AC Black Flag - Collection of Fixes for Low FPS and Stuttering

[TheCSharpFreak]

Hey Community,

after a day of optimization I'd like to quickly post nice solutions that worked for me when I encountered massive lags and stuttering in Assassins Creed Black Flag. I hope this post is not to repititive or annoying.

General Options:

First of all, you can try to run the program in compatibility mode for Windows 7, that fixed the problems for some people.

Graphics Options:

https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1690311-AC-Black-Flag-stuttering-problem

There's a nice post from unknown2304 about graphics settings, I can highly recommend to read it carefully! (Turn off PhysX, use external application for vsync).

CPU Settings:

This was the fix with the highest impact. Apparently my game was not only stuttering, it ran constantly on 6 FPS with my almost decent computer. This fix for "For Honor" works perfectly for AC Black Flag:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYM--PWFFA

(I'd really like to credit the person who found out the fix works for AC. Unfortunately, I forgot the forum site where it was posted, so if you are the person please write a comment)

A lot of threads are not the best for this older game. I have 24 Threads on 12 cores (2 CPUs). Actually, the more cores I disabled, the smoother the game ran :D

Now I don't want to Alt+Tab out of the game on every start of the game, so I decided to write a small batch file to automatically assign priority and affinity of the game.

So right click on your desktop, click New -> Text Document and rename it to "AC_BlackFlag.bat". Then pase and personalize the following lines:

@echo off
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag"
Start /normal /affinity AAA000 AC4BFSP.exe

Second Line: cd "(path to your installation)"

Third line: /normal sets the affinity to normal instead of high, /affinity AAA000 sets the used threads to the wanted configuration.

The argument of /affinity is in essence a binary representation of the threads to use converted to hexadecimal. Here's a nice explanation:

https://www.eightforums.com/threads/cpu-affinity-shortcut-for-a-program-create-in-windows.40339/

For me this is 101010101010000000000000 to hexadecimal, as I want one thread per core on my second CPU to be used (1 = use thread, 0 = don't use).

The fix in the video recommended to deactivate only one thread. For me best performance was found after complete deactivation of one of the 2 CPUs and deactivation of 6 more threads. In contrast, when I deactivated only one core, the game had 40 FPS but occasional dropped to 18 FPS. So play around, four threads on an eight thread CPU could be the perfect setting for you, who knows.

Conclusion:

After those fixes, my AC Black Flag ran on high settings on a lumpy GT 1030 at smooth and constant 45 FPS from startup on.

Hope this helps some of you, if there are any questions don't hesitate to ask!

Last but not least, my specs:

NVidia GT 1030 - 2Gb GDDR5
2 x Intel Xeon E5645 @ 2.40GHz, 2400 MHz, 6 Cores, 12 logical processors
84 Gb RAM

And my game settings:

Resolution: 1920x1080 px
Environment Quality: normal
Texture Quality: normal
Anti Aliasing Quality: FXAA
Reflection and Shadow Quality: Medium
Motion Blur: On
Ambient Occlusion: Off
God Rays: Low
Volumetric Fog: On
V-Sync: OFF (Use external application!)
PhysX Particles: OFF (important!)


Best regards,

TheCSharpFreak

PS: If you know more fixes, write them in the comment section, this could lead to a nice collection for all players!

[Vivian Perilous]

Ok so in game Graphics menu I set Anti-Aliasing to SMAA and Physx to low (or off if you're on an older machine), turned off Vsync and set everything else maxed out.

Then in NVIDIA Control Panel I went to :
Manage 3D settings, clicked the Program Settings tab, selected "Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag"

Set as follows:
Anti-aliasing - Mode to "Enhance the application setting"
Anti-aliasing - Setting to "8x"
Triple Buffering - "On"
Vsync - "On"

Clicked "Apply"

In the Task Manager 'Details' tab (as stated in the above main thread and the video)

Right clicked AC4BFSP.exe and selected Set Priority to Normal
Set Affinity to ignore one core (All my cores are unparked but I don't know if that makes a difference here)

and it went from 50-45 FPS to 60-65, at 1080p. Not a major jump but made the difference visibly and play-wise.


My sys specs:

i7 7600k 3.6 GHZ oc'd to 4.5 (I have liquid cooling)
16 GB DDR4
Nvidia GTX 1070 AERO
running off a Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD - 7200 RPM

Hope this helps anyone! Seems like no matter the era or gear this game, like so many Ubisoft games are absolute ♥♥♥♥ with optimization and almost never receive support.

[Zero Gravitas]

This guide helped me in the weirdest way. I had to run the game using Windows 95 compatibility mode or it would crash on startup, but the game suffered serious lag...because it was only using 1 core! Changing the affinity to use more cores solved my stuttering.

I'm trying to make a batch file that changes the affinity on startup, but it appears the compatibility mode overrides the affinity I give it since I still have to alt-tab to manually set the affinity to use more than one core. I used a few affinities to no avail (your AAAA0000, F, 9). If anyone has any suggestions on how to get the game to use more than 1 core without alt-tabbing every time, please let me know.

[Northman_Ast]

2020 and people still think enabling tripple buffering works with DX. Good placebos all around the internet.

PEOPLE; TRIPPLE BUFFERING NOW ONLY WORKS WITH OPENGL GAMES.

[Vivian Perilous]

@Northman_Ast

Well I appreciate the heads up about it, but you don't have to be a ♥♥♥♥. Clearly people on this thread don't know everything about graphics issues, hence the reason for the thread.

