Assassin's Creed Mirage Performance Jumps 76% After Denuvo Removal

New benchmark tests show Assassin's Creed Mirage runs dramatically smoother without Denuvo, with minimum frame rates up 76% and file size slashed by nearly 400MB.

Well, this is one way to make your game run better. New benchmark tests have surfaced showing just how much Assassin's Creed Mirage benefits from ditching Denuvo, and the numbers are pretty wild.

The test rig was no slouch either — an Intel Core i7-13700K, a GeForce RTX 5080, 64GB of RAM, and a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD, all running on Windows 11. Using the game's built-in benchmark tool at 1080p with standard quality settings, someone put the Denuvo version and the Denuvo-free version head to head.

And the results? Frame rate stability got a serious glow-up. The 1% Low jumped from 93 FPS to 128 FPS, while the 0.1% Low climbed from 74 FPS to 105 FPS. But the real eye-opener is the minimum frame rate — it shot up from 51 FPS to 90 FPS, a massive 76% improvement. That's the kind of bump that turns a stuttery experience into a smooth one.

Average frame rates also saw a healthy boost, going from 162 FPS to 186 FPS, roughly a 14% increase. Interestingly, the maximum frame rate barely budged, sitting at 232 FPS before and 233 FPS after. So if you were already hitting the ceiling, you won't notice much there — but the lows are where the magic happens.

It's not just about performance, either. Once the virtualization and protection code were completely stripped out, the game's executable file size shrank dramatically. The original file, which packed both Denuvo and VMProtect, weighed in at around 496MB. After removal, it dropped to just 102MB. That's a whole lot of bloat gone.

For anyone who's ever dealt with Denuvo's reputation for eating CPU resources, this is pretty compelling evidence. It's the kind of data that fuels the ongoing debate about whether anti-tamper tech is worth the performance cost — and for Mirage, at least, the answer seems pretty clear.

Of course, this is just one test on one machine, so your mileage may vary depending on your setup. Still, a 76% minimum frame rate boost is hard to ignore. Have you noticed performance differences in games after Denuvo gets removed? Drop your thoughts in the comments.