Far Cry 3 GTX 560

[bryjoered]

I was wondering what the ideal settings are for Far cry 3 on this system:

GTX 560 2gb "Sparkle"
I7 2600k 3.2 gb processor
16gb ram

I'm not looking for 60 fps, just a framerate that never drops below 30 fps, and normally hovers around 40 fps.

I also should add that I feel that AA is not necessary and should only be added if you can max all other settings. I'm running in at 1080p. If someone has good reasoning to why a certain setting should be lowered in favor of AA I'm all ears. I really like shadow quality (one of the main perks of PC gaming), so disabling Ambient occlusion in favor of AA is not something I would like to do. I think MSAA is a huge resource hog.

 

[wilddivision]

you can turn everything high or very high (not ultra) except for shadows and postFX (turn them on medium or low)

also launch game only from dx11 shortcut (because if you`ll launch it from regular shortcut and choose dx11 from there - the game will still run in dx9)

i don't know why but for me dx11 works better then dx9 (im running 6950 1gb) and it gives about + 10 fps

and don't forget to turn ambient occlusion to SSAO

with this setting i think you will be able to achieve 45-60 fps
but there will be some drops to like 35 in specific locations

p.s. sorry for my english

 

[HEXiT]

also make sure the reder ahead frames matches the render ahead limit set in the nvidia panel. if its set to more than 2 then reduce it to 2 in both the panel and the game. any more and your likely to have mouse lag.
personally i use it on 1 because i dont have the render ahead option on the ati ccc panel.
set shading to hbao rather rather than ssao as it uses less resources on nvidia hardware than it does on ati.
this game although my fav for the last year has become a pain in the ass for many players...

 

[bryjoered]

Yeah, I bought the game last night and it really does look amazing. I'm going to switch to HBAO tonight and see if that makes a noticeable difference as I have it on the ATI HDAO. I just have been playing it on the optimal settings it put me on and it still looks very good. What I thought was interesting is I pushed everything to ultra and only lost like 10 FPS compared to very high. The Ambient Occlusion truly does crush performance, because I changed it to SSAO and it bumped from 20-40 fps.

 

[marieweaver132]

Hey!! Thanks for sharing this Far cry 3 game settings issue.. even I was getting the same issue.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

...whatever you're doing, make sure you have Nvidia's latest drivers. They're currently on v 310.90 at the time of this post. The last 3 versions were specifically meant to boost performance in FC3.

 

[bryjoered]

Yeah, first thing I did was update both the game and drivers( well the game does automatically) I read a benchmarking thing that says that SSAO is comparable to HDAO, with a lot better performance. I certainly will just use SSAO then. The ambient occlusion is really a killer on this game, turning it to SSAO and my framerate jumps into the 40s. I may even be able to get ~FPS on Ultra with SSAO enabled.

I would like to ask what you all's opinion is on graphical settings vs. AA. Is it better to sacrifice settings for AA, or do you max settings before you think about AA. I've always been one to want to max settings before I worry about AA. Certainly texture/shadow quality take a preference for me.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

Found this post on the EVGA forum. I haven't tried it but that might be want you're looking for to improve performance?

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1806130&mpage=1

 

[bryjoered]

Actually, when you turn the AO down to SSAO I get very smooth framerates at very high settings and even pumping graphics to ultra is playable. HDAO is not even a realistic option anymore because I noticed this weird shadowing effect where half the screen is always shaded. My recommendation is to change it to SSAO if you have an nvidia card and pump it to ultra and if you still have firepower left over increase the MSAA. 8x MSAA on Ultra will cripple most cards out there besides unless you have a 670+