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[Digital Foundry] Performance Analysis: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

I was using the top one as an example of how textures look from a distance, which is incredibly poor, especially compared to the games that shipped with III/BF's engine. I could boot it up right now and probably get a screenshot similar to the third one.

Yes the third one is accurate. I am just talking about the first, it's unloaded asset rather than reduced LOD in that picture.
 
Confused by that myself - its doing far less than Unity but only a bit better performance wise.
I don't know, watching the video it seems 30fps most of the time on ps4. Which is more than "a bit better" compared to Unity?

I'd love to know how it compares to previous gen console versions of past AC games. They pretty much all had Unity's performance and you didn't hear people complaining too much (when they should have, mind you).
 
It would have to be doing quite a lot less than it is currently doing to see a bump in resolution.
Kinda why I said far less ;)

Perhaps its the location but it doesn't look anywhere near what Unity was aiming for, on top of that its lost the massive crowds, Maybe having a female character model took more resources than expected

ps3ud0 8)
 
Why do these perf analyses never have PC btw?

1.What would you like them to test with? A 980Ti, a R9 380, a high end AMD CPU or an I3 Skylake? Maybe they should even include linux or mac setups?
Too many different, possible and still logical PC configurations you could use to test performance vs consoles. It's too much work.

2.Most, even mid class, PC configurations would just straight out win, like 9 out of 10 times (one being Arkham Knight). It's not even close most of the time.
For example: even one year ago, when Unity came out and everybody complained how bad it ran, most PC people were able to make it run at 1080p30-60fps. On the other side consoles ran at 900p 20-30fps. And the PC crowd (including me!) still complained the hell out of the game and it is still considered a bad port. (Not saying it is a good one but it ran and looked much more worse on consoles).
PC wins. No need to showcase it.

Edit:
Also watch some NX gamer on YT ;)
 
Confused by that myself - its doing far less than Unity but only a bit better performance wise.

Going for parity means no purchase for me (though post-Unity I doubt any AC entry will be worth getting back into the (dying?) series)

ps3ud0 8)

Unity didn't have a day night cycle..this one does.
So eventhough it might have cut back on one area (NPC count, less interior) it's doing more in a different area. Day night cycle can be quite heavy, AC1 somewhat looked better than AC2 and had higher quality models than AC2 due to the fact that AC2 used dynamic day night cycle and AC1 didn't

The other reason why it might not "look" as good is because of the dynamic day night cycle the game cannot really use as much prebaked lighting data as Unity which had static time of day.
 
Unity didn't have a day night cycle..this one does.
So eventhough it might have cut back on one area (NPC count, less interior) it's doing more in a different area.

Day night cycle can be quite heavy, AC1 somewhat looked better than AC2 and had higher quality models than AC2 due to the fact that AC2 used dynamic day night cycle and AC1 didn't
Ah for some reason I missed the day/night cycle addition (thought Unity had it) - explains that then

ps3ud0 8)
 
Bummer... XB1 was what I got Unity on (and all of the prior gen AC games). Sucks to hear that this time the roles are reversed and PS4 is the more solid version.

I also liked the interiors in Unity. It made the world much more immersive than the miles and miles of alleys and buildings you couldn't enter in the older games.

Both versions should be solid out of the gate. One console over the other on either side is dumb.
 
It's a shit engine.

Slightly expeditious. The game looks good and performs well on consoles, I doubt a subpar engine would have been able to achieve that.

Rather, the PS4's headroom has been used to maximise framerate stability.

The whole dx 11 draw call limitation discussion started last year with unity, because of frame drops and very strange NPC pop in, random change of clothes or switching NPC models etc.
Most people thought this was because there were too many NPCs on the screen at once and the draw call limit was reached.
But the console versions had the same problems, so more clever people then me started to investigate more and found out that console APIs work a bit different when it comes to draw calls and the possible draw call number is much higher (because it already apparently works similar to dx 12?).

Long story short. As this is the console port: No it's not because of DX11 limitations.
Consoles are not draw-calls limited by the API unlike DX11, their APIs are already "low level" akin to DX12.
The Jaguar cores could be the culprit. It could very well drop frames on consoles because of their CPUs, and on PC because the API can only handle so much.

I'm not convinced by your demonstration at all. You know it's common knowledge that PC APIs have no place on consoles where abstraction is not needed nearly as much. Therefore, I strongly doubt the APIs were the culprit, rather the CPU performance seems to me a more likely candidate to explain the wonky performance on consoles.

On PC however, well it's a possibility that DX11 is severely limiting performance.
 
900/30 on both consoles with the same settings is surprising. I would have thought they would have avoided that with the backlash from Unity last year. Seems odd that only AC is doing the parity thing.
 
Slightly expeditious. The game looks good and performs well on consoles, I doubt a subpar engine would have been able to achieve that.

Rather, the PS4's headroom has been used to maximise framerate stability.


Consoles are not draw-calls limited by the API unlike DX11, their APIs are already "low level" akin to DX12.
The Jaguar cores could be the culprit. It could very well drop frames on consoles because of their CPUs, and on PC because the API can only handle so much.
In all honesty graphically not seems even that goodness to accept the 900p compromise. The efficient of this engine for such console, it's really opinable. I'm not saying 900p are inexcusable. I'm saying the tech used it's too much expensive and barely appreciable. They should focus more to what console can do efficiently not to what they can barely handle.
 
900/30 on both consoles with the same settings is surprising. I would have thought they would have avoided that with the backlash from Unity last year. Seems odd that only AC is doing the parity thing.

Destiny says hello. I think Fallout 4 was also confirmed as 1080p/30 on both.

Also something at 900/30 does not mean parity, frame rate can be wildly different.
 
