Ubisoft has announced the minimal requirements for the PC adaptation of Assassin ’ s Creed Unity — and, well, they ’ re a short piece puzzling to say the least. At a bare minimum, the newly Assassin ’ s Creed game will require an Nvidia GTX 680 or AMD Radeon HD 7970, 6GB of RAM, and a Core i5-2500K or Phenom II X4 940 CPU. The commend specs take that up to a Core i7-3770 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a top-of-the-line GTX 780 or Radeon R9 290X. We know that the Xbox One and PS4 struggle with Assassin ’ s Creed Unity — they are both locked to 900p @ 30 federal protective service — but evening the minimum personal computer spectacles are about doubly the processing baron confront in the Xbox One. What on earth is going on ? To round out the minimal personal computer specification for Assassin ’ s Creed Unity, it besides requires 50GB of free space, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 SP1. Your GTX 680 or HD 7970 needs 2GB of RAM, excessively. To put the hardware spectacles into perspective, the GTX 680 is Nvidia ’ s top-end single-GPU card from 2012 which retailed for $ 500. The lapp GK104 GPU then got reused in the GTX 770 in 2013 — which cost $ 400 at launch, but is available for around $ 300 today. It ’ sulfur reasonably much the same story for the Radeon HD 7970 ; two years ago, it was AMD ’ s top-end $ 500 card. Unity ’ s minimum CPU requirement is a little less harebrained — the Core i5-2500K was a mid-range region that retailed for $ 220 — but still, when we factor in the 6GB of RAM, the minimum spectacles equate to a reasonably good gaming personal computer in 2012 ; something in the $ 1000+ crop. Heck, tied today a GTX 680 or 770 is a reasonably decent circuit board that will play barely about anything at 1920×1080. ( And let ’ s not even discuss that harebrained 50GB repositing prerequisite ; I think we ’ ll spill the beans about that in a discriminate story. )
Reading: Assassin’s Creed Unity’s crazy minimum PC specs: $500 GPU, $200 CPU, 50GB storage – ExtremeTech
So, what’s going on?
clearly, Assassin ’ s Creed Unity is a beefy game — while the Xbox One and PS4 aren ’ thyroxine precisely up-to-date hardware, it ’ s distillery telling that they ’ re locked to merely 1600×900 @ 30 federal protective service. hush, bear in mind that Ubisoft ’ s minimum personal computer requirements ask for a GPU that ’ mho capable of around 4 teraflops — or doubly the theoretical serve power of the PS4 ’ s GPU ( and as you know, the PS4 ’ s GPU is about 50 % more knock-down than the Xbox One ’ s GPU ). On the high end, a GTX 780 and Core i7-3770K is in the region of three times a knock-down as the Xbox One. ( direct comparisons are about impossible, but barely take my parole for it that the personal computer requirements are way, way above current-gen console spectacles. ) By far the simplest explanation is that Ubisoft expects you to play Assassin ’ s Creed Unity at 1920×1080 @ 60 federal protective service on your personal computer — and, simply due to the higher resolution and frame pace, you need about twice the processing power ( both CPU and GPU ) present in the PS4 or Xbox One. If we assume that the personal computer adaptation has better textures — and possibly better AI and more mobs on-screen at any one time — then you begin to see why you might need a GTX 780 and Core i7-3770K on the high end, particularly once you move the details slider to “ extremist. ”
Read: Nvidia Maxwell GTX 980 and GTX 970 reviewed: Crushing all challengers A more cynical degree of view, of course, is that Ubisoft is optimizing Assassin ’ s Creed Unity for the PS4 and Xbox One — with the personal computer port being just an reconsideration. I mean, it makes sense : a modern bet on personal computer does have a fortune more world power on tap than a console table, so why bother spend meter optimizing code when you can just throw more cycles at it ? evening if the game doesn ’ triiodothyronine run very well as a solution, the majority of your customers are console owners anyhow, so who cares ? personally, I ’ meter hope that Assassin ’ s Creed Unity is a in truth next-gen game that, while hampered by the weak hardware of the Xbox One and PS4, can last stretch its legs on a advanced gambling personal computer. The alternative — that my beautiful bet on rig will be abused by ill written code due to the demands of annoying console gamers — is besides disgust and debasing to even consider.
How does it make you feel, to see a two-year-old top-end gambling carriage as the minimum requirements for a personal computer game ? Now read: The 20 best free PC games (yet more proof of the superiority of PC gaming)