Assassin's Creed Odyssey PC System Requirements Revealed Alongside Previews Galore

[VSG]

We are less than a month away from when the latest installment of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed (AC) series comes out. It may have seemed only months ago that Assassin's Creed Origins came out, probably because that is indeed the case, but this has not stopped the hype machine from building up fervor as players get to explore the anticipated ancient Greece era done Ubisoft-style. As with AC Origins, Ubisoft says the PC version of AC Odyssey is not a straight port of the console versions and received a dedicated team at Ubisoft Kiev who worked hand-in-hand with Ubisoft Québec.

This is all great news to us, although memories of AC: Unity still linger around to ensure caution before pre-ordering this. As it stands, Ubisoft says the PC version of AC Odyssey will include exclusive features not found in the console versions, including uncapped framerate toggles and an in-game benchmarking tool. Read past the break for PC system requirements as well as more information based on previews from other media outlets.



The PC requirements are below:

Minimum Requirements

• OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
• Processor: AMD FX 6300 @ 3.8 GHz, Intel Core i5 2400 @ 3.1 GHz, Ryzen 3 - 1200
• Video: AMD Radeon R9 285 (2GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0) or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Resolution: 720p
• Targeted framerate: 30 FPS
• Video Preset: Low
• Storage: 46GB available hard drive space
• DirectX: DirectX June 2010 Redistributable
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

Recommended Specification

• OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
• Processor: AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz, Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.5 GHz, Ryzen 5 - 1400
• Video: AMD Radeon R9 290X (4GB VRAM or more with Shader Model 5.0) or better or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (4GB) - See supported list*
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Resolution: 1080p
• Targeted framerate: 30 FPS
• Video Preset: High
• Storage: 46GB available hard drive space
• DirectX: DirectX June 2010 Redistributable
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

Recommended 4K Configuration

• OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 1700X @ 3.8 GHz, Intel Core i7 7700 @ 4.2 GHz
• Video: AMD Vega 64, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0)
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• Resolution: 4K
• Targeted framerate: 30 FPS
• Video Preset: High
• Storage: 46GB available hard drive space
• DirectX: DirectX June 2010 Redistributable
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

Supported video cards at time of release: AMD Radeon R9 285/R9 380/RX 460/RX 560 or better, AMD Radeon 200/300/Fury X/400/500 series, Radeon Vega series: RX Vega 56 or better, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660/760/950/1050 or better, GeForce GTX 600/700/900/10-Series series.

With targeted marketing at play, Ubisoft also worked with specific game media outlets to release previews for the game earlier today based on lengthy demo sessions held last week. Polygon, for example, released their preview along with 27 minutes of gameplay footage seen below. Eurogamer, on the other hand, went more spoilery and shared details about the single player campaign (so don't read all of it if you want to remain spoiler-free). As it stands, the gameplay and narrative both seem to be familiar if you have played AC Origins and yet Ubisoft Québec have added in new gameplay elements to help keep things fresh and also faithful to the time period. Assassin's Creed Odyssey comes out on PC (and consoles) October 5, 2018 and we plan to do a detailed PC port test for the game near launch to help make your decision on game purchase.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[RejZoR]

It's so depressing to look at the "Sound" entry in 2018... Everything is evolving and we've gone a decade backwards with sound on Windows Vista release and we're still stuck there now. :/

 

[15th Warlock]

It's so depressing to look at the "Sound" entry in 2018... Everything is evolving and we've gone a decade backwards with sound on Windows Vista release and we're still stuck there now. :/

Since all high end sound encoding has gone the HDMI route, PC speakers manufacturers are still way behind the curve, most current onboard or discrete sound cards only support analog out, or toslink out, giving you Dolby digital encoding at best, that's two generations old, compared to what's state of the art in audio encoding, and not even comparable to Dolby TruAudio or DTS-HD.

Things are different if you use a receiver though, and connect it to your PC using HDMI, Win10 has full support for Dolby ATMOS.

