Today, we are going to take a deep look at what are the Best Graphic settings for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, by using the built-in benchmark at 4K (3840 x 2160).
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Origins are two amazing, content field, open world games from Ubisoft. You can spend weeks on doing all the quests and just exploring the world, all driven by very detailed and realistic graphics and superb story lines.
Both Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Origins are part of my Best Exploration Games list, so make sure to check that out as well if you are looking for more exploration goodness.
With that said, let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Best Graphics for Horizon Zero Dawn
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Benchmark PC Setup
The following Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Benchmarks were done at 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution, using the following PC system specs:
- Graphics Card : Nvidia RTX 2070 Super ($338.00)
- CPU : AMD Ryzen 3700x ($205.00)
- RAM: Corsair CMW32GX4M2C3200C16 Vengeance RGB PRO 32GB ($113.98)
- Motherboard : Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro Wifi ($253.54)
- Storage Drive : Western Digital 8TB Ultrastar DC HC320 ($150.00)
- Recording Drive : Samsung 970 EVO SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe ($157.99)
- System Drive : Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB SATA ($129.00)
- Power Supply : EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G3 ($250.00)
- Monitor :
Samsung 49″ RU7300 – 4K Smart TV (DEPRECIATED)
PC Setup Extras
- Keyboard : Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (Price not available)
- Keyboard Rubber O-Rings : Rosewill Mechanical Keyboard Rubber O-Rings (Price not available)
- Mouse : Corsair M65 Elite – FPS Gaming Mouse ($43.85)
- Gaming Controller : Microsoft Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 ($150.99)
- PC Case : Phanteks Eclipse P600S (Price not available)
- PC Case Fans : Corsair LL120 RGB, 120mm RGB LED Fan – Triple Pack ($69.99)
- PC Case RGB LED Strips : Speclux Computer Magnetic Addressable RGB LED Strip Kit ($16.99)
- PC Case RGB Controller : Corsair iCUE Commander PRO ($69.68)
- CPU Cooler : Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition CPU Air Cooler ($99.99)
Microphone : Rode NT1-A Anniversary Condenser Microphone (DEPRECIATED)- Microphone Stand : RODE PSA 1 Swivel Mount Studio Microphone Boom Arm ($98.50)
- Audio Interface Device : Steinberg UR22C 2×2 USB 3.0 Audio Interface ($194.99)
- Headphones : Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 80 Limited Edition Black ($200.00)
- NVMe Expansion : ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2 – 4x NVMe M.2 ($47.99)
- HDMI Switch : KVM 4K60p HDMI USB 4 Way Switch (Price not available)
- Stream Deck : Elgato 15 Key Stream Deck (No products found.)
- Monitor RGB LED Light Strips : GIDERWEL RGBW LED Strip Light,16.4ft SMD5050 ($15.99)
- RGB LED Light Strip Controller : GIDERWEL Home Smart Zigbee RGBCCT (Philips Hue Compatible) ($21.99)
- SATA Cables : 10 Pack 16 Inch SATA III 6.0 Gbps Cable (Price not available)
- Figurine (Storm Trooper) : Revoltech Star Wars Stormtrooper 6.7″ Action Figure ($181.64)
- Figurine (Darth Vader) : Revoltech Star Wars Darth Vader 6.7″ Action Figure ($64.73)
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Preset Benchmarks
The most obvious place to start any benchmark is with the given graphical presets, which in this case are Low, Medium High, Very High and Ultra High.
With these results, we are able to get a fairly good idea on the maximum and minimum results we can expect before diving deeper into each individual graphic setting.
Here we can see that each graphic preset setting in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey delivers a very linear progression in frame per second performance gains, from its previous lower setting, which is great.
Using the LOW Preset setting, I was able to reach 62fps while at the opposite end using the ULTRA HIGH Preset setting, it basically halved to 34fps.
In-between these two min and max results, we have MEDIUM with 53fps, HIGH with 45fps and VERY HIGH with 40fps.
If we then put this into a table format, we can analyze the performance gain each setting has over the ULTRA HIGH setting of 34fps.
