Today's Hard|Forum Post
Today's Hard|Forum Post
Date:
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Far Cry 4 Video Card Performance Review

We play Far Cry 4 on no less than twelve different GPUs for this in-depth look at what graphics settings are playable in Far Cry 4. We will talk about playable settings and show apples-to-apples so you know what to expect in this game and what upgrading your video card may do for you in this new game.

Introduction

Far Cry 4 was launched on November 18th of 2014. This has been a highly anticipated game ever since its announcement in early 2014. This is the sequel to the very successful game Far Cry 3 which was released in 2012. While this is a sequel, the storyline and setting are completely separate. Far Cry 4 however does use the same game engine as Far Cry 3 just updated with new art assets and technology embracing NVIDIA GameWorks.

Far Cry 4 on the PC currently has a Metacritic score of 80 and a user score of 6.5. This is at least higher than Assassin's Creed: Unity's user score of 2.4, but 6.5 is still not a stellar user score. There is a reason for this is because, gameplay and graphics bugs are many, and stability and performance issues abound.

Ubisoft has had a bad year in 2014 in terms of buggy, broken, unfinished, problem-ridden games at launch. We think 2014 will be remembered for the year of Ubisoft fails, and there are certainly plenty of these to reference. The reputation of Ubisoft among gamers is quite low at this point in time. Many have opted to stop pre-purchasing games but to instead adopt a wait and see approach when it comes to new games.

There have been plenty of new games with issues, and Far Cry 4 is no stranger to this. In fact, we would say Far Cry 4 was more buggy at launch than the previous Far Cry 3 launch was.

Article Image

If you'd like to learn more about this game in terms of mechanics, graphics, features and issues, there are several resources where some great information lies. The first resource is to check out our Far Cry 4 Performance Preview article. We went over all of the in-game graphics options and the NVIDIA GameWorks graphics features present in the game in our initial preview.

The second resource is NVIDIA's Far Cry 4 Graphics, Performance & Tweaking Guide. This article provides an in-depth look at the graphics features in this game and shows you comparison images so you know what these do. Kudos to Andrew Burnes on the work put into this article.

The third resource are Ubisoft's own forums. There is a Far Cry 4 forum topic with discussion boards dedicated to the PC version of this game and a place to keep up to date with patch updates. You will find these forums a great resource into seeing real-world user problems with this game. Other gamers are posting their issues, and there are certainly plenty of these. If you want to see what issues are happening to people in this game, spending an hour scouring the forums will reveal the buggy nature of this game.

The final resource is actually YouTube. TotalBiscuit's WTF is Far Cry 4 is an eye opener. There are also plenty of videos demonstrating the bugs in this game if you search for it, such as this one done in a hilarious manner (Warning, Extreme Language NSFW) worth watching.

Bugs and Patches and New Features

We have waited this long to do our full performance evaluation on Far Cry 4 for the sole reason that we knew new patches would be coming to fix some of the major bugs and change performance. We have been in deep contact with NVIDIA and Ubisoft on Far Cry 4 issues since the game launched. We have had many back-and-forth communications. This has allowed us to get a ton of information about the bugs to NVIDIA and Ubisoft so they can address these, as well as get information and a deeper understanding on the graphic’s features in this game.

Speaking of patches, this game has had a lot since its launch in November of last year. It has been now fifty days since the game has been launched as of this writing. That is a month and almost three weeks of this game being out, and there have been six, yes six, patches for this game and more to come. Here is a complete listing of the patches with some answers from NVIDIA and Ubisoft on features.

November Patches

There was a Day 1 patch of this game when this game was launched, which as you can read on the patch notes fixed a ton of issues.

It didn't stop there though, there was also another Day 1 patch, that's right, another patch following the initial patch called patch 1.2.0. As you can see from the patch notes, even more graphics bugs were tackled. This was just the first couple of days of the game being out!

It didn't stop there, following patch 1.2.0 was patch 1.3.0. Next of course, patch 1.4.0 was released on November 24th, November 24th, less than one week of the game being out and already four patches for the game!

