Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

High-Detail Benchmarks

Far Cry 3 Performance, Benchmarked
By

Our high-quality benchmarks are tested using Far Cry 3's Ultra quality preset, with the addition of 4x MSAA.

AMD's Radeon HD 7870 generally hovers under 30 FPS, below our rough target for playability. Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti and Radeon HD 7950 with Boost are only a little bit quicker. Even the powerful Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 670 are humbled by average frame rates just above 35 FPS. Only the two Radeon HD 7870s in CrossFire and GeForce GTX 660 cards in SLI manage to generate averages in excess of 45 FPS.

Speaking of multi-card solutions, notice that the Radeons achieve higher average results, but suffer lower minimum frame rates. In the frame rate-over-time chart, you can see that the GeForce boards in SLI yield smoother numbers than AMD's cards, which are not as consistent.

None of these cards are able to handle 5760x1080 using Far Cry 3's most demanding settings.

Although the Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 670 manage playable results at lower detail presets, I don't think we'll see a GPU able to handle this title at its Ultra detail settings using three screens until the next generation of hardware shows up.

We should also mention that we experienced some texture anomalies on the GeForce cards at this detail level. None of the results are playable, so the issue isn't particularly significant. But we did see something similar when Battlefield 3 debuted, requiring a driver revision from Nvidia to fix.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display all 11 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • -1 Hide
    mactronix , 14 December 2012 14:27

    I really don't see how you can properly test performance if you are going to change the GPU's for the different settings.
  • 4 Hide
    Anonymous , 14 December 2012 16:02
    The good news for folks with AMD processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i7-3960X (never mind the fact that the Core i3 costs $1050 less).

    The good news for folks with Intel processors is that the i3-2100 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i7-3960X (never mind the fact that the Core i3 costs $1125 less).
  • 1 Hide
    tranzz , 14 December 2012 16:30
    @x86man

    Almost word for word you beat me to it
  • 0 Hide
    HEXiT , 14 December 2012 18:28
    i really did enjoy this title. 2 good endings made a fitting finale to a very well thought out single player campaign. defiantly 1 of the better titles of this year. i will go back and play this 1 again and next time i will likely take a much less rushed approach. overall i would say its a very good 8/10
  • -1 Hide
    bemused_fred , 15 December 2012 16:07
    "As far as 5760x1080 goes, forget about playing at Ultra quality with 4x MSAA. We're not sure that there's a rig out there able to deliver perfectly playable performance without some sort of compromise on detail settings."

    The GTX 690 would like a few words with you....
  • 0 Hide
    sam_p_lay , 15 December 2012 16:49
    bemused_fred"As far as 5760x1080 goes, forget about playing at Ultra quality with 4x MSAA. We're not sure that there's a rig out there able to deliver perfectly playable performance without some sort of compromise on detail settings."The GTX 690 would like a few words with you....


    Judging by the 15fps on the 7970, you'd be more than one GTX690 to make this playable! Alternatively, four GTX680s might do it... or just don't play 5760x1080 and Ultra :-)
  • 0 Hide
    deekosrsv , 17 December 2012 15:20
    This is where i get a little confused. I have two 5850's running in crossfire and can play this on Ultra @1080 perfectly well. I was thinking 'i'll have to upgrade for this title' but no? Are these cards punching well above their age/weight?? - would love feedback please.
    They are coupled to an i5-2500k, 8gb Ram and an SSD
  • 0 Hide
    Opaz1ka , 18 December 2012 23:37
    mactronixI really don't see how you can properly test performance if you are going to change the GPU's for the different settings.

    What?
  • 0 Hide
    joeh_87 , 5 January 2013 02:57
    Strange, Medium quality my 7850 + Phenom II x4 965 @ 3.7ghz gets me a 60fps avg @ 1920x1080 these report 47fps avg though not sure where these are tested in the game, nor what CPU they used with the GPU. I use Custom Settings everything maxed bar Post FX which is medium. Post FX higher adds motion blur and kills my FPS also. for one i hate Motion blur so don't mind it off even if i lose some other visuals.
  • 0 Hide
    MajinCry , 12 February 2013 21:30
    @Joeh

    Drivers.
  • 0 Hide
    skuds , 15 March 2013 19:35
    Well even stranger I am running it in ultra @1920x1080 with two gtx560 Ti in sli runs fine.