Assassin’s Creed Mirage tech review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks

Back to the roots. With Mirage, Assassin’s Creed is striving to turn the focus back to its original core elements (e.g. stealth). We are especially interested in checking out how graphically demanding the latest instalment in the series is.

Florian Glaser, 👁 Florian Glaser (translated by Zhiwei Zhuang), Published 10/11/2023 🇩🇪

Right now, our gaming benchmarks are performed using these laptops. Click on the images to visit the respective product page. All other test systems (tower PCs, mini-PCs, etc.) are listed at the end of this article.

Visually, Assassin’s Creed Mirage leaves a decent to good impression but isn’t phenomenal by any means. As is usual with the series, environments are highly atmospheric and often created with much love for details, giving the game a fantastic vibe. The in-house Anvil engine also shines with remarkable draw distance and high character density (in settlements). The play between light and shadow is likewise more than decent and enhances the game’s atmosphere.

That said, Mirage still struggles with inconsistent performance in its current state. Regardless of the hardware and settings used, we constantly observed stuttering and poor minimum FPS. The developers really need to work on resolving this phenomenon.

There isn’t much to complain about the options menu. We think it is slightly inconvenient that the five available presets always automatically enable Adaptive Quality (which we disabled throughout our testing). Other than that, Ubisoft deserves much praise in this department. Besides the amount of options, the written explanations and comparison images are also worthy of recognition – it doesn’t get much better than this. You’ll also find a useful VRAM indicator. According to it, Mirage requires around 6 GB at FHD/Ultra and 7 GB at 4K/Ultra. Whilst not necessarily low, these requirements aren’t excessive either. As you might expect from a recent release, upscaling technologies such as XeSS, FSR and DLSS are likewise supported.

The only downside: you need to restart the game after modifying some of the settings. This is somewhat annoying due to the fact that load times are pretty long and some intro or video sequences are unskippable. Furthermore, we encountered a few crashes that couldn’t be reproduced (despite our test devices running on the latest drivers). On an AMD-based system, we also had issues with the game not displaying correctly in full-screen mode or the cursor not showing up after switching resolution. The game’s install size is moderate at approx. 38 GB.

Similar to its predecessors, Mirage also comes with a built-in benchmark tool. As you can see in the video below, the benchmark consists of a roughly 1.5 minute-long camera roam that transitions from close-up shots to a panoramic view. A frame rate graph and other information are shown when the benchmark is running. At the end of the run, the game will provide you with a few more bits of performance information.

We would consider Assassin’s Creed Mirage decently playable at 40 FPS and above. As usual, 60 FPS or more is recommended if you want a smoother gameplay experience. The system requirements are fairly modest overall.

Those using an iGPU should stick to low resolutions and settings. Even the Radeon 680M can only manage good frame rates (i.e. around 60 FPS) when the game is running at 720p and Low preset. On the other hand, mid-range cards (e.g. Radeon RX 6800S or similar) can sometimes break the 60 FPS mark even at 1080p and high to very high settings.

You likewise won’t need an absolute high-end GPU to enjoy Mirage at QHD. A GeForce RTX 4050 is theoretically powerful enough to run the game at 1440p and Ultra High preset, but the 6 GB of VRAM is a limiting factor.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage only gets really demanding at 4K. With the settings maxed out, you’ll need an RTX 4070 or better to have a decent gaming experience at this resolution. Enabling DLSS Quality only occasionally improves performance by a limited margin. There are other games that benefit more from the technology, for instance Cyberpunk 2077.

Because gaming tests are very time-consuming and are often constrained by installation or activation limits, we are only able to provide you with part of the benchmark results at the time of publishing this article. We will be adding more graphics cards over the coming days and weeks.

Pos	Model	PrevNext>  Assassin’s Creed Mirage (2023)
		low 1920×1080 Low Preset (Adaptive Quality Off)	med. 1920×1080 Medium Preset (Adaptive Quality Off)	high 1920×1080 High Preset (Adaptive Quality Off)	ultra 1920×1080 Ultra High Preset (Adaptive Quality Off)	QHD 2560×1440 Ultra High Preset (Adaptive Quality Off)	4K 3840×2160 Ultra High Preset (Adaptive Quality Off)
3	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080		220	211	177	145	93
5	AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT		179	170	136	113	71
17	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU		183	176	129	112	68
25	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU		137	129	97	74	41
33	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU		115	109	87	71	47
45	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU		106	102	80	63	40
48	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU		126	118	92	69	37
59	AMD Radeon RX 6800S	97	87	82	66
134	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU		107	97	70	53	28
231	AMD Radeon 680M	34	32	30	24

^(-) * Smaller values are better. / ⁿ¹²³ Number of benchmarks for this median value / * Approximate position

Legend
5	Stutters – This game is very likely to stutter and have poor frame rates. Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, average frame rates are expected to fall below 25fps
	May Stutter – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, stutters and poor frame rates are expected.
30	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 25fps
40	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 35fps
60	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 58fps
	May Run Fluently – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, fluent frame rates are expected.
?	Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.
	Uncertain – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game and no reliable interpolation can be made based on the performances of surrounding cards of the same class or family.
The value in the fields displays the average frame rate of all values in the database. Move your cursor over the value to see individual results.

 Cns

Editor of the original article: Florian Glaser – Managing Editor Gaming Laptops – 583 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2009

I discovered my interest in computers in my childhood, growing up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. I was especially fascinated with computer games, even from an early age. From Monkey Island through Lands of Lore to Doom, I tried every game I could get my hands on. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2009 with my focus mostly being on high-performance gaming laptops.

Translator: Zhiwei Zhuang – Translator – 106 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2022

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering, I moved from Singapore to
Cologne in 2014 and began pursuing a career as a freelance translator. Much of my translation work
focuses on science, engineering and technology. My fascination with computers and mobile
electronics began when I was young. And I have fond memories reading countless tech and gaming
magazines. Working with Notebookcheck gives me the opportunity to incorporate my personal
interests into my professional work.