
I get a lot of shadow pop-in. Very annoying, but seems to happen more and more in most games I play.
Yeah I noticed but the difference for me is far, far off that - I can barely tell the difference between Normal and TXAA from just looking at it.
infinityBCRT
Member
Do you remember GTA 4? So much whine when that game came out because they gave ridiculously maxed out settings that would not run well even on the best machines. Console view distance settings were found to be only like 25% of the detail that the PC version would allow you to set to, yet everyone cried about that because their shiny new rigs couldn't handle max settings. And that was back when PC's weren't blowing away consoles by miles like they are now.
Except that's a shitty example because GTA 4 to this day still doesn't work well with a lot of AMD GPUs, poor multi-GPU support, they had to use COMMUNITY patches to fix shader performance etc.
The English Conquistador
Member
Truth, GTA IV on the PC is the template for shitty porting, and just an all around terrible PC game, performance wise.
As pointed out, it's the same image, but even if they were different TXAA static screenshot comparison inevitably ends in "the textures look blurry." From my own comparisons I can see there is a slight loss in texture detail, but it's nothing like the crazy blur in Secret World.
If you dig into the tech you'll see that TXAA is basically MSAA plus some other stuff, so geometry aliasing will be about the same in any screenshot. It's when you start playing that you notice the massive difference, especially in the cities like in Nvidia's video.
If you didn't know the game featured Boston, then you done one hell of blackout on this game.
Actually, TXAA resembles FXAA a whole lot more in the way it works. The guy behind FXAA also worked on TXAA.
Assuming these patches happen. AC2's broken LOD system was never fixed, and with publicly-traded multinational publishers, there's a relatively short cutoff point when it comes to post-release support.
http://benchmark3d.com/assassins-creed-3-benchmark
This is on a Sandy Bridge core. Just imagine on some weakly ARM core on a next gen console. I don't think they're going to patch this, but future games should have it fixed.
What about an option in the graphic settings to lower the amount of NPC's in the open world segments? That is the least they could do. But I think they will fix it completely by making the NPC generating multithreaded, it can't be that hard.
indigo-cyclops
Member
Man, the game looks and runs beautifully on my system. I only played about an hour though. Perhaps a crash awaits, but I can't complain at all right now.
The IQ is just incredible.
The IQ is just incredible.
Ideally I think it'd be nice if PC ports of console games had "real" graphical options to make the game scaleable on all sorts of hardware like Valve does. You should be able to turn off some of the nice effects, drop down to DX9 mode and get a solid 60fps and then in a few years when you get a new computer with a beefy gpu you can set everything on ultra DX11 mode and get 60fps on that.
That way people who prefer amazing visuals at 30-60fps unstable can get their enjoyment, and people who prefer a smooth locked 60fps experience with lesser visuals can get theirs as well.
The main problem I see with a lot of games lately is that the graphical options do almost nothing. The difference between everything on "low" and "very high" in games like AC3, NFS MW, LA Noire, is very very minor as is its effect on framerate. Outside of the AA options, the rest are almost just for show.
You're tripping. Each of the settings in AC3 can change performance massively. AA has MSAA at Very High, Shadows Very High has that uber AO, Environment Quality has extra LOD and tessellation, and there's a TXAA setting too if you have the hardware.
I would expect that core clockrate would scale 100% because the core game engine seems to run on 1 core.
As for more cores, it seems muddy to me. The benchmark you posted has lots of variables in a single bar graph, not sure what 4K versus 4 means for example.
The one I posted shows:
1. With AA set to normal, 1 core is used 100%, other cores < 25%. They're used, but poorly.
2. AA set to max, 1 core is used 100%, other 3 around 40-60%.
They speculate that the game engine's threading is on one core primarily, and that multi-threading for higher settings interferes with the primary engine resulting in FPS dropping. Maybe AA should be confined to other cores? I don't know, probably only the developers of the game know what the problems is. I think this engine is the first iteration of their next gen stuff and it will be optimized later considering Desktop CPUs are way faster per core than non-x86 Intel.
Yeah setting the AA to Normal degrades picture quality, but this game is about speed. Rather have it run on average 80fps than 40 fps with frame drops and sluggish menus.
Then you have not played Prototype 2 on PC.
Anyway, I'm getting...disappointing performance with my machine. Currently have everything on High -
i7 960 @ 4.0GHz
12GB RAM
AMD 6970
Most likely because AMD drivers are crap? Not sure. I upgraded from 12.8 to the latest 12.11 betas and didn't notice an improvement.. Curious if they fixed the Dishonored crashing problem with 12.11.
Lower AA to normal.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Haha, I'm currently playing Prototype 2 on an Nvidia card (460) and the performance is far better than I was expecting after the bitching I saw online.
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