Widescreen Gaming Forum

[quote]I just bought this.

I hate you all.

LOL, what exactly do you mean, troubles getting decent frame rates? I read last night that a rig that plays Crysis at respectable frame rates on Medium settings bogs down even on Low settings in Assassin's Creed.

Not at all, I can play with everything maxed except one setting, multisampling, at 2 instead of 3... 1680 res.

I have single core.

Playable, but I have many games that perform better given what is being displayed.

Can you guys be more specific? Do you both own AC now? If so, please give your system specs and how performance compares between Crysis and AC. I only have a P4 3Ghz, X1950Pro 512MB AGP, 2 GB RAM rig. I really doubt I can play AC, but I can play Crysis fine.

Can you guys be more specific? Do you both own AC now? If so, please give your system specs and how performance compares between Crysis and AC. I only have a P4 3Ghz, X1950Pro 512MB AGP, 2 GB RAM rig. I really doubt I can play AC, but I can play Crysis fine.

My system specs are in my sig, and I just described how well I play AC... full Steam version.

I can't really compare it to Crysis, completely different games with completely different settings (much more limited in AC). I run Crysis at mostly high settings, no AA, in 1680 res, but I also force DX9 to keep the framerate up. Assassin's Creed runs very well though, and I have a pretty low end dual core processor... I would guess a single core could run it, have seen comments to that effect on the Steam boards, but you might have to sacrifice some res or effects.

A french review surprisingly praises Ubisoft for a particularly brilliant PC port:
http://www.jeuxvideopc.com/test/test-11561-3-assassin-s-creed.php

They tested AC on two configs:

C2D / 2 GB RAM / 8800 GTS ("older" one)
Everything maxxed out.
30 - 60 fps, with some acceptable drops during combat.

Athlon 3500+ / 1 GB / x1950Pro
Lower shadow options.
20 - 30 fps, and no huge difference in image quality, as long as you keep post FX on.

The resolution they used is an issue though, since they don't report the "pixellisation triangle" bug, it seems it was below 1680.

Oops, sorry, didn't notice the specs in your sig. That scenario I was talking about was on a lower end rig that could only play Crysis on Med though, as I said.

That info from the French site is very encouraging, they even used the same GPU I have and close to the same level CPU and I have twice the RAM. I also don't like using post processing if they're meaning HDR, motion blur, bloom, etc. Maybe I could get the upper end of that 20-30 FPS they're talking about, then it would be no worse than Crysis runs on my rig.

On the res, I have a 21" (20" viewable) 4:3 CRT and generally get good results with 1200x900 keeping jaggies to a minimum. It's the res I use for Crysis. Even if I have to go 1024x768 though I'd be OK with that. Do you guys know if they plan to make a PC demo for AC? That way I'd know for sure if my rig could handle it.

It was a bit difficult reading the translation from French to English but I did notice they said like others have that the player movement is not nearly as easy on PC as on console. They seem to be recommending a gamepad, I absolutely hate gamepads. The video of the game on that site is one of the best I've seen of AC though, except for that bad fall he took on one jump.

Actually they say PC controls are good, but they prefer using an Xbox pad. Testers always recommend a gamepad, because unlike you (and me), they're totally used to this god-forsaken device... Have no fear, I'm sure the classic controls don't suck :)

As for the "post FX", if you got a "weak" CPU compared to your graphics card, enabling all possible eye-candy sometimes better performance. If you hate those effects then so be it, but I'm afraid the game world may look pretty bland without it. This game looks so... greyish. :oops:

There will NEVER be a demo, it's been announced plain and simple, both because prepping a demo might have delayed the game release, and because given the open-ended nature of AC they couldn't really cut out a "slice" of the game to offer as a demo. :/

Well so far on most resource hungry games like Crysis, GoW, etc, when I turn post processing down I get noticeably better frame rates and less stuttering. Thank God I read that bit about controls wrong though because man do I suck at gamepads.

I just looked at a lot of the videos on GameTrailers.com and though the game looks really fun as far as navigating through the maps, the idiotic AI and repetitive nature of the fighting could quickly wear thin. They seem to indicate the side quests and flag collecting is rather pointless too.

I can't for the life of me imagine what possessed them to want to use that silly stealth pose that ignores any need to avoid being seen right after a kill, then be able to sneak right up behind some goon that walks over asking who did that.

I also don't like their use of glowing highlights on enemy characters in the game rather than some other indicator that doesn't rob you of the graphic immersion or just being able to turn it off and figure out for yourself whom to kill. What's up with those weird sparkle effects that come on screen every now and then too?

I suspect making some of the more elaborate break-ins to get to a main target, combined with daring escapes are going to be the more enjoyable aspects of the game. I must admit though, as repetitive as the fights against the guards are and even with their tendency to stand and watch as you kill their brethren off one at a time, the game's got some of the most graphic and realistic medieval mêlée I've seen yet in a game.

I also don't like their use of glowing highlights on enemy characters in the game rather than some other indicator that doesn't rob you of the graphic immersion or just being able to turn it off and figure out for yourself whom to kill. What's up with those weird sparkle effects that come on screen every now and then too?

It's explained when you play the game, and is acceptable once you understand, I guess.

I've been playing the 360 version recently; 3/9 assassinations so far, while doing every 'side-mission' on the way (except for flags, it's easier to do at the end). I have a fairly high tolerance for repetition but it's been really fun so far, and I can't say I've gotten bored of it.

The game seems to be built completely for the 360 since it IS rather pointless to do the side quests, but on the Xbox they give achievement points. Just thought I'd mention that.

Thanks for the info Infernus. I've been reading through more Gamespot forum posts and lots of people seem to be saying it can run on a single core rig. Some have even lower spec than mine. I've read you can lower the population of citizen AI in the game settings, but they say there's still quite a lot of citizens, which is much of what causes lag in cities on single cores. I'm hoping you can reduce it even further via modding.

I've already seen videos of missions in caves where there's very few AI around on a 3Ghz single core with a 7950GT, about the same equivalent of my spec, and it was running very smoothly and even looked OK considering it was Flash video format. One of the things I found too is that collecting flags creates saves, so I guess they're not totally a waste of time.

Last time I saw that sparkly effect I wondered if it was a teleport, but sometimes I see it during escape runs and it seems they wouldn't allow you to use it at times like that. I thought it was just for quicker travel between cities. It's that white glowing sort of web effect that looks like it's attached to part of the HUD at times.