How to improve FPS in Assassin's Creed Mirage (PC)
Assassin's Creed Mirage marks Ubisoft Bordeaux's return to the series' stealth roots, leaving behind the RPG scale of Odyssey and Valhalla to offer a densely reconstructed but more compact 9th-century Baghdad. It runs on an evolved version of the Anvil engine, and although the map is notably smaller than its recent predecessors, NPC density in souks, alleyways, and residential districts is much higher, which shifts a large share of the CPU load to the foreground even on modest configurations. The rendering itself is reasonably efficient, so with the right settings it's possible to get solid performance even on entry-level GPUs like the RTX 3050.
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +43% free FPS.
Crowd Density
Directly controls how many simultaneous NPCs the game simulates and renders in souks and streets. It's the most decisive performance setting in Baghdad because it affects both CPU (AI, animation) and GPU (skinning, character shadows).
Shadows
Anvil uses fairly demanding shadow cascades in scenes with lots of vegetation and vertical architecture. Lowering from Ultra to High trims distant shadow resolution without affecting close-range contact shadows, key for reading the parkour environment.
Screen Space Reflections
SSR mostly affects the scenes along the Tigris and the city's canals, relatively limited surfaces of the map. Lowering it to Medium reduces the reflection buffer resolution without eliminating them.
Vegetation Quality
Baghdad has gardens, palm groves, and interior courtyards with dense vegetation that impacts draw distance and the number of alpha-blended objects rendered per frame.
Ambient Occlusion
The default Ultra AO uses a costly variant that reinforces contact between NPCs, hanging fabrics, and the narrow architecture typical of the alleyways. Medium keeps contact shadowing indoors without penalizing framerate as much.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Ray Tracing (shadows/AO)
Mirage includes ray tracing options for shadows and ambient occlusion, but their cost on mid-to-low-end GPUs is disproportionate to the visual improvement, especially since the game's base lighting is already solid without RT.
Texture Resolution
The game allows Ultra textures, but they demand considerable VRAM on 6-8GB cards. Lowering to High frees video memory with no significant sharpness loss at normal play distances.
NPC Draw Distance
Determines how far NPCs are simulated with full animation instead of simplified proxies. Reducing it eases CPU load in the busiest streets without visually emptying nearby scenes.
Anti-Aliasing
Mirage's TAA on Ultra applies more aggressive temporal sampling meant for 4K. At 1080p/1440p, Medium offers an almost identical result at lower GPU cost.
Depth of Field
A mostly cosmetic effect in dialogue and cutscenes; its cost in normal gameplay is low but not zero, and many players disable it because it makes it harder to identify guards at mid-distance during stealth.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS 2
+32% FPSNatively supported in Mirage, it's the recommended option on NVIDIA RTX GPUs: in Quality mode it offers very stable image reconstruction on the urban environment's stone and fabric textures, with notable gains and no visible artifacts in motion.
AMD FSR 2
+28% FPSAvailable and works on any GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel). In Balanced mode it's the best option for entry-level cards without DLSS, though it shows somewhat more ghosting on dense garden foliage and character hair than DLSS.
Intel XeSS
+25% FPSIntegrated into the game, with reasonable performance even on non-Intel GPUs thanks to its DP4a compatibility path, though with somewhat less sharp reconstruction than DLSS in scenes with lots of architectural detail.
AMD FSR 1 (legacy)
+12% FPSStill available as a universal fallback option for very limited hardware, but introduces perceptible blur on text and fine details; recommended only if FSR 2/XeSS aren't viable.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Enable DLSS in Quality mode before touching graphics sliders: in Mirage it usually gives more performance margin than lowering individual settings, and keeps the game sharp in detailed urban scenes.
- •On 6GB VRAM GPUs, avoid combining Ultra textures with high crowd density: the combination saturates memory and causes micro-stutter when entering souks.
- •Use NVIDIA Reflex if available in the graphics menu; it reduces input latency in tightly-timed stealth combat with no performance cost.
AMD
- •On RDNA2/RDNA3 GPUs without strong dedicated RT, disable shadow ray tracing entirely: the relative cost is higher than on equivalent NVIDIA GPUs.
- •Prioritize FSR 2 over FSR 1 whenever possible; the sharpness difference in Baghdad's masonry and fabric detail is notable, and FSR 2's extra performance cost is minimal.
- •Update to the latest Adrenalin drivers before playing: Mirage received several AMD-specific performance patches in the weeks after launch.
Sistema
- •Install the game on an SSD (preferably NVMe): the densely populated streets continuously stream textures and NPCs, and on HDD crowd pop-in is frequent.
- •Close third-party overlays running over the game; occasional frame time drops have been reported when opening the map or skill menu while overlays are active simultaneously.
- •If you notice stuttering in the first sessions after a patch, let the game finish compiling shaders in the background before entering heavily crowded zones.
5. Known game issues
Frame time drops in the Round Souk and main markets
The combination of high NPC density, active stealth systems, and texture streaming causes occasional FPS drops when entering the map's busiest zones, regardless of GPU power, as it's predominantly a CPU bottleneck.
Estado: Partially improved in patch 1.0.3, though it persists on configurations with 4-core CPUs or fewer.
Shader compilation stuttering after updates
After each patch or driver update, the first play sessions show micro-hitches when passing through new zones while the engine finishes compiling and caching shaders, a behavior more noticeable given Mirage's urban density.
Memory leaks in long sessions (launch version)
In the first weeks after launch, a progressive increase in VRAM and RAM usage was reported in sessions longer than two hours, leading to cumulative performance drops; later patches notably reduced the problem.
Estado: Mitigated in patch 1.0.5
6. Frequently asked questions
Does Assassin's Creed Mirage demand less than Valhalla or Odyssey?▾
Is it worth enabling ray tracing in Mirage?▾
Why does the game run well in open country but drop FPS in the markets?▾
Which upscaling method should I use with an RTX 3050?▾
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Calculate FPS for Assassin's Creed Mirage →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →