Assassin’s Creed: Rogue was originally released on old-gen consoles, and has just been released on the PC. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue is built on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag engine, and – believe it or not – is perhaps the only AC game that runs incredibly well even on older PC configurations.
As always, we used an Intel i7 4930K with 8GB RAM, NVIDIA’s GTX690, Windows 8.1 64-bit and the latest WHQL version of the GeForce drivers. NVIDIA has not released yet any SLI profile for this title, however you can easily enable it via NVIDIA Inspector Tool. All you have to do is browse the available game profiles, find the one for Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag (SP), and add Assassin’s Creed: Rogue’s executable file. SLI scaling (as can be seen in the following 4K screenshot) is incredible with Black Flag’s profile, so we highly recommend using it.
Assassin’s Creed: Rogue is perhaps the only AC title that runs exceptionally well even on older PC systems. Believe it or not, the game ran with constant 60fps even on a simulated dual-core system. Given the fact that this is Ubisoft we’re talking about, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue’s smooth performance feels like an April’s fool joke, yet it isn’t. Moreover, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue never stressed our CPU. As we can see below, our CPU was merely used during our testing session, something that basically explains why the game runs so good even on dual-core systems.
To be honest, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue feels really old and lacks a lot of modern-day features. Contrary to Black Flag, Rogue lacks bendable vegetation and its crowd number has been severely decreased. So while Rogue runs incredibly well, it feels a lot of times ‘bland’ and ’empty’.
Regarding the game’s GPU requirements, a single GTX680 is more than enough. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue ran with constant 60fps at 1080p with all settings maxed out. Furthermore, the game never used more than 1.8GB of VRAM, meaning that those with GPUs that are equipped with only 2GB of VRAM will not have any trouble maxing it out. On the other hand, a GTX970 (or a GTX690 if you like) can run the game at 4K resolutions with 30FPS. Those wishing to experience the holy grail of 60FPS at 4K will have to resort to SLI solutions.
Graphics wise, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue does not look as sexy as we’d hoped. The game packs – for the most part – great textures, however everything (from the lighting system to the environments themselves) feels outdated. In addition, we noticed various LOD shadowing issues that should not be present in the PC version. And while the ocean itself and the sea battles are quite good, they are not as good as those of Black Flag.
All in all, Assassin’s Creed: Rogue feels like a mix between Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. In fact, Rogue is almost the same with the old-gen version of Black Flag. Ubisoft may have included a bit higher resolution textures on its PC version, but the game is not a looker for today’s standards. Despite that, Rogue is the only AC title that runs without performance issues even on older PC configurations, so at least we can congratulate Ubisoft Kiev for that. Oh, and like almost all AC titles, Rogue suffers from mouse acceleration issues.
Enjoy!“Only a mind free of impediments is capable of grasping the chaotic beauty of the world. This is our greatest asset.”
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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The black flag sli profile for rogue causes some movies (hacked animus movies, intro, etc) to glitch out and go all green.. Best use the Unity profile.
You either get a game that looks great OR runs great. You can’t have it all you picky PC gamers.
You get neither on consoles though.
But we will get it all when Metal Gear Phantom Pain hit’s PC in September 🙂
LOL!
Couldent have said it better myself as allmost every games looks like crap and runs like it!
Or you just get a forced cinematic experience which can include borders. I’m surprised Ready At Dawn and Bethesda isn’t provide popcorn with the console versions of their cinematic game.
Like you console owners are getting the definitive experience…. ?
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/196fuqliii7awgif/original.gif
Why are you even on this website? Just trying to troll? Be gone.
Good review.
A Ubisoft game without sh*t optimization? What kind of black sorcery is this?
Did you read the article? They used graphics from 3yrs ago. It doesn’t even look as good as black flag and more closely resembles asscreed 3. That’s not “without sh*t optimization” that’s called being lazy.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimizing-assassin-s-creed-rogue-for-3rd-gen-intel-core-processor-graphics
you still hadn’t got an AMD card or the FX 8350.good job..good job
Horrible and boring game same damn thing as the other series
I am done with assassin’s creed games. I find them boring rehashes (even if they add something new it’s mundane). But this seems to run well something strange for ubisoft.
Even if it’s designed for “old tech” (like my rig).
The main problem is that the main story is actually only a small part of the game and can be finished in about 10 hours. The rest of it (30 hours or so) is fetch quests and side missions and every game has that same problem.
The only reason I find myself playing a few of them after AC2, revelations, brotherhood greatness, is that climbing really high and watching a sunset is always fun, and I really enjoy seeing 3D renderings of different parts of the world. I told myself I’d never pay for one again, but I’m actually finding Rogue to be an enjoyable story and experience, despite the first-person “out of the animus walking around corporate Abstergo” immersion breaking segments.
They’ll always be the same killing/parkour simulators, with varying combat systems, but something about visiting Nassau, freeing slaves as the first Haitian protagonist in gaming, climbing a replica of Notre Dame, or watching the sun rise over Vinezia, that’s the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back to the franchise.
That being said I think Ubisoft is great at their production work, but their quality control needs to improve on engine performance big time.
Well I think AC Rogue is built on AC3 and that was well optimized. Black Flag not so much.
Wasn’t it AC3 with those huge frame drops in city areas?
Not for me at least. But I did play it fully patched on a ‘modest’ laptop (GT 540M) and rarely dropped below 30 FPS.
lol ac3 was absolutely terrible in optimization.
Really? I’m not one to defend Ubisoft of all corporations but did you play it on a toaster?
haha i jjust read that you played it at 30 fps. please, unless its 60, sh*ts not playable. game was full of sh**ty unoptimization and bad coding all around, game ran smoothly the first 10 hours of the tutporial, once you got to town, sh*t tanked to less than 30 with massive stutters, like ALL AC games, hell, in fact, imma go with black flag being optimized a lot better than 3, but yet again, i bet your modest laptop can play last gen games with no issues.
looks like a mobile game……..
This franchise wants to die hard, you can hear it whispering “kill me pl0x :'(“
No, my laptop actually IS a toaster lol (GT 540M GPU)
AC3 & Rogue is optimization for low-end GPU like GT540M, idk if the game is terrible for High-end GPU, its strange. Mine is GT540M too with 2gb vram, the game is run fine on GT540M.
While I agree that the Naval portions of the game are not as fulfilling as those of Black Flag, I’m finding that the lighting is absolutely gorgeous. It actually gave me a feeling similar to the sunsets of Fallout 4, just not quite as volumetric. 770 4GB SLI setup with the AMD 8350, everything stock, and it runs amazingomg. I notice that with all their updates that my CPU runs at 100% nearly all the time, which I’m glad because older AC games underutilized and would create lots of stuttering which made me think “hm… maybe their engine should use more CPU?”
Cheers for the review! I’m glad you pointed out that it ran so well, it felt like an April Fool’s joke! They say Syndicate isn’t meant for over 30fps, this is proof they’re just lazy about it. I mean, how hard WOULD it be to add a population density slider?