Patch 1.5.0

This next patch was a pretty big update for the game as well, and we had a lot of feedback for both NVIDIA and Ubisoft as we really started to dive into the game around patch 1.5.0. On December 8th patch 1.5.0 was released. Again, a ton of issues, especially in terms of graphics were "fixed."

This patch also oddly removed the NVIDIA Preset graphics options in the game. There is a reason for this, we reached out to NVIDIA and Ubisoft to find out why the NVIDIA Presets were removed. The answer was given to us directly from Ubisoft:

We think it simplified the menu and NVIDIA agreed. The ‘NVIDIA’ setting simply turned on all GameWorks technology. GameWorks technology can now be enabled through advanced settings. All GameWorks in Far Cry 4 with the exception of TXAA works on AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. Labeling it ‘NVIDIA’ was confusing for users.

HairWorks Fur Now Working

We also found out that patch 1.5.0 did in fact finally enable the NVIDIA GameWorks HairWorks Fur technology. This one kind of went under the radar, no one noticed it. However, in patch 1.5.0 a new option called "Simulated" got added to the Fur option in the game. This is indeed the new HairWorks GameWorks NVIDIA technology being implemented in the game. We again reached out to NVIDIA and Ubisoft for clarification and got our answer directly from Ubisoft:

"HairWorks is on in 1.5.0 (simulated fur), but we will be tweaking it a bit. Expect to see better detail LOD (closer you get, finer the fur, more dense it gets) and distance LOD (reducing cost/complexity based on range) and proper multi-GPU support in a coming patch. Hairworks uses DX11 tessellation to create real geometry and uses a physics simulation to more closely mimic fur than other available solutions. We are working closely with both GPU vendors to help address any issues and we will be releasing post-launch updates and ongoing support for the game and its community. For the optimal Far Cry 4 experience, we highly recommend you download the latest patch (and upcoming updates) through Uplay or Steam."

Patch 1.5.0 also fixed the dark shadow SLI bug many people were experiencing when SLI was being used. This one didn't get specifically mentioned in the patch notes, but NVIDIA confirmed this was fixed in patch 1.5.0. We also reported to NVIDIA the SLI ghosting issue associated with SMAA and SLI being enabled.

Soft Shadows

In addition to some other problems, we have also been in contact with NVIDIA about Soft Shadow image quality in this game. Prior to this patch Soft Shadows was bugged and not being enabled even if you turned these on. This patch fixed that, and Soft Shadows now work. However, we have learned that there will be more tweaks made to Soft Shadows in the future. We have also reported a bug where the shadows flicker on and off as you move closer to and farther away from objects. These issues are known, and perhaps future patches will upgrade Soft Shadow image quality in this game.

Patch 1.6.0 and Hot Fix

Finally, the latest patch for this game is patch 1.6.0 and Hot Fix released December 24th. As you can see, various graphic fixes again, but no specifics mentioned sadly. This is the patch version we are testing with in this article, so all the performance is up to date with patch 1.6.0.

Future Patches

There are more patches coming. We know a patch is scheduled, but we don't exactly know when it will be released. We do know this, PCSS Soft Shadows will be receiving a bit of an update. There might be improvements in the level of detail and other factors in regards to improving Soft Shadow image quality. Therefore, for image quality, we are going to wait for the next patch to come out to dive into it.

Our Goals

This is Part 1 of a 3 part series of looking at Far Cry 4 in-depth on performance and image quality. In this first part we are focusing on the highest playable settings for a lot of video cards so you know what works and what image quality settings are the best balance of performance and image quality. This will allow you to see if upgrading to a new video card may allow a better experience. We will also include apples-to-apples graphs.

In Part 2, coming next week, we will dive into the specific feature performance of the game. We will find out how taxing Soft Shadows are, how taxing Godrays are, how AA settings compares, how Ambient Occlusion performance compares and Fur and other settings. We will find out specifically which is more demanding and which options you can sacrifice for smoother gameplay.

In Part 3 we will focus completely on image quality. We will see what the shadow options look like, what Godrays look like, what Ambient Occlusion looks like, and AA settings and Fur and other things. However, for this part we are going to wait for the next patch to be released to do it since we know Soft Shadows are getting a visual quality upgrade.