Assassin’s Creed Mirage Best PC Settings: Adaptive Quality Cuts Your Resolution Whenever FPS Dips

Assassin’s Creed Mirage has a setting called Adaptive Quality that drops your render resolution whenever the frame rate falls below a target you may never have chosen. TechPowerUp’s review describes it plainly: you set an FPS target of 30, 45 or 60, and “if FPS drops below that, the render resolution will be reduced.” Per Notebookcheck, each of the five graphics presets switches it on automatically, and Notebookcheck turned it off for every benchmark it ran.

That is the whole trick, and it is narrower than it sounds. Adaptive Quality does not rewrite your shadow, water or texture settings. It only changes how many pixels the game renders, in the moments when your PC is struggling most. This guide covers what to set first, what the presets cost in measured FPS, which GPU hits which target, and who should leave Adaptive Quality on. I haven’t benchmarked Mirage on my own hardware, so every number below comes from a named source with its test conditions. It is checked against Ubisoft’s Title Update 1.1.1 notes (December 2025), and for the wider toolkit see our guide to optimizing PC game settings for better FPS.

Quick Start: The Mirage Settings to Change First

1. Set Adaptive Quality to Off. Do it after you pick a preset, because the preset turns it back on.
2. Pick High, not Ultra. In Notebookcheck’s 1080p tests High cost 9–17% versus Low on four desktop GPUs, while Ultra took a further 17–23% off High.
3. Leave Resolution Scale at 100% unless you are deliberately supersampling or downscaling. The slider runs 50–200% per TechPowerUp.
4. Need more FPS? Use an upscaler (DLSS, FSR or XeSS) at Quality instead of lowering the Resolution Scale slider. All three are supported.
5. Lower World Details, Water and Depth of Field first if you are still short. These were the costly ones in ASUS’s handheld testing.
6. Restart the game after changing graphics options. Notebookcheck notes some changes only apply after a restart.
7. Re-test in the busiest street you can find, not in the menu or an empty rooftop.

Verified against the sources below on 5 October 2026. Most benchmark data comes from launch-era testing in 2023, so treat exact FPS as a guide to proportions, not a promise for your driver version.

What Adaptive Quality Actually Does (and Doesn’t)

Adaptive Quality is dynamic resolution scaling: when your frame rate falls under the target, Mirage renders fewer pixels and stretches the result to your screen. TechPowerUp’s is the only Mirage-specific description of the mechanism I could find, and it mentions resolution and nothing else. ASUS says it “can adjust graphics on-the-fly to hit a certain performance target,” which is looser wording for the same behavior on the ROG Ally. Mirage runs on the same AnvilNext 2 engine as Valhalla, per TechPowerUp’s conclusion, and a community guide to that game describes the setting as an automatic decrease in render resolution to hold 30 or 60 FPS.

Two things follow from that, and one is unknown. First, your shadows, clutter density and textures stay exactly where you set them, so the “it overrides everything” version of this story is wrong. Second, what looks like a stable 60 FPS may be 60 FPS at a lower internal resolution, which is why a screenshot of your frame counter proves nothing. The unknown is how the Adaptive Quality target interacts with the Resolution Scale slider. None of the sources I fetched documents it, so test it: turn Adaptive Quality off and compare how sharp a distant doorway looks in the same spot.

Why Every Preset Starts With It On

Notebookcheck found that the five presets “always automatically enable Adaptive Quality,” and called it slightly inconvenient. That is a single source testing the 2023 build, so check your own menu, but it explains two common confusions.

First, you pick High, leave everything else alone, and quietly get a dynamic resolution you never asked for. Second, published preset benchmarks do not describe that default experience. Notebookcheck’s tables are labelled “Adaptive Quality Off,” so a card that posts 150 FPS there is rendering every pixel, while your copy may hold the target by shedding pixels. If your fps counter says 60 and the picture looks soft in a crowd, that is the likely cause. Turn it off and see whether the frame rate falls and the image sharpens.

