Far Cry 4 Graphics Features Performance Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Far Cry 4 Graphics Features Performance Review - We evaluate NVIDIA GameWorks graphics options in Far Cry 4 for performance, and which causes the greatest impact for GeForce GTX 980, AMD Radeon R9 290X and even last generation's GeForce GTX 780. We wanted to know exactly what Godrays, Soft Shadows, HBAO+, Fur, and AA do to FPS performance in Far Cry 4.
 
This in depth reviewing is great, cheers!

I hoped to see the GTX970 in the memory tests due to a recently revealed issue where it sometimes doesnt use more than around 3.6GB.
Is there any chance you can add it?
I'm a little concerned because the 970 is my current performance recommendation for those that dont want to splash out for the very best.

I also found that God Rays and Shadows were the best things to turn down on my 290x.
Any word from AMD if they can further improve performance on the 290 cards?
 
"We cannot explain why, across the board, the AMD Radeon R9 290X video card is filling more of its VRAM at every setting compared to the GeForce GTX 980, but likely due to compression being done more efficiently. If you recall compression efficiency is one that that was touted at the GTX 980 launch.

The memory subsystem has also been significantly revamped. GTX 980’s memory clock is over 15% higher than GTX 680, and GM204’s cache is larger and more efficient than Kepler’s design, reducing the number of memory requests that have to be made to DRAM. Improvements in our implementation of memory compression provide a further benefit in reducing DRAM traffic effectively amplifying the raw DRAM bandwidth in the system."

but the 780 uses the same amount of memory as the 980. should the 780's memory usage be higher because it isnt using the compression?
 
Great review! Very interesting the results between the R285 and R290X.

Would have been interesting to see the VRAM usage of the 285 vs. 290X, if it was more inline with the 780 & 980 than 290X.
 
I realize that the Fur tests were probably done during "normal" game play, but if you're baiting/farming for Snow Leopards or other predators, you will destroy your frame rate if you have fur on.

I was seeing 20-30 FPS with a 980 at 1920x1080 with Ultra/SMAA/Enhanced Godrays/Fur On and 15-20 animal corpses on screen.
 
MrMike said:
I realize that the Fur tests were probably done during "normal" game play, but if you're baiting/farming for Snow Leopards or other predators, you will destroy your frame rate if you have fur on.

I was seeing 20-30 FPS with a 980 at 1920x1080 with Ultra/SMAA/Enhanced Godrays/Fur On and 15-20 animal corpses on screen.
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lol, 15-20. I was going to say I never noticed when I killed 5 bears.
 
Dayaks said:
lol, 15-20. I was going to say I never noticed when I killed 5 bears.
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r6wAkJql.jpg
 
another Far Cry 4 [H] article?...Assassin's Creed Unity looks like the prettier game from a graphics standpoint
 
Thank you for your hard work. It looks like I was right to hold off buying the 4 GB GTX 980s for lack of VRAM at 4K.

Given your findings about VRAM, it would be interesting and useful to determine how much each feature affects VRAM usage. I appreciate it's probably a little late for Far Cry 4, but perhaps something you could consider for future articles?
 
MrMike said:
I realize that the Fur tests were probably done during "normal" game play, but if you're baiting/farming for Snow Leopards or other predators, you will destroy your frame rate if you have fur on.

I was seeing 20-30 FPS with a 980 at 1920x1080 with Ultra/SMAA/Enhanced Godrays/Fur On and 15-20 animal corpses on screen.
Click to expand...

I only saw those kinds of drops with the "nVidia" fur on. And yes, even with only 1-2 "fuzzy" animals on the screen (like bears or tigers) I got significant performance drops using that fur setting.
 
This table is revealing. At 3840x2160 (4K) with "Ultra" settings the GeForce GTX 980 with 4GB of VRAM is hitting its limit at 4042 MB of used memory. The AMD R9 290X GPU based video card is as well, though it is a couple hundred Megabytes less than the GTX 980 for some reason.
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So would everyone who says you don't need more than 4GB of VRAM STFU now?
 
I really like these kind of articles -- versus the gfx reviews that simply push everything to ultra, leaving one with no impression how a midrange card will work with actual reasonable settings.
 
lucidrenegade said:
So would everyone who says you don't need more than 4GB of VRAM STFU now?
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it's only necessary for 4K resolutions (and multi monitor setups)...everyone has been saying that all along...you don't need 4GB+ for 1080p/1200p/1440p
 
Great article thanks HardOCP! I used to love tweakguides for this same sort of article. It's great to to be able to squeeze the most out of a game by understanding which options have the most effect on performance whilst having the least effect on visual quality.

Cheers! :)
 
lucidrenegade said:
So would everyone who says you don't need more than 4GB of VRAM STFU now?
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I would if reviews could prove that 8GB cards can do more than 4GB cards, so far they have not.