Game Video Setting | Ultra (max) | Low/Off | Percent Difference |
Low | 34fps | 62fps | 28fps (82%) Gained |
Medium | 34fps | 53fps | 19fps (56%) Gained |
High | 34fps | 45fps | 11fps (32%) Gained |
Very High | 34fps | 40fps | 6fps (18%) Gained |
Ultra High | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Here again we can see a steady progression in performance, as we incrementally lower the preset settings from ULTRA HIGH.
- LOW = 28fps (82%) performance gain
- MEDIUM = 19fps (56%) performance gain
- HIGH = 11fps (32%) performance gain
- VERY HIGH = 6fps (18%) performance gain
While this is great foundational information, we now have to make use of this, in order to best optimize our Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s performance and graphic details, by individually testing each setting.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey Benchmarks - Individual Settings
As with all my best graphic settings benchmark articles, I will do so by using the ULTRA HIGH preset (or max values for each setting), then set each individual slider setting to its LOWEST/OFF setting, one at a time, running the benchmark again each time.
With this data, we can then determine how each one influences performance.
This will allow us to then rank which individual graphic settings are most resource intensive and tone those down slightly, in order to get the most visual detail, for optimal trade off in frame per second (fps) performance.
Here are the results.
Right off the bat, we can see that individually, the majority of the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s graphic settings offer very little difference in performance between the very highest and very lowest/off setting, except for the regular culprits that stand out in most benchmarks, being Anti-Aliasing and in this case, Volumetric Clouds.
If we again put this into a sorted table from highest to lowest performance gains, we can more clearly see which settings are our performance hogs.
Game Video Setting | Ultra (max) | Low/Off | Percent Difference |
Anti-Aliasing LOW | 34fps | 42fps | 8fps (24%) Gained |
Anti-Aliasing ADAPTIVE | 34fps | 38fps | 4fps (12%) Gained |
Volumetric Clouds LOW | 34fps | 37fps | 3fps (9%) Gained |
Shadow Details LOW | 34fps | 36fps | 2fps (6%) Gained |
Environment LOW | 34fps | 36fps | 2fps (6%) Gained |
Texture Details LOW | 34fps | 36fps | 2fps (6%) Gained |
Character Textures LOW | 34fps | 36fps | 2fps (6%) Gained |
Character Details LOW | 34fps | 35fps | 1fps (3%) Gained |
Ambient Occlusion OFF | 34fps | 35fps | 1fps (3%) Gained |
Depth of Field OFF | 34fps | 35fps | 1fps (3%) Gained |
Fog LOW | 34fps | 35fps | 1fps (3%) Gained |
Reflections MEDIUM | 34fps | 35fps | 1fps (3%) Gained |
Ambient Occlusion MEDIUM | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Depth of Field LOW | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Terrain Details MEDIUM | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Clutter LOW | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Water LOW | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Reflections OFF | 34fps | 34fps | 0fps (0%) Gained |
Anti-Aliasing OFF | 34fps | 33fps | -1fps (-3%) Lost |
As per the graph stats, we can see the setting our Anti-Aliasing to LOW offers a substantial 8fps (24%) performance gains, while ADAPTIVE Anti-Aliasing offers us half of this at 4fps (12%).
Anti-Aliasing set to LOW is visually fine in most games, compared to higher settings, especially when considering the performance gains it offers.
Interestingly enough, turning Anti-Aliasing OFF gave the worst performance, actually causing it to be 1fps (3%) worse than Anti-Aliasing HIGH, while giving horrible visual results, so I would definitely not use this setting.
Next up are the Volumetric Clouds, which when set to LOW have us a nice 3fps (9%) performance gain. I definitely recommend keeping this at low, as how often do you really look up at the sky or even notice the clouds unleash you are really out to take in-game photos. Here again I would definitely keep this at LOW as it’s very much worth the performance gains.
From here on out the performance gains start to dwindle with Shadow Details, Environmental Details, Texture Details and Character Textures all only offering a 2fps (6%) performance gain each. In most cases the visual impact that you have in game with each of these set from ULTRA HIGH to LOW, is substantial and not worth the tiny performance gains.
