Ubisoft claimed that the engine will use all the cores it needs until it sees that using more cores brings no more gain.
Not only that, but there was no difference at all between our simulated tricore and our quadcore systems. Normally, we’d expect a big performance jump from this enhanced version of AnvilNext, however that wasn’t the case. Truth be told, there was noticeable stuttering on our simulated dualcore system but that was because our two CPU cores were maxed out. As we can clearly see, the performance difference is only 5fps at best. What also surprised us was the performance difference between a tricore and a dualcore. Was the French company trying to raise the game’s PC specs for no apparent reason? It really puzzles us why Ubisoft suggested a quadcore CPU when the game can be enjoyed with a dualcore. When we lowered the game’s terrain setting (the one setting that only affects the CPU), our framerate skyrocketed at 60fps (though there were scenes in which the framerate dropped to 40s).
Our simulated dualcore CPU was able to run the game with 30fps at max settings. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is perfectly playable with a dualcore CPU, despite those official PC specs. Ubisoft claimed that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag requires a quadcore CPU at least. Obviously, our old Q9650 is able to run the game better than next-gen consoles, so keep in that in mind while reading the rest of our article.
The game, on the other hand, runs with a 30fps lock on next-gen consoles (and looks inferior due to its lower AA settings).
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag ran with 30-60fps with max settings at 1080p on our test system.
Before continuing, let us tell you that the aforementioned system – despite the awful port that Ubisoft offered us – runs the game better than PS4 and Xbox One.
Not only that but the performance difference between a dualcore and a quadcore is around 5fps at best.Īs usual, we used an overclocked Q9650 (4.2Ghz) with 4GB RAM, an Nvidia GTX690, the latest version of the GeForce ForceWare drivers and Windows 7-64bit. As Ubisoft claimed, the scheduler used for the rendering was ‘ rewritten from the ground up and in AC4, the engine will use all the cores it needs until it sees that using more cores brings no more gain.’ Well, it appears that information was incorrect as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is plagued by performance issues and runs identical on tricore and quadcore CPUs. Last month, we had the pleasure to interview Ubisoft who confirmed that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag would be better optimized on the PC than its predecessor.