Ubisoft's open-world Assassin's Creed series is like no other in terms of how it can bring gaming PCs to their knees, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey is no different. A little bit of fiddling will be required to achieve optimum PC performance in AC Odyssey, but hopefully, this handy little Assassin's Creed Odyssey PC performance guide can help you hit the sweet spot between graphics and performance.
Using the chart below you can find out just how demanding each graphics setting is in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Along with this, we've given priority scores based on how important we believe it is to enable these graphics options for the optimum PC gaming experience with ACO.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey System Requirements
For the benchmark results below we used a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, an Intel Core i7-5820K processor, and 16GB DDR4 memory.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey Graphics Options Performance Breakdown
The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics option is.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey Graphics Settings
Antialiasing
A technology used to soften the edges of objects on Assassin's Creed Odyssey. This lends a great deal to image quality in ACO and should be turned up as high as you can manage. However, the higher your resolution, the less the importance of this particular graphics setting.
Performance Impact - 2/5
Priority - 5/5
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Shadows
The Shadows setting affects filter, distance, and shadow map applied to display shadows. This option can have a large impact on GPU performance in AC Odyssey.
Performance Impact - 4/5
Priority - 4/5
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Environment Details
Adjust graphical complexity on environmental elements in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Performance Impact - 0/5
Priority - 3/5
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Texture Detail
Use texture quality for more detailed textures, or lower texture quality to increase performance. This setting is almost exclusively reliant on the amount of VRAM on your graphics card. Find the maximum Texture Detail setting your GPU can handle in ACO and stick to it, as provided you have enough video memory there will be little to no impact on performance.
Performance Impact - 3/5
Priority - /5
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Terrain
Terrain adjusts the detail level of terrain in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. In truth, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the Medium and High settings available. We detected no performance cost, however, so feel free to turn it up at the expensive of a few megabytes of VRAM.
Performance Impact - 0/5
Priority - 2/5
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Clutter
Affects the amount of clutter and debris that litters the terrain in AC Odyssey, such as grass and branches. It's a cheap video setting but it does add a great deal to the density and believability of environments.
Performance Impact - 2/5
Priority - 5/5
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Fog
The Fog graphics setting is pretty straightforward, affecting the realism and density of fog that appears in AC Odyssey. It's a not a graphical benefit that'll be seen often,
Performance Impact - 1/5
Priority - 3/5
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Water
The Water graphics setting in AC Odyssey impacts the quality of the water rendering. The higher the Water setting, the more realistically transparent a body of water looks. Considering just how much of ACO takes place in or around water, this setting can be crucial to the experience.
Performance Impact - 1/5
Priority - 5/5
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Screen Space Reflections
Screen Space Reflections, or SSR, adjusts the rendering quality of reflections on wet surfaces. This can impact both large bodies of water and slick surfaces such as rain on cobbled streets. It's a luxury in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but a very nice one.
Performance Impact - 1/5
Priority - 4/5
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Volumetric Clouds
Everybody loves fluffy clouds, and this particular graphics setting is all about how realistically clouds are rendered in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. On Ultra, clouds can be presented as billowing, dynamic, and realistic, while on Low they can appear flat and static. Interestingly, we found this to be the most expensive graphics setting in the entirety of AC Odyssey, so perhaps consider dropping Volumetric Clouds down to High or Medium for much faster frame rates.
Performance Impact - 4/5
Priority - 2/5
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Texture Detail (Characters)
Use higher texture quality for more detailed textures, or lower texture quality to increase performance.
Performance Impact - 1/5
Priority - 3/5
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Character
Adjust detail level on characters you meet in Assassins Creed Odyssey. The difference between Medium to Ultra is practically imperceptible outside of cut-scenes, so despite the low frame rate hit this could be a worthwhile setting to dial down. Our recommendation is that Character is set to Medium as a minimum though, as Low, well, see for yourself below.
