Far Cry 3 Tested, Benchmarked

Fantastic job, finally a benchmark that includes the GTX 460, a GPU so many of us still use!

Why not test the AMD Catalyst 12:11 CAP2 ?
AMD says • Improves performance in Far Cry 3 (up to 25% with 8xMSAA, enabled SSAO @ 1600p, and up to 15% with 8xMSAA, HDAO enabled @ 1600p) (AMD Catalyst 12:11 CAP2 must also be installed)

Was the game patched to the latest available patches 1.01 and 1.02 . also was the 12.11 CAP 2 installed . the AMD 12.11 beta 11 driver page says

"AMD Catalyst 12.11 CAP2 has just been released, and should be used in conjunction with AMD Catalyst 12.11 Beta11
Improves Far Cry 3 performance for single GPU configurations with AA enabled"

Both the pcgameshardware.de and computerbase.de show HD 7970 Ghz doing much better than GTX 670 with latest drivers at MSAA 4x.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Far-C...y-3-Test-Grafikkarten-CPU-Benchmarks-1036726/

http://www.computerbase.de/news/2012-12/eigene-benchmarks-zu-far-cry-3/

The GTX 460 is featured in all of our gaming evaluations and has been since it was released.

Guys the CAP2 was installed relax.

The graphs were all labeled "version 1.01". Version 1.02 came out the day I finished the article.

Both CB and PCGH might have been using the latest AMD driver, but both used an older Nvidia driver (310.64). 310.70 was rushed out (still awaiting WHQL certification) primarily because it has some specific FC3 performance benefits.

Steve
Very timely and comprehensive review once again. Many thanks for the time and effort.

Can confirm there is no real diffrence between version 1.01 and 1.02 for me.

Evga 460 sc 1024 sli.

Ultra settings, 2 x msaa

1.01 = 48.4 fps
1.02 = 48.5 fps

I just wish that older Core2 quads are thrown into the mix (CPU scaling)...

Both the reviews used the 310.64 beta drivers. the 310.64 had the farcry 3 improvements built into them.
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/53254

from the beta driver page
"Up to 38% in Far Cry 3"

in fact pcgameshardware.de shows the performance for 310.54 and 310.64 in tables and compares the performance improvements.

computerbase has the first chart with nvidia 310.64 and amd 12.11 beta 8 drivers and the second with the update 310.64 and 12.11 beta 11

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http://www.computerbase.de/news/2012-12/eigene-benchmarks-zu-far-cry-3/

So, you're telling me that 310.70 has no performance benefit over 310.64 ? You have some evidence to support that hypothesis?

The release notes are a simple C&P from the earlier driver - including the bug fixes and PhysX engine update. If the drivers are supposedly identical then why did Nvidia release the 310.70 driver ?

Classic. Rabidly howling for benching with the latest driver from one vendor whilst simultaneously dismissing the use of the latest driver from another. There's a name for that...I'll get back to you after I check the dictionary.

My results

310.64 = 44 fps
310.70 = 48 fps

A nice increase in my opinion

Great article! I was hoping TS would release some benchmarks for FC3.

Thanks, Steve!

yeah 310.70 seems to have improvements. anyway looks like the difference for performance between PCGH and techspot is HDAO. HDAO provides the best image quality and is faster on HD 7970 Ghz than the GTX 680.

hardocp has a farcry 3 preview and they test with HDAO, A2C and 8X MSAA, though its not playable. for 1080p they seem to suggest HDAO, A2C, 4X MSAA would be playable on HD 7970 Ghz and GTX 680.

http://far-cry.ubi.com/fc-portal/en-gb/community/detail_news.aspx?c=tcm:21-73246&ct=tcm:6-231-32

"DIRECTCOMPUTE ACCELERATED HIGH DEFINITION AMBIENT OCCLUSION
Far Cry 3 implements a new and improved version of HDAO that uses full 3D camera space position data to detect valleys in the scene that should be shaded darker, and attenuates the lighting based on valley angle. In Far Cry 3 this technique has been significantly improved in both performance and quality relative to previous implementations."

I've been waiting for a game that can push my system. I've been debating about buying Hitman, but this game looks pretty damn fun...almost like a next gen Mercenaries.
Excellent/timely performance review Steve!

Holy cow! I was reading thinking that Very High Quality was the highest of all, but was astonished when I kept reading and it went Ultra!

This is a hell of demanding game!

So why dont you donate a Core2Quad to the site!

My MSI Hawk Radeon 6950 does a pretty decent job with this game without being OC'd. Looks like it's time to push my system a bit harder to get some beautiful gaming going on. Already on my second playthrough

Not to mention the bucketloads of time to install and test the game on another system that's 4 generations old. If you're still on a C2Q chances are you aren't that fussed about running modern games at their most demanding settings anyway.

From 3.5GHz to 4.5GHz the i7 gained only 5 fps. In the same clock range the FX gained 13 fps. This comment: "It's interesting to note that the FX-8350 at 4.5GHz was only able to match the Core i7-3770K at 3.5GHz." is very biased and unsuitable for a serious tech site. Combined with the driver "choice" towards a better nVidia performance (or worse AMD performance) makes this test less trustworthy. Very, very biased against AMD. :-(

For the CPU part i7 scales poorly with clock speed. FX scales much better. Make them both run at 5GHz and see the FX outperform the i7 (if i7-3770K would ever run at 5GHz).

And the comedy comment of the day goes to...

Try reading the graphs again, the i7 3770K at 3.5Ghz gets 70fps while the FX 8350 at 4.5Ghz gets... 70fps