Far Cry 4 Benchmarked, Performance Review

[Steve]

Graphics have always been a selling point of the Far Cry series as few games offer the same open world environments that can be experienced in Far Cry. The latest iteration is no exception, as it is based on the same Dunia Engine 2 game engine has Far Cry 3.

With that being the case, it's no surprise or disappointment to learn that Far Cry 4 looks reminiscent of the previous version. Effects such as god rays are heavily emphasized and used in a way that have tremendous atmospheric impact on the game's environments.

Being an Nvidia "The Way It's Meant to be Played" title, FC4 has loads of optimizations for GeForce cards, including HBAO+, PCSS, TXAA, Godrays, and HairWorks. If nothing else, this should make it all the more interesting to compare results between GPU camps.

Read the complete article.

 

[oldikes]

Anyone care to explain to me as I feel like im missing something why the FX-4320 reports a better FPS than the FX-8350 at the same clock speed?

 

[Steve]

Anyone care to explain to me as I feel like im missing something why the FX-4320 reports a better FPS than the FX-8350 at the same clock speed?

I hadn’t noticed that, I would have looked more closely at it if I did. The suspect Nvidia performance stole most of my attention.

At a guess I would say the FX-4320 hit a higher turbo frequency than the bigger and hotter FX-8350.

 

[Guest]

For a game that's supposed to be under Nvidia Gameworks and their Meant to be Played banner, Nvidia is looking kind of pathetic here. Guess throwing money at devs doesn't always work.

 

[kingmustard]

As the article says, if you have a NVIDIA card, lots of extra things (HBAO+, PCSS, TXAA, Godrays, and HairWorks) are used. This likely explains why the performance on NVIDIA cards is lower. You should turn off the NVIDIA-only things so that NVIDIA and AMD cards are on an even pairing.

 

[Guest]

Dude, are you blind? This benchmark was tested on Ultra profile, for all GPUs. Nvidia cards have their own NVIDIA profile that was not tested. Face it, AMD simply blows Nvidia out of here which is really crazy considering it's the Nvidia game. XD

 

[kingmustard]

Dude, are you blind? This benchmark was tested on Ultra profile, for all GPUs. Nvidia cards have their own NVIDIA profile that was not tested. Face it, AMD simply blows Nvidia out of here which is really crazy considering it's the Nvidia game. XD

Ah, I didn't see that part. Fair enough, then

 

[Steve]

This should just be a driver issue. Through further testing I have found that the performance of the GeForce cards is very up and down. Some parts of the game they are very fast while other parts quite slow and I have noticed this is causing a lot of stuttering. The Radeon’s are much more consistent which is why we were getting stronger averages.

Sorry for the confusion kingmustard, as the guest pointed out (a bit rudely) we used the Ultra pre-set which applies the exact same settings to both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

 

[tomkaten]

Guess Ubisoft forgot to destroy the Radeons' performance in the final game. I'm sure Nvidia are on the phone with them as we speak, especially since "the way it's meant to be played" is in your face every time you start the game

 

[kingmustard]

Does anyone else remember Unreal Tournament 2004's (possibly 2003's, too) "The Way It's Meant to be Played" logo? It was all 3D rendered and a UT grunt blew through the center. Good times

 

[Burty117]

Does anyone else remember Unreal Tournament 2004's (possibly 2003's, too) "The Way It's Meant to be Played" logo? It was all 3D rendered and a UT grunt blew through the center. Good times

I still play UT2004, such a beast of a game! xD

 

[Badvok]

Dude, are you blind? This benchmark was tested on Ultra profile, for all GPUs. Nvidia cards have their own NVIDIA profile that was not tested. Face it, AMD simply blows Nvidia out of here which is really crazy considering it's the Nvidia game. XD

Exactly, for the sake of comparing apples with apples, the test was done on the non-Nvidia specific settings. Since AMD are the only other real player in this field one can reasonably assume that non-Nvidia means AMD optimised, but since the GPU makers are doing so many things differently these days that is the only way of comparing like with like.

 

[Shaz130]

This is really weird.All the other benchmarks I have seen show AMD at a significant disadvantage with the latest drivers and this site is showing the exact opposite :/

http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1701-far-cry-4-gpu-benchmark-amd-is-broken-again

 

[Experimentongod]

Interesting numbers. I have a GTX 760. By the time the game drops in price the drivers and patches hould have already rolled out to smooth out things. And who knows maybe I would have already upgraded to a GTX 970. I play at 1920x1080 so I think the experience will be pretty good.

