AC Mirage: How To Fix Lag & FPS Drops

AC Mirage is finally here; if you’ve pre-ordered the game or are a Ubisoft+ Member, you can access the game a little early. Set in the 9th century of Baghdad, you get to play as Basim. The game consists of obvious stealth and assassination elements that all the AC Fans love. But, something no one likes is the performance issues that the game has.

The official Reddit and the AC Forums are filled with people complaining about constant stuttering, FPS Drops, and lag. In this article, I have covered a few basic tweaks to improve your performance and increase your FPS.

AC Mirage: How To Fix Lag & FPS Drops

Here are some of the most reported performance issues:

• Frame rate drops and stuttering
• Input delay and laggy controls
• Long load times

Change Graphic Control Panel Settings

For Nvidia Users:

• Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel
• Click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings
• Find “AC Mirage” you can manually add the game if it’s not on the list
• Now, make the following changes:

Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
Threaded optimization: On
Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering – Quality:  Performance
Low Lateny Mode: Off (High or Ultra makes sense only for PvP Games)*

Nvidia Low Latency Mode is a feature found in Nvidia’s Control Panel. It is designed to help reduce input latency on Nvidia graphics card systems. Low Latency Mode can be used in games or any other application where you need to reduce the time it takes for your inputs to be registered.

For AMD Users

• Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
• Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
• Morphological Filtering: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
• Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
• Surface Format Optimization: On
• Wait for V-sync: Off
• OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
• Shader Cache: AMD optimized
• Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
• Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
• GPU Workload: Graphics
• Chill: Off
• Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled

Turn Down Graphic Settings For Higher FPS

The first thing I tried was lowering my graphics settings. Reducing demanding options like shadows, lighting, texture quality, and more took the pressure off my GPU and instantly boosted the frame rate. I tweaked each setting incrementally to find the ideal balance of visual fidelity and high FPS for my setup.

You can test different settings while running the game to find the best settings.

Update Drivers For Compatibility

Ensuring my Nvidia, chipset, and Windows were fully updated ensured the best compatibility and stability with a new release like Assassins Creed. Driver updates often include enhancements tailored to big game launches. Head to Nvidia’s site or Windows Update to snag the latest.

Enable High-Performance Power Plan

I switched my Windows 11 power plan to High Performance, which forces your CPU and GPU to run at peak clock speeds. This prevented downclocking and throttling, which can tank game performance when hardware thinks it can take a break. Keeping my components at full throttle made a noticeable difference.

Use Windows 10 Compatibility If Unstable

Clearly, AC Mirage still needs some work to run smoothly on Windows 11. Setting compatibility mode to Windows 10 in the game’s properties helped improve stability and framerates.

Update Device Drivers

• Download Nvidia Drivers
• Download AMD Drivers

I am sure most gamers know the importance of always having updated drivers.

Disable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling

This option was added to the graphic settings page after the Windows 10 May 2020 update. Many YouTubers such as Linus Tech Tips, Jayz2Cents, and Gamers Nexus have tested the performance when turned on or off. They found that setting makes little to no difference, good or bad, on mid to high-end machines and slight improvement to framerates on low-end computers (but also brings instability at times).

To disable hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling

• Open Windows Search, and type “Graphic Settings.”
• Under Default Settings, click “Change Default Graphics Settings.”
• Click the radio button to toggle the setting on or off.

Conclusion: Turn this on or off and compare the difference in FPS

Enable Game Mode

Windows 11 has a built-in Game Mode that tweaks your system to optimize game performance. It allocates more resources to games and streamlines processes. Enabling it provided a nice little optimization boost for the game.

To Enable: Type game mode in search and enable it.

Note: Game Mode doesn’t always improve performance for every PC. Sometimes, it might worsen the performance, so it’s best to test it both on and off.

Use Compatibility Settings

Of course, not all the titles are optimized for the new operating system yet. This should change soon. Until then, you can use Windows’s inbuilt compatibility setting. To do so:

• Right-click on the app’s exe file
• Go to properties > Compatibility
• Under Compatibility mode, select “Windows 10.”
• Also, click on the “disable fullscreen optimizations” checkbox
• Click Apply and close the box.

One more thing suggested by Reddit users is doing a clean Windows 11 install rather than upgrading it from Win 10. Also, DX12-optimized games benefit while older ones are taking a hit.

These settings and optimizations were tested on PCs with the following configuration:

• i5 8500 with GTX 1060 @1080p
• i3 10300 with RTX 2060 @1080p
• i7 8700 with GTX 1650 @1080p
• AMD Ryzen 5600x with RTX 3080 @2k

These few things helped me fix my Low FPS issue in Assassins Creed Mirage. You can try them and let me know if they worked for you using the comment section below.