[nuclear explosion LOU]

Publicado originalmente por Gideon Tride:

Ok so in game Graphics menu I set Anti-Aliasing to SMAA and Physx to low (or off if you're on an older machine), turned off Vsync and set everything else maxed out.

Then in NVIDIA Control Panel I went to :
Manage 3D settings, clicked the Program Settings tab, selected "Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag"

Set as follows:
Anti-aliasing - Mode to "Enhance the application setting"
Anti-aliasing - Setting to "8x"
Triple Buffering - "On"
Vsync - "On"

Clicked "Apply"

In the Task Manager 'Details' tab (as stated in the above main thread and the video)

Right clicked AC4BFSP.exe and selected Set Priority to Normal
Set Affinity to ignore one core (All my cores are unparked but I don't know if that makes a difference here)

and it went from 50-45 FPS to 60-65, at 1080p. Not a major jump but made the difference visibly and play-wise.


My sys specs:

i7 7600k 3.6 GHZ oc'd to 4.5 (I have liquid cooling)
16 GB DDR4
Nvidia GTX 1070 AERO
running off a Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD - 7200 RPM

Hope this helps anyone! Seems like no matter the era or gear this game, like so many Ubisoft games are absolute ♥♥♥♥ with optimization and almost never receive support.

Thanks, this helped my performance.
i3-7100 @ 3,9GHz, GTX1060 3gb, 16gb ddr4 3200mhz. Was getting an average of 45 fps on a mix of medium-high-very high settings. Would drop to 30 fps sometimes, and the game was stuttering even when I had stable FPS. This fixed it tho! Locked 60 fps no stutters. Highly recommend trying this.

[Rolando Zolo]

what i found is the UPLAY launcher creates 2 useless services when it launches. meshplay and some UPC.exe thing. NFI what they do except burn GPU cycles and eat up ram. i killed them both and bam game is SUPER SMOOTH now. no screen tears or stuttering at all.

looks like the launcher has bugs in it impacting old games.

[Ubi-Borealis]

Thanks for sharing your workaround here, Rolando Zolo!

- Ubisoft Support

[nuclear explosion LOU]

Ubisoft gonna fix their launcher? o.o

[shawkir35]

Publicado originalmente por Gideon Tride:

Ok so in game Graphics menu I set Anti-Aliasing to SMAA and Physx to low (or off if you're on an older machine), turned off Vsync and set everything else maxed out.

Then in NVIDIA Control Panel I went to :
Manage 3D settings, clicked the Program Settings tab, selected "Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag"

Set as follows:
Anti-aliasing - Mode to "Enhance the application setting"
Anti-aliasing - Setting to "8x"
Triple Buffering - "On"
Vsync - "On"

Clicked "Apply"

In the Task Manager 'Details' tab (as stated in the above main thread and the video)

Right clicked AC4BFSP.exe and selected Set Priority to Normal
Set Affinity to ignore one core (All my cores are unparked but I don't know if that makes a difference here)

and it went from 50-45 FPS to 60-65, at 1080p. Not a major jump but made the difference visibly and play-wise.


My sys specs:

i7 7600k 3.6 GHZ oc'd to 4.5 (I have liquid cooling)
16 GB DDR4
Nvidia GTX 1070 AERO
running off a Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD - 7200 RPM

Hope this helps anyone! Seems like no matter the era or gear this game, like so many Ubisoft games are absolute ♥♥♥♥ with optimization and almost never receive support.

Thanks a lot, this helped, worked like a charm!

[Vic]

Transfering the game to SSD helped me to solve the stuttering issues.

[UbiKarl]

Thanks for sharing this with everyone guys and I'm glad to see community helping each other out :)

Should anyone be facing any further difficulties or have any queries, do mind we're also here to assist, so feel free to get in touch!

- Ubisoft Support

[skyjywr]

If you're running on compatibility mode for Windows 95 and want to use more cores, /affinity doesn't seem to work. Adding on to the suggested .bat script, you can remove the /affinity option and insert another command to set the affinity after game starts.

@echo off
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag"
Start /normal AC4BFSP.exe
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe "$Process = Get-Process AC4BFSP; $Process.ProcessorAffinity=1365"

Change the installation path to your AC IV.
ProcessorAffinity is a decimal value. See https://www.eightforums.com/threads/cpu-affinity-shortcut-for-a-program-create-in-windows.40339/
You must run .bat script as admin.

[YourWorstNightmare]

Thank you friend running this in windows 7 comp mode worked wonders doing it in 85 I was running into problems but 7 worked fine

[adam]

A lot of anger

After start the game always crashing. It is starting in win95 compactibility mode but lagging like hell. Ubisoft app reinstalled and tried everything but still cant find the problem and Cant find the solution. Please someone help. Thank you

[76561199205081135]

Publicado originalmente por YourWorstNightmare:

Thank you friend running this in windows 7 comp mode worked wonders doing it in 85 I was running into problems but 7 worked fine

Hi !

I've taken note of your report, and I'm glad to hear that these workarounds helped you enjoy the game !

I advise you to exercise caution when running scripts / downloading them from third-party websites, as they might modify the game and your system in unexpected ways.

adam, your message has been merged to this thread, in order to bring it the best possible visibility.

In order to isolate the problem, I invite you to let us know if running the game in the Windows 7 compatibility mode helps mitigate the Issues.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions, or if there's anything else we can help you with !


- Ubisoft Support