The ASUS handheld team reached the same practical conclusion: they “find that the game runs smoother with it turned off.”

Where It Kicks In: Dense Streets, Not Flyby Benchmarks

The trigger is any moment your frame rate falls under the target, and in Mirage those moments are crowds and city blocks. Mirage’s built-in benchmark will not show you them. It is a roughly 1.5-minute camera roam from close-ups to a panorama, per Notebookcheck, and TechPowerUp called it unrealistic and tested a custom scene in the main city instead, mixing busy and lighter areas. Even so, Notebookcheck “constantly observed stuttering and poor minimum FPS” on every hardware and settings combination, and Guru3D noted stutters shortly after a scene starts, until textures are cached.

My reading of that evidence, which is an inference and not a measured result: a flyby rarely forces the frame rate under the target, so it can hide how often Adaptive Quality would step in during a real chase through a market. That is why the settings advice is to test where it hurts. If you are chasing dips in a dense zone in any open-world game, our walkthrough on fixing FPS drops in a dense open-world zone shows the method, and the graphics settings that actually kill your FPS explains why shadows, reflections and lighting come first.

Crowds and volumetric dust stress the CPU side (draw calls and animation) as well as the GPU, which matters for the next section. If lowering settings gains you nothing, you are probably not GPU-limited.

What the Presets Are Worth: Measured FPS

Dropping from Ultra to Low buys roughly 28–54% more FPS depending on the card and scene, and in Notebookcheck’s table the step up to Ultra costs more than the step up to High on every card. On an RTX 4090 at 4K with upscalers off, TechPowerUp measured Low at 138, 141 and 145 FPS across three scenes against 108, 97 and 106 FPS on Ultra. TechPowerUp’s own summary is that the gain from the lowest setting is only around 30% versus maximum.

Source: Notebookcheck’s database (average FPS, built-in benchmark; percentages are my arithmetic). The pattern is consistent: High stays within 9–17% of Low, and Ultra is where the biggest single cost lands. That lines up with Ubisoft’s own recommended specs, which use the High preset for its 1080p and 1440p 60 FPS targets.

A caution on reading the Low column. The same Notebookcheck table lists 278.5 FPS for an RTX 4080 Super, 284 for an RX 7900 XTX and 290 for an RX 9070 XT at Low, nearly identical to the RTX 4090’s 280, on very different GPUs. That clustering suggests a CPU or engine ceiling on the test setups around 280–290 FPS rather than a GPU limit (my inference). Guru3D found moving from Ultra to Medium at 1440p worth “roughly 25% more performance,” so drop presets only as far as the numbers justify.

Which GPU Hits Which Target

For a locked 60 FPS at 1080p on maximum settings, TechPowerUp’s testing says an RTX 3060, Radeon RX 6600 or Intel Arc A770 is enough. Ubisoft’s official tiers name weaker cards because they target the High preset, not maximum settings.

Memory is not the constraint it is in newer games. Notebookcheck’s in-game indicator shows about 6 GB at 1080p Ultra and 7 GB at 4K Ultra, and TechPowerUp recommends 8 GB for maximum settings, finding no difference between an RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB and 16 GB, even at 4K.

Upscaling, Frame Cap and Known Quirks

Upscalers. DLSS, FSR and XeSS are all supported. TechPowerUp’s tip for sharper edges without upscaling: enable DLSS first, then set Upsample Quality to Native, which runs DLAA (the same trick works for FSR and XeSS). Their 2023 testing found no DLSS 3 Frame Generation, Reflex or FSR 3 support. Ubisoft’s December 2025 notes do mention an Intel XeSS Frame Generation option for Arc GPUs, so check your own menu before assuming it is missing.

Frame cap. TechPowerUp lists the in-game limiter as 30–90 FPS with no cap by default. Players on a Ubisoft support thread report sand and grass textures flickering above about 100 FPS that stopped after capping at 90 FPS, a community-reported workaround with no cause confirmed in that thread. Try it only if you see the flicker.

