Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced: A Dual Perspective on Linux and Windows Performance
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has resurfaced with a fresh look, bringing an exciting adventure set on beautiful tropical beaches and lush palm trees to PC gamers. A thorough testing phase has analyzed the game on Windows using four graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia. This testing has also extended to a Linux system, allowing us to explore whether the AMD-Linux combination continues to impress, and how the troublesome relationship between Linux and Nvidia develops. Here’s what we discovered.
Installation Challenges: A Bumpy Start
Playing through Steam is usually the go-to choice for many Linux gamers, thanks to Proton’s integration simplifying the launch experience. However, for this new AC version, only the Ubisoft Connect edition was available, requiring an extra set of installation steps. While Steam allows you to add non-Steam games, integrating Ubisoft Connect proved slightly cumbersome as it necessitated both the installation and execution of the Ubisoft launcher. Fortunately, incorporating this into Steam made it manageable, although developers could benefit from providing better support for alternative launchers.
Once the game finally launched, it ran smoothly for the most part. However, the Ubisoft launcher occasionally struggled to start, an issue that switching the Proton version could resolve. On the AMD side, performance remained stable without any remarkable issues. Contrastingly, Nvidia users experienced graphic glitches and crashes during the first game start, which thankfully rectified themselves upon restarting.
Testing Methodology: Systems and Settings
For our benchmarks, both Linux and Windows systems utilized an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor with 48 GB of RAM at 6,000 MT/s, running on the CachyOS for Linux tests. Although the Windows benchmarks were run on a slightly different machine, they still aligned well with the Linux results. Notably, the Nvidia cards exhibited an unexpected CPU bottleneck, which was more due to troublesome Linux performance than hardware differences.
The benchmarks for both platforms focused on a 20-second run through Havana’s waterfront, with two different settings: a pure rasterizing benchmark without ray tracing and an enhanced ray tracing setup. Various resolutions were also tested, utilizing two GPUs each from both Nvidia and AMD across different generations.
Performance Analysis: Rasterizing vs. Ray Tracing
In rasterizing performance, AMD’s older 7000 architecture holds strong under Linux, nearly matching the Windows output without surpassing it. However, the newer 9000 XT version did not optimize as well, trailing behind its Windows counterpart in frame rates. Surprisingly, the AMD RX 7900 XTX topped the charts for both WQHD and Full HD performance, largely due to Nvidia’s struggles in mastering driver optimization.
The RTX 5090 also faced challenges, hitting a CPU bottleneck around 83 FPS, which doesn’t represent its true capabilities. AMD, on the other hand, outperformed it despite competing against the 5090’s supposed superiority, clocking in at over 96 FPS without nearing such limits.
Ray Tracing Challenges
In the ray tracing benchmarks, Nvidia struggled once again, failing to utilize its GPUs effectively. The RTX 5090 saw a stark halt in performance scalability across resolutions, with frame rates capped at around 71 FPS. In contrast, Windows managed to produce up to 110 FPS even with a weaker CPU before hitting a slight CPU cap.
AMD’s performance exhibited marked improvement over Nvidia but still did not match Windows. Although the AMD cards continued to perform well, they displayed a noticeable drop in frame rates under Linux, indicating some room for improvements in graphics optimization.
Conclusion: Performance Discrepancies
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is playable on both AMD and Nvidia systems, yet significant performance differences remain evident. AMD delivers fairly robust rasterizing output but hasn’t reached the ideal Linux performance scenario. On the other hand, Nvidia faces dire issues with unnecessary CPU limitations and overall subpar GPU performance. For an optimal gaming experience in this pirate adventure, Linux gamers would do best with AMD RX 7000 hardware, steering clear of ray tracing for now.
