Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced FPS Optimization & Full Breakdown Comparison

This is the full breakdown of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced FPS throughout different graphics options.Ordered by what matters most to the least impactful options. You can easily almost double your FPS, with comparable graphics quality.

Overall Preset

Besides upscaling, obviously overall preset is going to have the highest FPS impact. Surprisingly the handheld modes actually look rather good even on a PC on a larger screens. Using 1/3 less VRAM for another 1/3 FPS is interesting.

Upscaling (XeSS)

XeSS susprisingly offers The largest FPS impact from 50 to 72. While aliasing is noticeable on low settings, XeSS has come a long way.

Upscaling (TAA)

TAA is, as usual, much more noticeably blurry. You are forced to choose upscaling of some kind, so either choose TAA, or native AA. Otherwise use DLSS, or if you have to, AMD FSR.

Upscaling (DLSS)

DLSS is usually the strongest contender for both FPS and quality here is no different. The visual consistency looks solid, clean and sharp, even on more performant options.

Upscaling (FSR)

FSR is usually quite far behind DLSS in terms of quality and performance. However, here it seems to be very comparable. If I was unable to choose DLSS for its slight edge, AMD FSR would be something I’d very easily get used to.

Raytracing Mode

Ray tracing provides the biggest non upscaling FPS impact. The game still looks very pretty, even with raytracing it turned off. Should you wish to play with raytracing - turned on standard is fine. Extended is going to eat a lot more of your FPS.

Shadow Quality

Lowering shadow quality slowly lowers the amount of shadows in the scene - most noticable in the comparison from from different objects like ropes hanging above. However, major shadows from buildings still exist even on the lowest settings. Not to mention dynamic shadows from players and NPCs also exist on the lower settings, where they just seem to get incrementally blurrier, especially on NPCs.

Water Q (Underwater)

To be perfectly honest throughout general gameplay; lowering underwater quality while actually underwater doesn’t do all that much other than possibly slightly making the water clearer to see in, and maybe the surface a bit nicer to look at it from below. Especially considering large FPS impact that it has, from screenshots alone it seems almost indistinguishable. This is definitely a setting worth lowering. Performance has the largets jump between medium and low where it then plateus, so low is as low as you need to go.

Terrain Quality

Terrain quality surprisingly has very little impact for the 10% or so FPS it costs. The general differences you can see are mainly to do with the ground deforming. On highest settings there’s more variance in ground height and deformation. Lower settings means less deformation for the most part. The FPS gain drops off after very high, so that’s where I’d leave it.

Hair Strands

Hair strands mainly has to do with the smaller bits of hair fluttering in the wind. The lower graphic settings do seem to make hair more static and made of plastic in it’s entirety. However, anything above off looks more than fine.

Fog Quality

Fog quality mainly seems to lower the amount of fog in the scene, especially from low to very low. However, anything above that seems to look just about the same and perform similarly.

Light Source Quality

While the in game graphics options seem to suggest that this setting removes different light sources, especially at night time. Changing from high to very high, you can see that leakage from the building’s light stops shining through and onto me through a solid roof, meaning that most likely it has to do with light being contained by different objects.You shouldn’t generally notice a change in performance for this throughout general gameplay. FPS does seem to plateu at High and below.

Water Quality

Water quality doesn’t have much impact on performance while on or above water. However, I can see a small impact between medium and low, with the quality of the surface of the water changing at least a little bit.Playing at Medium and above should give you the best experience with around the same FPS.

Loading Distance

From ultra high to medium, there’s already a noticeable drop in the amount of distant shadows, especially in the bell tower in the scene, with lower options progressively bringing the distance at which shadows stop rendering closer to the player. The next drop I can see is High to Medium. From Low to Very Low the tree shadows seem affected mostly. Finally, very low seems to nuke the quality of distant trees and more.

As this has a generally small FPS impact, having it on the highest settings should be more than fine.

Terrain Texture Q

This option has such an incredibly small impact on both visuals and erformance. Leaving it maxed out should be fine.

Cloud Quality

The same is true for cloud quality. The higher options seem to have less blurry clouds. You can see more detail around and in them, while on lower settings they seem to be just generally flatter. You’re not going to be spending all that much time looking directly up and performance wise things are fine on high, so that’s probably where I’d leave it.

Character Quality

Throughout testing, there’s a small trend in FPS as you lower this option. However, as for how things actually look in the world and feel, there’s basically no difference between these. Leaving this on high or even ultra high should be more than fine.

Micropolygon

This option suggests that its impact might be extremely small in general gameplay. I can maybe see less detail in a distance, especially on the bell tower building in the scene - but this change only appears at Low. Leave this on Medium and above.

Beyond this point, FPS seems to stay mostly the same for most of the graphics options, so if you skipped over the rest of these you should be fine.

Raytracing Quality

Ray tracing and BVH quality were tested on the extended raytracing options, with high graphics settings. Even with the most demanding raytracing impact, changing this option doesn’t seem to have much performance impact other than the sudden drop off in 1% and .1% lows from very high to ultra, leaving this one very high should be more than fine.

Texture Resolution Q

The final, least impactful option when it comes to FPS on most graphics cards is texture quality. Raising this does result in a much better looking environment and if you have enough VRAM to handle it, having it cranked all the way up should be basically perfect.

The main FPS impact comes from memory running out, and textures needing to be swapped in and out of VRAM. This only happens on much lower-powered graphics cards. Esecially on handheld where memory might be shared.

BVH Quality

Again, same thing here. BVH quality is visually almost indistinguishable and performance-wise about the same.

Screen Space Effects

While the graphics options seems to suggest that this option mainly has to do with ambient occlusion, it’s very subtle, even when comparing high to ultra low.

Deformation

This setting seems similar to terrain quality, although it’s impacts are much more subtle, and FPS impact even more so. There’s basically no difference between the lowest and highest options, so leaving this turned up higher should be fine.

Post Effects

This graphics option is incredibly subtle, both in looks and FPS impact on lower options. It seems to remove a little bit of fog over the scene in general on lower settings, which I prefer.

Geometry Quality

This option mainly has to do with the amount of VRAM your system has. Performance-wise you’ll see a boost in performance when you’re absolutely starved for VRAM. On systems with 8GB VRAM+ this doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Particles Quality

Even on the rainiest scenes, I don’t think there’s much difference between these, both visually and performance-wise.

Scatter Density

This option does seem to add a few small rocks, leaves and things like that on the ground around the place. The impact is so incredibly small, leaving it up should be fine.