Although if you are trying to squeeze out every last bit of performance this is the area you should focus on.
Following this is Character Details, Fog and surprisingly Ambient Occlusion and Reflections, which each only give us a 1fps (3%) performance gain.
I am surprised by both Ambient Occlusion and Reflections as they are usually right up there with Anti-Aliasing in other games such as Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty Modern Warfare.
Either way, they seem to have very little impact in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, so let’s accept that and move on, as it’s actually a good thing for our visual experience to have these as high as possible.
Lastly we have Water Details, Clutter Details, Terrain Details and Depth of Field which all yielding no performance benefit between their ULTRA HIGH and LOW settings so keep these at ULTRA HIGH.
- Powered by GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER
- NVIDIA turing architecture & real time ray tracing
- WINDFORCE 3X cooling system with alternate spinning fans
How to get 4K 60fps in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Taking the above benchmark results, I used the LOW Preset and adjusted my individual graphics slider settings up as follows, in order to get what I felt are the Best Graphic Settings for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
This gave me the best possible performance, while keeping as much graphical beauty and detail as possible on my Nvidia RTX 2070 Super at 4K (3840 x 2160):
- Graphic Preset: Custom
- Adaptive Quality: Off
- Anti-Aliasing: Low
- Shadows: Ultra High
- Environment Details: Ultra High
- Texture Details: High
- Terrain Details: High
- Clutter: Very High
- Fog: High
- Water: Very High
- Reflections: High
- Volumetric Clouds: Medium
- Depth of Field: Low
- Character Details: Ultra High
- Character Texture: High
- Ambient Occlusion: Medium
- Depth of Field: Low
With the above settings, I was able to achieve 48fps in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at 4K which I am actually very happy about.
The reason I am impressed with this is because it is just 5fps (10%) lower than the MEDIUM Preset and 3fps (6%) better than the HIGH Preset, all beating the visual Quality of both those presets hands down, by using a majority of ULTRA HIGH settings.
With these custom settings, we are able to get visual results almost on par with our ULTRA HIGH Preset, but with an increase in performance of a lovely 14fps (41%).
Not too shabby I’d say!
NO DLSS or VULKAN
Unfortunately, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is actually a poorly optimized game in terms of graphical performance, as I was just barely able to reach my goal of 60fps (of my 60Hz Monitor), if I settled for the lowest of low settings, which simply isn’t acceptable in this day and age.
We have two major software technologies available to use in games today, that would easily be able to provide 60fps using the ULTRA Preset, had Ubisoft made use of them, which is DLSS and the VULKAN API.
I am really surprised that Ubisoft has not made use of VULKAN for either Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Origins, as they have full implementation of it in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, where the results it offers over DX11/OpenGL, speaks for itself.
VULKAN immediately offers a solid 10% performance increase over DX11.
There is no excuse to not put this into their of these Assassin’s Creed titles as well, especially seeing as how much work has gone into the graphical beauty of these games, and added to the fact that they already have a working VULKAN pipeline in Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
The second and most important optimization feature lacking here is Nvidia’s DLSS Anti-Aliasing.
In other games such as Wolfenstein Youngblood, I am able to achieve 70fps in ULTRA setting using DLSS.
That is just one example, if you check out my Best DLSS Games list, you will see many other examples of AAA High end graphics games beating the socks off the performance of Assassin;s Creed Odyssey.
In my DLSS Benchmarks of Mechwarrior V, you can see how DLSS not only provides double the performance, but actually increases the sharpness quality over TAA at its highest settings.
This is insane, as this literally doubles our frame rates, indirectly giving us the power of dual graphics cards for the price of one.
Our ULTRA HIGH Preset was able to only provide us with 34fps, so if we only made use of DLSS , we would be hitting around the 68fps mark.
If we were to throw VULKAN into that mix we could add another 10% to the 68fps, giving us around 75fps compared to our measly 34fps that we are currently subjected to.
I am beyond confused as to why Ubisoft refuses to implement DLSS into their games, and only implants VULKAN into a rare few.
Come on Ubisoft, you can do better!
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