It's a shit engine.
I don't think it's a shit engine, I think they just overshot the PS4/XB1 when developing it and now they're having to deal with it. The games still look very nice and Syndicate seems to perform well enough on PS4, just at 900p, which is a shame.
 
I don't think it's a shit engine, I think they just overshot the PS4/XB1 when developing it and now they're having to deal with it. The games still look very nice and Syndicate seems to perform well enough on PS4, just at 900p, which is a shame.
That's the only company who expected more powerful console from what we see. I don't know in what world ubisoft lived in the past years. Even Rocksteady said to expect such low profile hardware.
 
900/30 on both consoles with the same settings is surprising. I would have thought they would have avoided that with the backlash from Unity last year. Seems odd that only AC is doing the parity thing.

Maybe because it was not as easy as a parity-thing... And now, Ubisoft has a deal with Sony, not MS.
 
In all honesty graphically not seems even that goodness to accept the 900p compromise. The efficient of this engine for such console, it's really opinable. I'm not saying 900p are inexcusable. I'm saying the tech used it's too much expensive and barely appreciable. They should focus more to what console can do efficiently not what they can barely handle.

You wanted a stable 30fps ? Now you got it, and the game performs worse on Xbone so it's not "parity".
 
That's the only company who expected more powerful console from what we see. I don't know in what world ubisoft lived in the past years. Even Rocksteady said to expect such low profile hardware.
Well I don't think it's an unreasonable guess considering what they originally unveiled Watch_Dogs and The Division looking like. Other games that were revealed around that time didn't have anywhere near the same sort of "downgrade" suggesting to me that they were expecting more power than they got.
 
[Call-Me-G];182677106 said:
Maybe because it was not as easy as a parity-thing... And now, Ubisoft has a deal with Sony, not MS.
Well they can lower the res on the xbone to have parity fps. Why they didn't?
 
I still don't understand why they are the same (lower) resolution on both consoles.

Considering resolution is GPU bound and not CPU where the Xbox has a slight advantage.

Destiny says hello. I think Fallout 4 was also confirmed as 1080p/30 on both.

Also something at 900/30 does not mean parity, frame rate can be wildly different.

Considering the GPU advantage the PS4 has it should be able to afford better resolutions than the Xbox. If a game is running 1080 on both, that's great but there is no reason for a 900P Xbox game to run at the same resolution on the PS4.

I'm talking only about resolution, not frame rate.
 
So they can put a sticker on the box saying 900p. It's a sad day when I see a ps4 game in 900p. This generation needs to be wiped from existence. Ps5 and Windows pc can't come soon enough.
You are very naive if you think next console generation will be better of this. There is no way for a tons of reason they can put in the market a console competitive with the PC standard.
 
I'm not complaining of the more stable fps. I'm complaining of this engine in general.

The two are linked, you can't complain about an engine which has to scale things up or down depending on target framerate.

I see nothing suggesting that the game does not make wise use of ressources.
 
I'd love an AC that focused much more heavily on stealth and visuals, along with population density. Have it take place in a city 1/5th the size of these current games. If be all about it.
 
It's a shit engine.
I too feel like this, you would expect the game to look amazing to justify the 900P and the not locked 30, but it's not, one of the less visually appealing open world games, just seems like a poor tech in this case, not amazing visuals, not great performance, what's left? Pretty disappointing how AC turned out this gen technically.
 
the excuse is simple...and valid. Neither of these consoles are particularly powerful
That's something I don't get it. Why most of the ps4 games can be handle at 1080p when are 900p on xbone but not this? Why suddenly ubisoft are the wizard of the optimization? Probably they preferred more stable fps on ps4. I don't think 1080p was impossible at all.
 
What you define as powerful? So pc is not powerful because Arkham knight problems?
At least say something productive

The situation is nowhere alike. You can clearly see why Syndicate runs and looks as it does on consoles.

AK did not run as well as the hardware allowed, as evidenced by the performance patch which drastically improved performance on my PC.
 
I'd take the incredible amount of NPCs over the performance but I know I'm in the extreme Minority...

I thought that was really quite incredible in ACU
 
The two are linked, you can't complain about an engine which has to scale things up or down depending on target framerate.

I see nothing suggesting that the game does not make wise use of ressources.
I'm just saying if this engine can barely handle 30 fps at 900p, they should rethink of their graphic priorities. Even The Witcher 3 seems better and it's even more compromise compared the PC.
Just to be precise, I can live with 900p but the final results in Syndicate it's not even that appreciable.
 
The situation is nowhere alike. You can clearly see why Syndicate runs and looks as it does on consoles.

AK did not run as well as the hardware allowed, as evidenced by the performance patch which drastically improved performance on my PC.

the witcher also got performance patch on ps4 hell ac4 was 900p on ps4 lol
how those are not similar cases lol
 
What you define as powerful? So pc is not powerful because Arkham knight problems?
At least say something productive
there is simply nothing all that cutting edge on either console. They both use relatively weak CPU setups, and their GPU's are pretty middle of the road...

I couldn't care less about any problems with Arkham Knight on the PC because I don't game on a PC...but if there are across the board problems with the game running, even on bleeding edge PC hardware, than its a problem with the game...

That's something I don't get it. Why most of the ps4 games can be handle at 1080p when are 900p on xbone but not this? Why suddenly ubisoft are the wizard of the optimization? Probably they preferred more stable fps on ps4. I don't think 1080p was impossible at all.

whats your point? youre making apples to oranges comparisons when you say "most games." There are 900p games out there on the PS4, and from major AAA studios as well...

Of course i never actually said 1080p was impossible, but people would in here complaining about the framerate if they picked 1080p and it dropped more frames than the Xbone version...

Im not defending Ubi, but they are in a lose lose situation...
 
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