 

[RejZoR]

The problem is not on the output side but on the audio processing side. We had literal HW accelerated 3D positioning sound that used actual sound tracing with "audio shaders" for environmental audio and they scraped all of it for a software audio which in theory and on paper is just as capable, but in reality, 3D positioning is garbage in most cases and it all just sounds so bland and uninspiring it's driving me nuts. Sometimes I'd actually prefer to have exaggerated EAX 2.0 environmental effects that always did such amazing dramatic effect and which is just gone now. Anyone who played original Half-Life with EAX enabled will understand what I mean when you hit something metal with a crowbar in a large hall or listening to explosions and footsteps on huge open canyon spaces that echoed majestically. It just sounded epic. Now it all sounds like you're walking on a carpet in a living room. It's just all the same, metal, concrete, carpet, eh. Everyone these days is just 24bit this, kilohertz that, Dolby this, DTS that and for games, basically none of that matters. It's 3D positioning and environmental audio that matters and nothing else. And we have none of it, at least not one that would actually sound good anyways.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Targeted Framerate: 30fps

Come on, this is PC, no respectable PC enthusiast with those cards is targeting 30fps.

The "cinematic" era needs to die. Chromatic aberration, film grain, lens flare/dirt/distortion in 1st person needs to stop. My eyes aren't crappy camera lenses.

 

[danbert2000]

Since all high end sound encoding has gone the HDMI route, PC speakers manufacturers are still way behind the curve, most current onboard or discrete sound cards only support analog out, or toslink out, giving you Dolby digital encoding at best, that's two generations old, compared to what's state of the art in audio encoding, and not even comparable to Dolby TruAudio or DTS-HD.

Things are different if you use a receiver though, and connect it to your PC using HDMI, Win10 has full support for Dolby ATMOS.

Support for TrueAudio or DTS-HD over HDMI would be pointless for games, and it's already there for movies, in that you can bitstream those sources from a video or BluRay to a receiver already. For video games, there would be no point sending the lossless compressed audio over sending lossless uncompressed audio, AKA PCM 7.1, which HDMI supports. As you said, Atmos already works on PC, and I don't see why DTS:X couldn't be added in the same way.

The sound card is dead because everyone sends audio over HDMI. And the real gap in sound support is sending DTS or DD+ over HDMI from the graphics card, so we can use HDMI ARC from the TV instead of chaining the PC through a receiver. I would be perfectly happy using DTS for my PC surround sound setup, but Nvidia doesn't encode surround sound for HDMI output, it's PCM or bust. I suppose there might be some utility in providing an HDMI-only sound card, but you already have that: just enable the Intel GPU in your BIOS and use that to send audio, or connect another HDMI cable from your GPU to your receiver.

Since audio is all digital now, there's just not much point in having a high end sound card if it's only job is to push data over an HDMI cable.

 

[RejZoR]

Aaaaaand basically everyone entirely missed the point of advanced game audio systems... Hint, they have nothing to do with bitrate, frequencies, SNR, decibels, DTS, Dolby, HDMI or any other high flying words and everything to do with accurate 3D audio positioning and simulation of how audio behaves in certain environments (reverberations and echoes mostly).

 

[danbert2000]

But echo/reverberation doesn't make sense to do on a sound card. If it's on the sound card, it's going to be faked or it's going to require the sound card to have GPU-level processing. They do all that stuff on the GPU now, for a good reason. And Dolby Atmos can already be sent over HDMI, so again, no point in sticking a dumb sound card in the middle of the process if you're just sending audio over HDMI. Positional audio is important, I agree. But most gamers are going to be doing that with headphones for stuff like VR and gaming at a desk. I doubt anyone would set up 9+ speakers around their desk for Atmos...

So what am I missing, RejZoR?

 

[Easo]

Don't tell me they have locked the framerate at 30. Because that is way too low number to be "recommended".

 

[VSG]

Don't tell me they have locked the framerate at 30. Because that is way too low number to be "recommended".

An unlocked framerate toggle is in the PC version, as mentioned in the second paragraph of the post.

 

[spectatorx]

Aaaaaand basically everyone entirely missed the point of advanced game audio systems... Hint, they have nothing to do with bitrate, frequencies, SNR, decibels, DTS, Dolby, HDMI or any other high flying words and everything to do with accurate 3D audio positioning and simulation of how audio behaves in certain environments (reverberations and echoes mostly).

