Question The myth of running Far Cry 5 without stutter

[Geoff Leven]

Hi all,

To this day I have still not been able to run Far Cry 5 smoothly without some very annoying stutter, nor the DLC/spinoffs from it inlcuding New Dawn. Not only these I can include Far Cry 4 in this matter as well. For the record Far Cry Primal for whatever reason ran very smoothly - both on my old and current PC.

Previously I was running an 17 3770k and a GTX 970 and it did me well for a good number or years. Since then I have upgraded and currently my specs are as follows:

OS: Windows 10 Pro
MAINBOARD: Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Elite
CPU: i5 9600k OC @ 4.6ghz all cores
RAM: 32GB G-Skill ripjaw @ 3200 mhz Dual channel
VIDEO CARD: Gigabyte Windforce RTX 2080
MOUSE: Logitech gaming 300s
MONITOR: AOC G2460PG G-Sync
HDD: Samsung Evo 850 Pro

Even with this setup, which is not top of the line but respectable, really should be able to run this game with excellent results. And thats true if I only consider fps as my main measure. But its the constant little stutters that never cease in this game that just down right ruin the experience and has made me not want to play still 2 years after its release.

Now however i'm in a position where I am seriously thinking of handing this PC off to family and starting from scratch building a new PC. Not solely for Far Cry 5 but definately want to build it having it in mind as one of the first games I want to play and finish without all that horrible stutter.

The stutter in question has been well documented in many many forums online and video upon video in Youtube documenting the issue. To summize the stutter I experience is as follows:

1. stutter when collecting item and materials from the world and arrows shot from yourself and picking them up again.
2. Stutter when autosaving - the game has a very aggresive autosave feature. Each time the game autosaves you can see 3 small dots in the top right of the screen flash a couple times.
3. Other stutters just happening at random.

Actually 1 and 2 are the same stutter because when NOT in a mission but just free roam, when each and every single item are collected from the world the game is making an autosave hence the stutter - this is exacerbated when items are grouped together and picking up 5-6 items all in a second or so the game becomes a stutterly mess.

Interestingly, when you are in a mission, the game does not autosave and when picking up items. The stutter from collecting items does not manifest, atleast from what I have tried just recently when starting a new game and completing the first several objectives on the tiny island before the rest of the map is opened to the player. I tested this by collecting materials placed in the world as well as shooting arrows at the ground and collecting them again. No stutter.

Now. From my own research I have found there may be some hardware solutions that may be able to brute force the issue with superior hardware. As the below video from Gamer Nexus concludes, CPU's with 6 or less cores/threads have a lot of trouble running the game without demonstrating stutter. With my current CPU being the 9600k as being reviewed in this video and benchamarked with Far Cry 5, I can reproduce the stutter at will that they had experienced and demonstrated in their video.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F92byoMgptU&t=4s


Secondly, because of the nature of the stutter, primarily being that it occurs when the game is autosaving, has made me think there is a problem when reading/writing to the hard drive. Really though with the game being installed currently on my SSD, I can't in my right mind say this can be a cause for the stutter. But we can only guess, maybe the code for autosaving has been written poorly - not optimised and so on. I would really like to know if someone has ran this game on a NVME drive and how the game performed.

I have also heard which makes sense - that because the autosave is so aggresive, meaning the game is constantly auto saving as statistics are constantly being tracked and uploaded to Ubisoft servers so they can make infographics. Statistics such as arrows shot, number of people being saved, animals skinned and so on etc.. So because all this is constantly being uploaded to Ubi servers makes sense for stutters like this to occur.

Lastly, I was watching another video today from Digital foundry, (video below @ 3:40) and there was a comment that the game is quite memory bandwidth bound, and any video card that has a 256bit memory bus configuration (including my previous GTX 970 and current RTX 2080) simply can't handle the game's need's efficiently. Now ofcourse their video was about running the game at 4k 60fps and I am simply trying to run the game at 1080p, but non the less it has me thinking.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoZqb6BDc4


I would like to make a call for anyone out there still playing or have Far Cry 5 or its related games, installed on thier PC and who were honestly able to play the game without the stutter, upload a small 3-5 minute 60fps video showing the frametime graph on screen. Showing the frametime graph is crucial as Youtube for example is not the best for smooth video playback recorded at 60fps so, the frametime graph make spikes much easier to detect.

