When I played six hours of Assassin's Creed Shadows at Ubisoft Quebec last week, I knew it would be the only time I saw it looking this good. Global illumination, ray traced everything, super high framerate—I was test driving a Ferrari knowing I'd eventually have to climb back into my Nissan Versa and go home.
All I hoped is that Shadows' official system requirements wouldn't box out my aging RTX 2080 Super, and now that Ubisoft has finally released the full specs, it sounds like I'll be OK. Here's what we're working with:
SELECTIVE RAY TRACING
MINIMUM
- 10-series and other old GPUs should be able to run Assassin's Creed Shadows says director, and my RTX 3060 Ti sheds a single hopeful tear
- Assassin's Creed: Shadows PC performance analysis: Ray tracing, upscaling, and frame generation are all optional, but only two of them are worth using, though not the ones you might think
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 1080P at 30 FPS
- Visual Settings: Low
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 8700k/ AMD Ryzen™ 5 3600
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce GTX™ 1070 8GB/ AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 8GB/ Intel® Arc™ A580 8GB (REBAR ON)
RECOMMENDED
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 1080P at 60 FPS
- Visual Settings: High
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 11600k/ AMD Ryzen™ 5 5600x
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 3060Ti 8GB/ AMD Radeon™ RX 6700 XT 12GB/ Intel® Arc™ B580 12GB (REBAR ON)
ENTHUSIAST
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 1440P at 60 FPS
- Visual Settings: High
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 11600k/ AMD Ryzen™ 5 5600x
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 2070 8GB/ AMD Radeon™ RX 6700 XT 12GB/ Intel® Arc™ B580 12GB (REBAR ON)
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 4K at 60 FPS
- Visual Settings: High
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 12700k/ AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800x3D
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti Super 16GB/ AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XT 20GB
STANDARD RAY TRACING
MINIMUM
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 1080P at 30 FPS
- Visual Settings: High
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 8700k/ AMD Ryzen™ 5 3600
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 2070 8GB/ Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 2070 8GB/ Intel® Arc™ B580 12GB (REBAR ON)
RECOMMENDED
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 1440P at 60 FPS
- Visual Settings: High
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 11600k/ AMD Ryzen™ 5 5600x
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 4070 Super 12GB/ AMD Radeon ™ RX 7800 XT 16GB
EXTENDED RAY TRACING
ENTHUSIAST
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 1440p at 60 FPS
- Visual Settings: Ultra
- CPU: Intel® Core™ Intel i7 13700k/ AMD Ryzen™ 7 7800x3D
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 4080 16GB
EXTREME
- Resolution/FPS Using Dynamic Resolution and Upscaling: 4K at 60 FPS
- Visual Settings: Ultra
- CPU: Intel® Core™ Intel i7 13700k/ AMD Ryzen™ 7 7800x3D
- GPU: Nvidia® GeForce RTX™ 4090 24GB
A lot to absorb, but unless you have one of the most expensive graphics cards on the market, let's assume you can pretty much ignore the "Extended Ray Tracing" suggestions. What sticks out to me is that Shadows is the latest game to not make ray tracing an option—sounds like the feature is fundamental to how the game is lit, similar to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is good news for our eyeballs but potentially bad news for the majority of Steam users on older hardware.
It's not as bad as it could be: Those "Selective Ray Tracing" specs are pretty reasonable if, like me, you're still gaming at 1080p. I'm betting that by "selective," that means yes to global illumination, but no to reflections. Whatever keeps the framerate around a smooth 60.
Curiously, one of these specs include Shadows' install size, just that an SSD will be required (another mandate that's only getting more common). PC Gamer asked Ubisoft about Shadows' install size and we'll update this story if we hear back.