Stutter. The stutter Notebookcheck and Guru3D describe is not fixed by any setting I found evidence for. Install the game on an SSD (Ubisoft lists SSD storage in all tiers) and give each new district a few seconds to cache.

Which Adaptive Quality Setting Fits You

If you are unsure, use this short decision path. Does your frame rate stay above your target in the busiest street you can find? If yes, turn Adaptive Quality off and enjoy the sharper image. If no, does an upscaler at Quality fix it? If yes, use that. If it still dips, lower World Details and Water, and only then consider an Adaptive Quality target below 60.

Test Adaptive Quality on Your Own PC in Five Minutes

You can see what Adaptive Quality does to your own copy without any tools, and the result tells you whether the setting is worth keeping. Park Basim on a rooftop with a long view over the city, note how crisp a distant doorway or window looks, then walk down into the busiest street you can reach and look at a similar-sized detail on a far wall. With Adaptive Quality on and a frame rate that dips, the second view should look softer than the first, because the game has cut resolution to hold the target.

Now repeat both views with Adaptive Quality off. If the street looks sharp but your frame counter shows dips below your target, you have found the trade-off that the setting was hiding, and you can fix it with an upscaler at Quality or by lowering World Details instead. If the frame rate stays above target in the street either way, the setting was never doing anything for you and is safe to leave off. This is the same logic Notebookcheck applied when it disabled the option to get comparable benchmark numbers. If you are new to the series and wondering where Mirage fits before you tune it, our Assassin’s Creed games in order guide covers it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I turn off Adaptive Quality in Assassin’s Creed Mirage?

Yes, for most PC players. It trades image sharpness for frame rate at exactly the moments you notice it, and Notebookcheck and ASUS both ran their tests with it off. The exception is a locked-frame-rate priority on weak hardware, where a softer image can beat a stutter.

Does Adaptive Quality change my other graphics settings?

No. According to TechPowerUp it reduces the render resolution when FPS falls below your target, and no source I found says it touches shadows, textures or World Details. Your menu values stay put, which is why the effect is easy to miss.

What is the best graphics preset for Assassin’s Creed Mirage?

High. In Notebookcheck’s four-GPU table it stays within 9–17% of Low, while Ultra costs another 17–23%. Ubisoft also recommends High for its 1080p and 1440p 60 FPS tiers.

How much VRAM does Assassin’s Creed Mirage need?

8 GB is the comfortable target for maximum settings. Notebookcheck’s indicator shows about 6 GB at 1080p Ultra and 7 GB at 4K, and TechPowerUp found 4 GB works at the lowest settings with some pop-in.

Is Mirage’s built-in benchmark accurate?

Only for comparing your own runs. TechPowerUp called it unrealistic because it is a flyby, and Guru3D found it somewhat more stuttery than play. Judge your settings in a crowded district instead.

Sources

1. TechPowerUp. Assassin’s Creed Mirage Performance Benchmark Review — Graphics Settings & Test System. TechPowerUp (6 October 2023)
2. TechPowerUp. Assassin’s Creed Mirage Performance Benchmark Review — Image Quality Comparison. TechPowerUp
3. TechPowerUp. Assassin’s Creed Mirage Performance Benchmark Review — Conclusion. TechPowerUp
4. Notebookcheck. Assassin’s Creed Mirage tech review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks. Notebookcheck
5. Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed Mirage PC Specs and Features Revealed. Games Press
6. ASUS ROG. Assassin’s Creed Mirage on the ROG Ally: performance guide & best settings. ASUS Republic of Gamers
7. Guru3D. Assassins Creed: Mirage — PC graphics performance benchmark review, Concluding. Guru3D
8. Ubisoft. AC Mirage Title Update 1.1.1 Release Notes. Ubisoft News (December 2025)
9. Steam Community. Graphics Settings Overview + Optimization (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla). Steam Community guide
10. Steam Community. Texture flickering — game bug? Assassin’s Creed Mirage Player Support. Steam Community

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.