Assassin’s Creed Shadows PC Performance Tested on Integrated Graphics

Running Assassin’s Creed Shadows Without a Dedicated GPU

Assassin’s Creed Shadows arrived with a reputation for being demanding. Ubisoft’s open-world feudal Japan epic targets high-end hardware, and its minimum spec sheet lists a discrete GPU as a baseline requirement. That framing has led many players with integrated graphics setups – think thin-and-light laptops, budget mini PCs, or older desktops without a dedicated card – to assume the game is simply off the table for them. The reality is more complicated, and worth testing properly.

This piece documents what actually happens when you run Shadows on integrated graphics in 2025 – specifically on AMD’s Radeon 780M (found in Ryzen 7000 and 8000 series mobile chips) and Intel’s Arc integrated graphics on Core Ultra processors. These are the two most capable integrated solutions most PC players realistically have access to, and both tell very different stories about what’s achievable when you’re willing to compromise on settings and resolution.

Testing Setup and Expectations

The AMD side of testing used a Ryzen 7 8840U running its Radeon 780M iGPU with 16GB of dual-channel DDR5-5600 memory. Memory speed matters enormously for integrated graphics, since the iGPU pulls directly from system RAM rather than dedicated VRAM. Single-channel configurations would perform noticeably worse. On the Intel side, a Core Ultra 7 165H with its Arc integrated graphics ran the same test scenarios. Both systems had their TDP limits set to the highest allowed threshold to avoid thermal throttling skewing the results.

Expectations were low going in. Shadows uses a custom version of Ubisoft’s AnvilNext engine, and the game’s global illumination, volumetric fog, and cloth simulation push hard against even mid-range discrete GPUs at 1080p. The question wasn’t whether integrated graphics could run Shadows at Ultra settings – they can’t – but whether the game could be made playable at all through aggressive resolution and quality scaling.

Performance Results: AMD Radeon 780M

At 1080p with everything on Low and FSR Quality mode enabled, the Radeon 780M averaged around 28-34 frames per second in outdoor open-world areas. That number sounds rough, but the actual experience is slightly more tolerable than the raw figure suggests. Shadows doesn’t have a particularly heavy physics-based movement system, and traversal through forest environments – the game’s most visually dense spaces – sits at the lower end of that range, occasionally dipping below 25fps during dense foliage scenes with weather effects active.

Dropping to 720p output with FSR Performance scaling brings the internal render resolution down significantly, and the frame rate climbs into a more consistent 40-48fps range in open areas. Ubisoft’s FSR implementation in Shadows is reasonably clean at this tier, though fine details on Naoe’s costume and distant environmental geometry show visible softening. The game remains identifiable and even attractive in wide shots – feudal Japan’s architecture and color palette hold up even at reduced fidelity.

Towns and populated areas are where the 780M hits its real ceiling. Bustling market districts and castle interiors with NPC crowds drop performance into the low 20s at 720p Low settings, occasionally stuttering during combat with multiple enemies on screen. The stuttering appears tied to asset streaming rather than raw GPU load – enemy AI routines and environmental destruction effects both tax the CPU side of the Ryzen 8840U as much as the iGPU.

One practical workaround: disabling real-time shadows entirely and setting ambient occlusion to off recovers roughly 8-12fps across all test scenarios. The game looks noticeably flatter without shadow casting, but remains functional. For a player running on battery power or prioritizing frame rate over visual quality, that’s a meaningful option Ubisoft’s PC settings menu makes accessible.

Performance Results: Intel Arc Integrated Graphics

Intel’s Arc integrated graphics on the Core Ultra 7 165H performed worse overall than the Radeon 780M in most Shadows scenarios. At 1080p Low with XeSS Quality enabled rather than FSR, the average frame rate in outdoor areas sat around 22-27fps – playable in the loosest sense, but visually choppy during fast camera movements or combat. XeSS on integrated Intel Arc doesn’t have dedicated XMX AI accelerator access in the same way discrete Arc GPUs do, so the upscaling quality is on par with FSR’s bilinear fallback mode rather than the full neural network version.

Switching to 720p with XeSS Performance brought Intel’s solution into the 32-38fps range – closer to usable, though the visual output at this resolution and upscaling tier starts to look noticeably worse than what the 780M produces at the same settings. Intel’s integrated graphics in the Core Ultra H-series remain a step behind AMD’s Radeon 780M for gaming workloads, a gap that has been consistent across multiple titles.

Practical Takeaways for iGPU Players

If you’re on an AMD Ryzen 7000 or 8000 series laptop with the Radeon 780M and dual-channel memory, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is technically playable – but that word needs heavy qualification. Story missions in more controlled environments hold up better than open-world roaming. If your tolerance for sub-40fps gameplay is low, the experience will frustrate more than it entertains. If you’re someone who plays narrative-heavy titles at a measured pace and doesn’t chase smooth frame rates, you can get through the campaign.

For Intel integrated graphics users on Core Ultra hardware, the honest answer is that Shadows sits below the threshold of comfortable play at any resolution without significant visual degradation. The game can technically launch and run, but the combination of lower frame rates and weaker upscaling output makes it a harder sell. Waiting for a discrete GPU upgrade or a cloud gaming option would serve most players better than grinding through performance compromises.

Ubisoft does deserve credit for building a PC settings menu that exposes enough granular controls to make this kind of tuning possible at all. Individual toggles for shadow quality, ambient occlusion, level-of-detail distances, and volumetric effects give integrated graphics users actual tools to work with rather than a locked preset system. The game also supports FSR Frame Generation, though that feature requires a compatible discrete GPU and doesn’t apply to integrated graphics configurations. For players curious about what proper discrete GPU performance looks like in Shadows, the gap between even a mid-range card and an iGPU is substantial – a point made clear when reviewing how discrete solutions handle the game’s dynamic weather system, which is essentially a non-factor on integrated graphics because you’ll have already disabled most of the settings it relies on.

The most telling detail from testing: at 720p Low with FSR Performance on the Radeon 780M, the opening sequence in Shadows – a story-driven, cinematic segment with controlled camera work and minimal open-world load – runs at a smooth 50+ fps. Ubisoft’s setpiece design inadvertently creates the iGPU’s best moments, because the engine clearly pulls back complexity during narrative sequences. The rest of the game is less forgiving, and the gap between those controlled moments and free-roaming open-world play is exactly where integrated graphics users will feel the hardware ceiling most acutely.