Performance Impact - 0/5
Priority - 2/5
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Ambient Occlusion
Adjust self-shadowing of objects. As always, this is one of our favourite visual effects. It is fairly expensive to enable Ambient Occlusion, however, and after the Medium setting, it becomes a case of diminishing returns.
Performance Impact - 3/5
Priority - 4/5
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Depth of Field
Off: all objects appear in focus.
Low or High: distant objects appear blurry.
Use Low setting to improve performance on higher resolutions
Performance Impact - 0/5
Priority - 3/5
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PC Specs
Everything on ultra except volumetric cloud to very high locked 60 FPS most of the time. In some areas drop to 55 FPS at lowest because my cpu is holding back.
PC Specs
With GTX 970 my 2nd card i must put all to high to run 50-60 FPS. Also looking forward to test my 3rd card GTX 670 2Gb model i expect low settings for 50ish FPS.
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Just tested GTX 670 on low 45-55 FPS
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I hope with another performance update on their side, i might be able to max clouds and shadows on my 1070.
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Damn... it looks astonishing even on low.
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Thanks for another graphics options article!
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In the first and the last pictures Low/Ultra are switched,right?
And no Volumetric Clouds and Shadow for me then.
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No, in the first pictures the AA slightly blurs the image in order to soften the edges (kind of hard to tell its effect in an image this size though), while the final set of pictures Depth of Field Low basically defaults to Off, so if you don't like the Depth of Field effect, the Low will look better than Ultra.
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Any chance I will be able to run this.
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I'd say Low is best
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Really? I think he can do med-high just fine
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With my rig i can run it maxed at 1080p only lowering shadows to high, and clouds to high, ambient occlusion on also on high, while keeping AA on low. Rest is maxed and gives 60fps outside of cities, and between 30-40 in crowded areas.
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If even your rig cant run it, then I am doomed for sure :D
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I played Origins with my current pc and resolution with med to high settings getting 28-50fps depends on the location and npc density so will this have the same performance or will I have to lower more settings for this game?
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Think you will be fine, but lower shadows, volumetric clouds, ambient occlusion and AA, cause them are the big fps killers
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HWunboxed did a really great video on AC:Odyssey optimization. do check that out.
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The first pic looks better on low for me :/
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Oh man, character detail on low is just...terrifying...
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I want this so badly, but I wasn't going to buy into the pre-order hype. The thing is that things have been going so good lately the past week that I have a little extra cash to throw around. So, now I have to decide. AC: Origins now or pick me up a used PS4 and get RDR 2. As much as I love AC I am so much more excited for RDR 2. I just don't know.
PC Specs
Personally I'd steer towards red dead. That's surely going to be the better game and I'd get heavy fomo if I didn't play it lol
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I went ahead and pre-ordered a RDR 2 PS4 Pro bundle from Game Stop. I'm gonna keep checking Craigslist though, if I can get PS4 Pro for cheap then I might just go that route and use the money saved to picked up Odyssey.
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You could always get Odyssey later,but with PS4 you could get GoW,Spidey and other exclusives.
PC Specs
My sister has all my PS4 games and I can borrow them whenever I want for as long as I want. I need to borrow back Horizon Zero Dawn so that I can play The Frozen Wilds. It's probably my biggest regret selling my PS4 when I did. I'll definitely play GoW. I'm not a big fan of Spider Man, but the reviews are so good I might just give it a shot.
PC Specs
it seems like i will be running this on 1440p ultra for 60fps + ultra just like origins
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So we get no eyes on low, cool
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It's the Slender Man game we've always wanted
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Will this one be a stable one, last time AC Origins keeps crashing after like 5-10 minutes gametimes , have to wait for new update to fix that
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What about ray tracing ?
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It has no raytracing support, and I don't believe it's getting any either
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I would like to see how well it runs on the minimum requirements
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Those are some expensive clouds
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Another game that seems to run poorly on AMD. Won't be buying this one.