I really want to be proven wrong, that it is possible to run the game without these stutters. Whether the problem lies in not having enough CPU cores/threads, or a video card with a high memory bus configurtion (384bit) I want to hear from all and anyone who has honestly had a better result then I ever did. All are most welcome to reply, but I'll only consider those who have the video evidence to prove it.

Thank you all for reading.

 

[boju]

Ive been playing games for at least 27 years, have a lot of experience. Farcry, especially 5 has always had this problem, nothing you can do. It's the way the game auto saves as you said, it's not your system. Not quite, maybe when storage IO access latency becomes just as fast as ram, then maybe it might be different.

It's just poor game design.

 

[leafbelly]

Not sure if this helps or not as this thread is getting a little long in the tooth, but I play Far Cry 5 and Far Cry New Dawn religiously on my system and have never noticed slow-downs or stutters at all. I run both in 1440p at (near) max settings. I have a few settings at medium.

Here are my specs:
i5-9600K (stock 4.4Ghz) with EVO 212 RGB Black cooler
16GB G.Skill Trident 3600 MHz RAM CL 16
NVidia 2060 Super FE
Boot drive: SP 480GB NVME PCIe 3x4
Steam Drive: 6TB 5400 RPM WD (w/Optane acceleration)*

*The only difference may be that I'm using an NVMe drive to save/write to the game, and it has blazing fast PCIe 3X4 speeds. My steam drive also has 32GB of Optane Memory to cache my hard drive. I specifically purchased a cheap 5400 RPM drive b/c I knew I'd be using Optane. And, when I test speeds, I get consistent read speeds of 1383MBps (seq.) and 1242 (random) and write speeds of 274 (both seq./random).

But, I loaded Far Cry on the NVMe to reduce load/save times, and it seems to have helped. I realize this is anecdotal and I have no stats to back me up, but it really does help.

BTW: The reason I purchased a "K" chip w/out overclocking is because it was between an 8700 and 9600k, and the 9600k was about $150 cheaper. Also, 9600 (nonK) is nearly impossible to find, and more expensive when you can find them. I've considered overclocking, but for now the 10 degree difference for 5% or so fps boost isn't worth it IMO, since my current display is 60Hz.

 

[boju]

So you're saying when you pickup perk magazines in FC5 it doesn't chug on any?

 

[leafbelly]

It goes into slow motion when I find a prepper stash, but I've never noticed a stutter when I pick up a magazine, but even if it does, I don't think that's related to the CPU. My guess is it's just the game auto-saving and probably more related to drive access times.

But, I probably wouldn't label a very tiny pause while picking up a perk as a "very annoying stutter." It's not a very vital or important gameplay moment.

I've been gaming for over 30 years, so to see a "stutter" during a save is not a big deal for me, at all. I guess it would be nice if it didn't happen, but it's probably just a few milliseconds and doesn't bother me - at all.

 

[leafbelly]

FWIW, here's someone who said they were able to solve the issue using Windows performance settings ...

This is from Reddit ...


Ok guys I finally fixed mine.

Notebook Odyssey z Gtx 1060 6gb I7 8750h 16gb ram I was getting stutters and slowdowns. But knowing that my specs where good enough I started to do some digging.

Windows PC tuner ...disabled all the privacy stuff. That actually made a big improvement. Now after that it still was stuttering and dropping frames. So what fixed it all the way was enabling ultimate windows performance mode. I had to enter a command in command prompt for it to appear. But now I'm playing buttery smooth after months of doing research about this issue. Now this is for ppl for have high end pcs or laptops that get slow downs or stuttering. Your welcome