 

[cldmstrsn]

Strange to hear about NVidia as I have a 780 and have had great performance and I have heard amd cards being very stuttery.

 

[stewi0001]

I don't even know if I should even try FC4 with my SLI 570s XD

 

[GhostRyder]

Just got it and honestly since I cannot use all three R9 290X's sadly I am only playing at 1080p right now which is good enough for now since the game is so awesome. Pretty interesting to see AMD performing this good in this game since a lot of the focus was on Nvidia with this launch but I do agree as its probably driver related.

My performance is not "Stuttery" on my R9 290X so I do not know who is preaching that.

 

[cldmstrsn]

Here is the website that cited that AMD performed horribly also you have 3 R9 290X for 1080p?

http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1701-far-cry-4-gpu-benchmark-amd-is-broken-again

 

[Steve]

This is really weird.All the other benchmarks I have seen show AMD at a significant disadvantage with the latest drivers and this site is showing the exact opposite :/

http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1701-far-cry-4-gpu-benchmark-amd-is-broken-again

Here is the website that cited that AMD performed horribly also you have 3 R9 290X for 1080p?

http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1701-far-cry-4-gpu-benchmark-amd-is-broken-again

I cannot explain how they landed on those results. I have continued to test Far Cry 4 with the latest drivers and there is simply no way the R9 290X is that slow in any section of the game.

Another site that goes to great lengths to test video games received similar results to us…

http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-fps-/-tps/far-cry-4-test-gpu.html

It is interesting how the gamersnexus GeForce results are very similar to ours but the Radeon’s are all around 10fps slower.

 

[Uncle Al]

OK OK OK .... this is probably an old complaint but ... wouldn't it be great if these so called programming geniuses would just learn to write their code to be optimum on systems that were two generations removed? Not only would a newer machine really give kick-*** performance but those that can't afford to upgrade every couple of years could still buy them and run them. In the marketing world that is known as reaching the widest possible audience ..... are these companies so dense they haven't figured that one out yet?

 

[Steve]

OK OK OK .... this is probably an old complaint but ... wouldn't it be great if these so called programming geniuses would just learn to write their code to be optimum on systems that were two generations removed? Not only would a newer machine really give kick-*** performance but those that can't afford to upgrade every couple of years could still buy them and run them. In the marketing world that is known as reaching the widest possible audience ..... are these companies so dense they haven't figured that one out yet?

Are you saying that Far Cry 4 should run on 2 generation old hardware? If you are I have news, it does. These games scale back well to run on older hardware, we only test with the highest settings.

If you are saying why don't they make games look as good as Far Cry 4 that will run maxed out on 2 generation old hardware then you as asking for the impossible. That has nothing to do with coding skills, the hardware simply cannot deliver.

 

[RodneySavage]

As the article says, if you have a NVIDIA card, lots of extra things (HBAO+, PCSS, TXAA, Godrays, and HairWorks) are used.

NVidia GameWorks tech are HW independent (same as Radeon SDK, yet blackboxed) means they are all work on every DX11 HW! Only TXAA and GPU PhysX v3.3 and lower (3.4 using DirectCompute) is NVidia exclusive!

 

[Guest]

Great work Steve!Ty
This game is superb,and the graphical fidelity is also better than far cry 3.
I just started playing the game for a few hours or so,and getting really healthy(around 50-60+) and stable fps.Graphics(Himalayan paradise wow ) and gameplay mechanics both are great in fc4.Ubisoft did a great job.
Playing it on i5 2500K O'C 4 GHz(no volt mod) and sapphire 7950 HD (no O'C).

 

[ryan francis]

I have just bought the gtx 970 g1 and I have a lot of choppiness even at 70 fps ave. I mean I can play far cry 3 maxed out all teh way and not have any glitches at all so I hope they fix this issue because I was surprised to see how the gtx 970 played far cry4. my main concern is I was the only one and I got a faulty card but it seems like not...also does any one have audio issues at all like not hearing the words but everything else??

 

[Steve]

I have just bought the gtx 970 g1 and I have a lot of choppiness even at 70 fps ave. I mean I can play far cry 3 maxed out all teh way and not have any glitches at all so I hope they fix this issue because I was surprised to see how the gtx 970 played far cry4. my main concern is I was the only one and I got a faulty card but it seems like not...also does any one have audio issues at all like not hearing the words but everything else??

Yeah your card will be fine (assuming other games work), FC4 needs to be patched! Again