AMD tried something similar some time ago: TrueAudio.

Personally i'm still rocking creative x-fi titanium which has support for EAX 5.0 and audio hardware acceleration unlike most sound cards after x-fi series and some cards in this series including. Since some time i wonder what would i do if my wonderful titanium would fail because of age, what would i replace it with.

 

[15th Warlock]

The problem is not on the output side but on the audio processing side. We had literal HW accelerated 3D positioning sound that used actual sound tracing with "audio shaders" for environmental audio and they scraped all of it for a software audio which in theory and on paper is just as capable, but in reality, 3D positioning is garbage in most cases and it all just sounds so bland and uninspiring it's driving me nuts. Sometimes I'd actually prefer to have exaggerated EAX 2.0 environmental effects that always did such amazing dramatic effect and which is just gone now. Anyone who played original Half-Life with EAX enabled will understand what I mean when you hit something metal with a crowbar in a large hall or listening to explosions and footsteps on huge open canyon spaces that echoed majestically. It just sounded epic. Now it all sounds like you're walking on a carpet in a living room. It's just all the same, metal, concrete, carpet, eh. Everyone these days is just 24bit this, kilohertz that, Dolby this, DTS that and for games, basically none of that matters. It's 3D positioning and environmental audio that matters and nothing else. And we have none of it, at least not one that would actually sound good anyways.

3D sound positioning is alive and well, I have perfect 3D positioning when playing on my PC in the living room, just like I do when I play with my other system with discrete sound cards connected to surround systems via toslink or regular 3.5mm jacks, the only difference is one set of speakers will use an analog signal, another set uses toslink for Dolby digital and the PC in my living room uses HDMI.

BTW, the ATMOS 3D positioning sound is much better than what I get from the discrete sound cards in the other systems, both in fidelity and actual surround location of sound.

Even if a game doesn't natively support Dolby ATMOS, the decoder will convert the surround sound to a format a receiver can use in a 3D sound environment.

I would be perfectly happy using DTS for my PC surround sound setup, but Nvidia doesn't encode surround sound for HDMI output, it's PCM or bust.

The Nvidia card in my living room PC encodes Dolby and DTS perfectly over HDMI, no need to use PCM, the receiver shows it's decoding the right encoded signal over HDMI without problem.

Maybe you need to change the setting for your system's sound encoder for it to work properly.

 

[HimymCZe]

Ubi$h!t... dunno what to be mad about more...
the fact that AAA games in 30 years "progress" from 120hz native CRT to 23FPS "cinematic"
or the fact that they will still run on 286 CPU, if you strip the 16 threads of DRM... :/

 

[RejZoR]

But echo/reverberation doesn't make sense to do on a sound card. If it's on the sound card, it's going to be faked or it's going to require the sound card to have GPU-level processing. They do all that stuff on the GPU now, for a good reason. And Dolby Atmos can already be sent over HDMI, so again, no point in sticking a dumb sound card in the middle of the process if you're just sending audio over HDMI. Positional audio is important, I agree. But most gamers are going to be doing that with headphones for stuff like VR and gaming at a desk. I doubt anyone would set up 9+ speakers around their desk for Atmos...

So what am I missing, RejZoR?

Missing the fact that yeah, we had proper HW accelerated audio like 2 decades ago. And at around the same time, we also had superb 3D positional audio on stereo speakers or headphones (A3D). Even if they are doing anything on GPU's, we are currently around year 1997 in terms of audio because a) none of it is really standardized b) none of it is really being mass used in games like EAX (this wasn't just reverbs for all the deniers) and A3D were...

 

[THU31]

Why would 4K need a beefier CPU? The CPU has no impact on the resolution, only the framerate.

 

[Deleted member 177333]

Why would 4K need a beefier CPU? The CPU has no impact on the resolution, only the framerate.

The part I find hilarious is the targeted 30fps framerate. Might as well say targeted: unplayable.
Those "system requirements" are completely worthless to me since they don't state what's required to actually play the game at a playable framerate. Typical Ubisoft... Looks like another AC game I may need to pass on.