Assassin's Creed Black Flag PhysX Patch Live, AMD STILL NO OPTIMISED DRIVERS!!

[WYP]

Yesterday a patch was made live to enable PhysX support in game for users of Nvidia GPUs.

The new Assassin's Creed® IV Black Flag™ PhysX patch brings a whole new level of realism to the game. PhysX Particles and Turbulence are added to improve the visual effects around pistol and musket smoke, smoke bombs, and chimney smoke.

A video showing a Graphical comparison is shown below.

As you may know, there are a ton of awesome PC exclusive features like NVIDIA TXAA, HBAO+, Percentage Closer Softer Shadows, and much more. This video includes an example of TXAA, which makes a significant visual difference in the rigging on the Pirate ships.

At present Nvidia is the clear GPU Brand of choice for Assassins Creed, with every problem I have visually in the game conveniently fixed by an Nvidia technology.

My main problems with the game are a ludicrous amount of aliasing in the game, horribly demanding AA options (which do little to help with jaggies apart from kill my framerate) and constant screen tearing. Enter TXAA and G-Sync, both Nvidia exclusive techs that help greatly or eliminate both problems.

I love Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag but I cannot help but think it was intentional that I as an AMD user is being posed with these issues intentionally; and to make matters worse AMD are yet to release a driver with updated crossfire profiles (compared to Nvidia with excellent SLI profiles)so I may beat through the AA obstacle with the sheer power of my overclocked 7870 XTs (currently can only use FXAA).

Now back on topic; PhysX adds improved visual affects into the game to make the game enjoy a greater visual experience.

Are you guys impressed with the addition of PhysX into Assassin's Creed 4? Are there any other like me who have similar issues with the game? Please comment below.

source - Nvidia (Youtube)

 

[barnsley]

Oh come on AMD, Nvidia didn't sit on their butts when the AMD optimised games were released so you have no excuse. To be fair though, this game hasn't exactly been a great port for either team...

 

[Edge]

I think you'd have to be an incredibly pedantic fuck to really care how different the smoke looks.

As for drivers, nVidia has always been better in that department. Interestingly Catalyst 13.12 was released ?yesterday? with no optimisations for AC. Guess it takes a little longer to prepare when the port was horrific to start with, haha.

 

[WYP]

I actually think the game is worse with that physX smoke, there is just so much more of it (far too much if you ask me) and it doesn't really look that different.

AMD's driver team must be stretched very thin, with mantle coming and their recently missed target for phase 2 frame pacing drivers.

leaving a AAA title without good driver/crossfire support is still a bad move, Nvidia don't let that happen for too long.

 

[Edge]

I actually think the game is worse with that physX smoke, there is just so much more of it (far too much if you ask me) and it doesn't really look that different.

I thought that at first, but it does look more realistic and dissipate a lot more realistically. It's hard to get out of the mentality that more detail = better. In the physX smoke's case, less is more (aesthetics wise). Looks a lot more fluid.