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Our 8K test system
PC built by Chillblast
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMES
CPU cooler: Noctua NH-U14S
Box fans: Noctua NF-A14 140mm PWM Chromax
Processor: Intel Core i9-9900K, 8 cores / 16 threads
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090
Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 PCIe 500GB
Secondary storage: 2TB HP 860 I
Power: Corsair RM850x 80 PLUS Gold 850W Power Supply
Case: Fractal Design Vector RS Tempered glass
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp UP3218K
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the latest entry from Ubisoft in its long-running series, and in many ways the most ambitious, as it is the first entry to run on PS5 and Xbox Series X.
So, understandably, we were eager to test the PC version on our 8K test rig, which is now powered by the powerful Nvidia RTX 3090. This flagship GPU from Nvidia costs $ 1,499 / £ 1,399 (around AU $ 2,030), and the company promises that this is the GPU to finally bring 8K games to life.
We’ve already tested the RTX 3090’s 8K capabilities with Watch Dogs: Legion, another recent Ubisoft release, and were a bit disappointed. Was almost It was possible to play the game in 8K and at acceptable frame rates, but it did mean making big trade-offs when it came to image quality.
Does Assassin’s Creed Valhalla perform better in 8K? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding “no”.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 8K performance
Yes, sadly Assassin’s Creed Valhalla proves to be too demanding in 8K, even for the mighty Nvidia RTX 3090.
We started, as we usually do, by adjusting the settings to its highest level (‘Ultra High’) at 8K (7,680 x 4,320) and the results were quite brutal: 24 frames per second (FPS) was all that could be handled.
In some ways, this is still impressive. This is a completely new open world game, and with the ‘Ultra High’ setting turned on, the graphical fidelity of the game world is very admirable, and well above what you would get with the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The fact that it even managed 24fps without melting is a testament to the RTX 3090, but it is below the 30fps that we would consider playable, and a far cry from the 60fps at 8K target we are aiming for.
With all these settings at their highest levels, it is not surprising that the GPU has struggled, so before changing too much, we rejected the smoothing from ‘High’ to ‘Medium’. Anti-aliasing is a graphical setting that smooths out jagged edges in digital images and can make games look much better.
However, it is a demanding environment, and many people argue that at high resolutions like 4K, and especially 8K, you don’t need as much. We lowered it to ‘medium’, while keeping everything at its highest setting, and saw an increase in performance, with the game hitting 27fps on average. Better, but still not what we would consider a good performance.
So, we lower the setting to ‘Very High’. At 8K, this gave us an average of 26fps, a slight improvement, and with anti-aliasing set to ‘medium’ it went up to 29fps.
Meanwhile, the ‘High’ setting got 27fps on average, and lowering the anti-aliasing to ‘medium’ takes us beyond the 30fps baseline for a game playable at 8K.
Having all the settings on ‘Medium’ gave us an average of 33 fps at 8K, with a maximum of 47 fps.
Finally, turning the setting down to ‘Low’ gave us an even better 42 fps average. However, with these settings, the game seems terrible. You’d think it was running a PlayStation 2, not a $ 1,500 GPU.
So yes technically the RTX 3090 can Play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 8K, if you consider that 30fps is the minimum playable frame rate.
However, people running a gaming PC with an RTX 3090 won’t be happy with performance hovering around 30fps at a mix of ‘high’ and ‘medium’ settings. After all, PS5 and Xbox Series X owners are running it at 60fps on the equivalent of a ‘high’ setting, with dynamic resolution occasionally reaching 4K.
So what is the RTX 3090 with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla capable of?
Destroying consoles
While playing 8K is practically impossible, we wanted to see how it works in 4K, which is a much more realistic resolution for many people.
However, before setting the resolution to 4K, we lowered the resolution scale to 50%. This basically reduces the resolution to 4K, while the game’s menus, stats, and graphical interface remain at 8K.
This made a huge difference instantly, with the average frames per second jumping to 57fps, maxing out at 145fps while using the ‘Ultra High’ setting. Setting anti-aliasing to ‘medium’ gave us those magical 60 fps.
To be clear, this is not 8K. However, with 4K resolution and much higher graphics settings than next-gen consoles can handle, you get the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla experience on your PC with the RTX 3090 that takes Sony and Microsoft machines out of the water.
Good news for PC gamers, but if you were expecting an 8K tour-de-force, it still seems like a long way off.
Ray tracing and DLSS: where are you?
One thing to note is that two of the settings that made the biggest difference to Watch Dogs: Legion when we tested its 8K performance are not included in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla; ray tracing and DLSS.
Ray tracing is a graphical effect that brings more realistic lighting and reflections to games, but at a great cost to performance. As we found out with Watch Dogs: Legion, activating ray tracing even at its lowest settings had a huge impact on game performance in 8K.
Meanwhile, DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), uses the power of the GPU to intelligently enhance games at higher resolution using AI and machine learning, improving performance at ultra-high resolutions without too much impact on graphics fidelity. Using DLSS in Watch Dogs: Legion had a positive impact on game performance at 8K (and 4K), so it’s a shame it’s not included here.
Part of the reason for this may be because while Ubisoft partnered with Nvidia for Watch Dogs: Legion, it partnered with AMD for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
At the moment, only Nvidia GPUs offer ray tracing support (but that will change with the imminent launch of AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6800, and Radeon RX 6900 XT GPUs). Also, DLSS is a creation of Nvidia, so it is unique to its GPUs, although AMD is working on a similar feature for its graphics cards.
Still, if you are lucky enough to own an RTX 3090, then playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in 4K will still be a graphical delight. Just don’t get your hopes up about the 8K.
