Big performance gains on Windows AMD system with DXVK

[DangeRussBus]

This is a solution for poor performance that is widely used in Origins, but oddly, I don't find many posts about similar results in Odyssey. I think this could help a lot of people with similar setups to mine (R5 3600 / RX 5700XT on Windows). If you are using an Nvidia GPU, this solution would probably hurt your performance a lot more than just keeping the game as is.

DXVK is described as:

"A Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine."

Essentially, DXVK is a collection of libraries that can allow DirectX API games (9, 10 or 11) to run using Vulkan API. In most cases DirectX 11 will work better on Windows, but I have found that RPG style AC games run significantly better for me when using the DXVK libraries.

Benchmarks

Without any modifcations at 1080p, the ingame benchmarking tool gave me an average FPS of 38 - 45 after a few runs, with significant number of dips into the low 20s-30s. This persisted regardless of graphics settings I used.

After installing DXVK, my benchmarks landed around 70 on maxed settings (with Volumetric clouds turned down to high, as it's the single biggest resource hog in the game). Also worth keeping in mind is that benchmarking tool uses a more dense area in the game and general gameplay will get me 80 - 100+ FPS based on the area I'm in.

Installing

The file can be downloaded from this public Github Repo: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/tag/v2.0
To install, simply download the .tar.gz file, and unpackage with a tool such as 7-ZIP. Then, place the following TWO files

• d3d11.dll
  
• dxgi.dll

into your games home directory (The folder that contains your AC: Odyssey .exe file). After that, you should be good to go! Note that the link I provided is release 2.0, the latest release at this time. I personally am using release 1.10.3, as was recommended to me for AC: Origins. Since they use the same engine, I decided to just use what worked for me before. I see no obvious reason the latest release wouldn't work for you, but if you have issues you might try my approach.

What's with all the stuttering?

Don't worry! If you boot up Odyssey after installing DXVK and see a longer load time and A LOT of stuttering, that means it's working. This stuttering will go away after a short time of playing. This is due to DXVK compiling shaders while you play. As you play, the less stuttering you will see. Many games can compile shaders before you start playing, but seeing as this is a third party modification, they are being compiled in real time while you play. I've experienced bad stuttering for about 5-10 minutes, and it is altogether gone after about an hour. This should not affect you when you relaunch the game, either.

My games crash about once every 10 - 20 hours played. Of course, I have no clue if this is can be attributed to DXVK or or just the game in general. Either way, an occasional crash every 10 hours isn't too bad in my book. Just something to keep in mind if you experience them frequently.

Again, I have no clue why this solution has not been more widespread for Odyssey as I've seen a lot of discussion on it for Origins. Either way, I've seen the same massive improvements by using it.

[animal_PLANET]

If using AMD it is recommended you are on a driver from July or later as they improved performance greatly for DX11 games. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey gains up to 28%.

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-has-rebuilt-its-directx11-driver-from-the-ground-up-10-better-performance-on-average

I would also recommend using AMD driver removal tool to completely clean out your display driver and install latest WHQL or optional stable release. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-601

Or use DDU which works very well too and supports all GPU's. https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4194

[DangeRussBus]

If latest drivers see an improvement up to 28%, I am scared to think about how the game would have performed before July.

In any case, being on latest drivers still nets me FPS ranging from 25-40 on lowest settings. It would be great if a current release would fix this issue but simply does not for me. When researching the issue of poor performance on AMD cards, I see SO MANY discussions where the accepted answer is just "Odyssey is optimized like hot garbage." While that may not be untrue, it is totally unhelpful to me.

I see the claim that new drivers saw improvements in Odyssey, yet still find countless threads online about players using 5700XT or comparable GPUs and desperately looking for a driver release that actually works well with the game. I personally have not seen any substantiation to claim of 28% performance increase, unless of course performance was abysmally worse in the first place. 28% gains over barely keeping up with 40 FPS on low settings is not an impressive number in my opinion.

I am not disregarding your advice. Downloading latest drivers should certainly be somebody's first step if they are getting poor performance. However, if that does not work, as I and so many others seem to be experiencing, the DXVK fix is just as easy as grabbing the latest drivers and substantially more effective.

[animal_PLANET]

Originally posted by juicy4you:

In any case, being on latest drivers still nets me FPS ranging from 25-40 on lowest settings.

When changing in game settings has no effect on performance this is usually a sign of an issue with display driver. That is why I recommend you use one of the cleaning tools I linked above. It will remove any conflicts from a previous install and it will be like you are installing driver for the very first time.

Also, AMD does have a lot of settings for CPU that you can set in motherboard's BIOS. It is good to know what settings do what and how they effect certain games. There was a thread awhile ago about a certain AMD BIOS Setting interfering with this games performance. Sorry, I can not remember what.