Hitting 4GB VRAM has no relevance if the game does not improve in performance with the same card but with a higher VRAM.
 
xorbe said:
I really like these kind of articles -- versus the gfx reviews that simply push everything to ultra, leaving one with no impression how a midrange card will work with actual reasonable settings.
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For us to use these games in real world gameplay benchmarking, we absolutely need to know what is going on graphically so we can evaluate correctly. :)
 
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Great review! Thanks for the time and effort.

I still haven't bought FC4, but it's reassuring to know that my SLI 780 would be quite adequate at 1080p. I'll probably wait for the next patch until I purchase the game.
 
Arct1c0n said:
Some of us can't afford/justify 4k gaming, thus 3/4 gigs of VRAM is enough for our needs, so STFU yourself?
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LOL

Of course you don't need 4GB if you're running 1080p. Never said you did. However, there are a number of people around here that keep insisting that you absolutely do NOT need more than 4GB of VRAM for anything, even 4k. They're the ones my comment was directed at.
 
FYI - the 1.7 patch for Far Cry 4 has made things run noticeably smoother on my system (980 SLI @ 4k).
 
Brent_Justice said:
It will be the next patch, 1.8.0 that we see updates and fixes for the game. There is still an image quality improvement coming for Soft Shadows, 1.7.0 patch was NOT it.
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hopefully AC Unity gets another big patch like this as well
 
Excellent review [H]. This type of review is really helpful, in addition to your normal "playable at these settings" reviews.

I'm thinking on a gtx680 I can turn the shadows way down and hopefully be ok at 1200p.

I would say [these results] even show that the Gameworks runs fine on AMD (newest GCN) and performs worse on old GCN, Kepler (old nvidia). Which is to be expected. I would say based on these findings any current concerns that GW is harming AMD is for now, bogus.

AMD's real issue is that their newest GCN (285) is apparently having production issues, requiring them to release it running about 80 to 100mhz behind the 290 series of cards. But the potential is there in the architecture at least. If they can drop it to 20nm it will be very nice.
 
Brent_Justice said:
The only thing 1.7.0 patch did was add DLC, so, placebo effect.

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/995009-Patch-1-7-0-notes?p=10517125&viewfull=1#post10517125

It will be the next patch, 1.8.0 that we see updates and fixes for the game. There is still an image quality improvement coming for Soft Shadows, 1.7.0 patch was NOT it.
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God, the HORRENDOUS popping up shadows with soft shadows was enough for me to just turn shadows off entirely, it was that bad.
 
Brent_Justice said:
It will be the next patch, 1.8.0 that we see updates and fixes for the game. There is still an image quality improvement coming for Soft Shadows, 1.7.0 patch was NOT it.
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so the game was released on November 18th and it will take at least until patch 1.8.0 for it to look like it should...meaning 2 months at least for a stable game from a graphics and performance standpoint...why should anyone bother with buying games on Day 1 anymore
 
polonyc2 said:
so the game was released on November 18th and it will take at least until patch 1.8.0 for it to look like it should...meaning 2 months at least for a stable game from a graphics and performance standpoint...why should anyone bother with buying games on Day 1 anymore
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Egg Zactly
 
polonyc2 said:
so the game was released on November 18th and it will take at least until patch 1.8.0 for it to look like it should...meaning 2 months at least for a stable game from a graphics and performance standpoint...why should anyone bother with buying games on Day 1 anymore
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Impatience?
 
polonyc2 said:
so the game was released on November 18th and it will take at least until patch 1.8.0 for it to look like it should...meaning 2 months at least for a stable game from a graphics and performance standpoint...why should anyone bother with buying games on Day 1 anymore
Click to expand...

To be fair not all vendors pull this shit. GTA is pushed back again, because they want to polish it. iD software has historically never released anything with large bugs or long times to getting issues fixed.

This vendor just wanted to get on shelves in time for christmas, to get in on the holiday sales push. They could have waited 2 months and released it end of january, hopefully with these issues all behind them, and I think it would have sold just fine, and probably been better reviewed since Farcry3 was quite fun. Some VP up top decided this.
 
GoodBoy said:
To be fair not all vendors pull this shit. GTA is pushed back again, because they want to polish it. iD software has historically never released anything with large bugs or long times to getting issues fixed.

This vendor just wanted to get on shelves in time for christmas, to get in on the holiday sales push. They could have waited 2 months and released it end of january, hopefully with these issues all behind them, and I think it would have sold just fine, and probably been better reviewed since Farcry3 was quite fun. Some VP up top decided this.
Click to expand...

Ubisoft delayed WatchDogs for months and that didn't help and GTA IV was a mess on PC.
 
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