You could also try a clean boot. Disable all non essential programs, services, and tasks from loading when PC boots. You may have software that is conflicting with the game. Yes I know, you dont have any other issues with other games, but all games are different. So some troubleshooting needs to be done in order to see what is causing the issue of low performance.

Have you also checked your power profiles? This will def effect your system and the CPU boost of AMD processor. Also make sure your temps are good and you are not throttling. I would recommend using MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner to monitor temps in real time while playing for both CPU/GPU.

Have you also looked into this:

Have you updated your system to fix fTPM issue?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-fix-and-workaround-for-ftpm-stuttering-issues

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/agesa-1207-am4-motherboard-roundup

Lastly, are you using Win 11 with latest 22H2 update? If so there is an issue with gaming with that update. It would be good to uninstall until MSFT has released a fix.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/status-windows-11-22h2#2950msgdesc

[spine106]

This fix worked for me, Thank you.

[76561198885856812]

Hello juicy4you,

Thank you for sharing this with our community!

- Ubisoft Support

[Nicholas Steel]

Turns out I'm a moron and didn't read the setup instructions for DXVK-Async lol, so I had been running it without Asynchronous Shader caching & without the main Shader benefits of v2.0 (async turns off the new Shader handling in v2.0 in order to work asynchronously).

I just had to make a dxvk.conf file with a certain parameter in it to engage Async mode and now the stuttering is vastly reduced.

2024 Edit: DXVK Async is no longer needed, the regular DXVK now has features that render it obsolete.

[Ubi-WheelyDuck]

Originally posted by Nicholas Steel:

Turns out I'm a moron and didn't read the setup instructions for DXVK-Async lol, so I had been running it without Asynchronous Shader caching & without the main Shader benefits of v2.0 (async turns off the new Shader handling in v2.0 in order to work asynchronously).

I just had to make a dxvk.conf file with a certain parameter in it to engage Async mode and now the stuttering is vastly reduced.

Hey there,

Thank you for kindly taking the time out to share your experience.

The steps you have described are great as they are very likely to help someone else in the future.

If ever there is anything else we can help with, just let us know.

- Ubisoft Support

[SImplyStimulating]

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

[Nicholas Steel]

Originally posted by SImplyStimulating:

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

Disable the UPlay Overlay.

2024 Edit: Dismissing the warning in the UPlay Overlay now correctly removes the warning when closing the Overlay, so you can now keep the Overlay enabled.

[Ubi_TheBerry]

Originally posted by SImplyStimulating:

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

Hey SImplyStimulating,

May we please know what GPU your PC uses?

And have attempted any troubleshooting steps such as verifying the game's files[ubi.li], assuming you are using a supported GPU?

- Ubisoft Support

[animal_PLANET]

Originally posted by SImplyStimulating:

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

This is due to having a video driver that is not up to date. As the video driver needs to support Vulkan 1.3.

If you do not have Vulkan 1.3 than that issue comes on screen when trying to use DXVK.

Or, if you do have an up to date driver than as suggested above. Disable Ubisoft overlay and it wont show.

[Ubi_TheBerry]

Originally posted by animal_PLANET:

Originally posted by SImplyStimulating:

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

This is due to having a video driver that is not up to date. As the video driver needs to support Vulkan 1.3.

If you do not have Vulkan 1.3 than that issue comes on screen when trying to use DXVK.

Or, if you do have an up to date driver than as suggested above. Disable Ubisoft overlay and it wont show.

Thanks for noting this too animal_PLANET, appreciate it!

- Ubisoft Support

[Nicholas Steel]

Originally posted by SImplyStimulating:

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

Turns out this is a technical issue with DXVK and UPlay overlay: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/issues/3146

DXVK 2.1 should address this issue for Linux users (warning popup persisting permanently on screen).

For Windows users the solution will continue to be disabling the UPlay Overlay.

[Ubi_TheBerry]

Originally posted by Nicholas Steel:

Originally posted by SImplyStimulating:

"You are the running the game without a video driver installed or with an unsupported video card"

Turns out this is a technical issue with DXVK and UPlay overlay: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/issues/3146

DXVK 2.1 should address this issue for Linux users (warning popup persisting permanently on screen).

For Windows users the solution is still to disable the UPlay Overlay.

Thanks for sharing this too Nicholas Steel, appreciate it!

- Ubisoft Support

[abhishekthedevil37]

Originally posted by Nicholas Steel:

Turns out I'm a moron and didn't read the setup instructions for DXVK-Async lol, so I had been running it without Asynchronous Shader caching & without the main Shader benefits of v2.0 (async turns off the new Shader handling in v2.0 in order to work asynchronously).

I just had to make a dxvk.conf file with a certain parameter in it to engage Async mode and now the stuttering is vastly reduced.

Bro can u please help me do that