Low FPS 48~55 on FarCry 4 GTX970+I54690

sindel · Feb 20, 2018

Hey guys!

I bought FARCRY 4 in the last steam sale and to my surprise the game sometimes have an awful drop to 48 FPS while playing, I believe my system is more than sufficent to play this game from 2014.

The game works on a steady 60 fps most of the time but the drops are very painful.

I even tried to test playing on the lowest settings but still, when looking to a distance view or even in the forest, combat and etc the FPS drops! The temps are regular.

You know what can I do?!

x i5 4690 @ 3.5GHz
x EVGA GTX970 Superclocked
x Corsair Vengeance 2 x 8GB 1600Mhz
x Gigabyte H97M Gaming 3
x SanDisk SSD 120GB | WD 1TB
x Coolermaster G700w PSU

boju · Feb 20, 2018

What resolution?

Are you using antialiasing? If so which one?

What is Fur set to?

And Shadows?

sindel · Feb 20, 2018

1080p

AA MSAAX2, the lowest

Fur OFF

Shadows high

Settings pictures:
https://imgur.com/u0uxRe3
https://imgur.com/AArzN5Y
https://imgur.com/qrm9qRz

thanks boju

boju · Feb 21, 2018

Thanks sindel for the pictures

Farcry 4 is still pretty heavy on the system even for it's age, can remember playing it on 780gtx and i was averaging between mid 40s to high 50's with pretty much those settings but with a few different. 970 should fair better with it being at 60fps mostly.

I'll list settings for you to try and see if it improves for you. I've been playing this game from the beginning so kind of know what works well but we'll see.

Firstly, turn up all settings to Ultra then we'll work it back.

Fur can be left to on, theres not really a performance hit like simulated and simulated is god ugly.

Trees relief to on

Godrays to Enhanced

Antialiasing to SMAA

Ambient Occlusion HBAO+

Once done see how that goes then lower quality for just Terrain, Vegetation, Shadows and textures to your liking. Shadows could try on medium.

Another alternative to using in-game's antialiasing is to DSR factors in NvidiaCP to 1.20x and turn off antialiasing in-game altogether. See if that improves picture quality and fps without using antialiasing for 1080p since the picture should be clearer.

boju · Feb 21, 2018

In NvidiaCP, thats pretty much standard other then power management and vsync?

As to prefer max power and vsync set to fast

sindel · Feb 22, 2018

Hi boju i'll test the settings... I already use the vsync fast feature too.

I found this tread on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/4mo8ir/far_cry_4_low_framerate_on_gtx_970/

I tried but sometimes the FPS drops still persists.

Do you have any other suggestion?

thanks

boju · Feb 22, 2018

Will still get fps drops in fc4 that cant be helped, like i said this game is still quite stressful on top systems today.

All you can do is use settings that give you the most fps while still looking decent. Your link and i pretty much said the same thing so you should have seen an fps increase using aa smaa alone.

Use fraps to monitor fps.

Did you try dsr factors and turn aa off? If not, try it and use fraps to monitor fps before and after trying smaa etc smaa turned off and dsr factors on.

sindel · Feb 22, 2018

boju :

the DSR factor is on the nvidia control panel, right?

boju · Feb 22, 2018

Yes in 3d management

sindel · Feb 22, 2018

And boju, i know its asking too much to maintain 60 FPS all the time

But I can't get my head around having drops to 45 FPS! With my spec it should never happen!

Idk why, but i'm very disappointed in PC gaming in general... every game I play always the same story

maxalge · Feb 22, 2018

sindel :

if its every game then you have an issue you need to fix

boju · Feb 22, 2018

I understand your frustration, PC gaming can be all over the place and doesn't help if games aren't well optimised. Farcry 4 isn't one of those. Farcry 5 is out soon and i've read that will be optimised so not surprising if that runs better, but we'll see mid March when benchmarks start to roll.

Unlike consoles where games are made to be optimised, PC's and the varying hardware and drivers can make things fidgety. Generally a lot of games work well and some needing trial and error to satisfy. Looking up tweaks as you did can be very helpful.

Open world games are the most taxing games, rendering so much detail even the console versions are crippled to sustain frame rates. Quality in PC is a lot higher.

970 is still decent and the frame rate you're getting is about right.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/01/07/far_cry_4_video_card_performance_review/6

The settings i suggested will help, just need patience to try.

---

Other things that can be tried or considered.

Windows itself, not much going on in the background (not too many running programs)
Windows has been installed cleanly (not continuing from an upgrade) A clean install free of any upgrade is best performing install of Windows.

Keeping up to date with graphics drivers. Not always, sometimes new drivers may hinder performance to a degree, so you'd either roll back or wait for the next update. When installing gpu drivers, use DDU first https://www.wagnardsoft.com/ so it cleans up old drivers throughout the os and registry. You'd do that in safemode after installing the program in normal Windows.

If Windows 10, disabling gamebar could help. Windows + G to enter gamebar. Gamebar was suppose to improve things but for a lot of people it's made things worse.

boju · Feb 22, 2018

Sorry that picture is of 1440p, thought i read 1080p.

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So with the settings you had before making this thread, you were getting min dips to 40s. Try the new settings and use fraps to monitor fps and have it show on screen while you play.

sindel · Feb 22, 2018

The DSR is missing when I try to only turn this on on FARCRY, but the DSR is avaible overall. Can I change the DSR scale just when I playing the game? Or I need to turn on to everything on my pc?

boju · Feb 22, 2018

Use DSR globally, it wont be used until you change to a resolution higher than 1080p ingame, you'll see the extra resolution settings.

boju · Feb 22, 2018

Turn off antialiasing

sindel · Feb 23, 2018

I tried this. Not working at all.
Here's a pic of my perfomance AA off, everything high and shadows to medium, all nvidia works off as well.

https://imgur.com/s9HOmyy

It can't be right

I'm starting to feel very sad for this, really... All I wanted was a playable game! Every time i'm combat in the little villages the FPS drops to 45

sindel · Feb 23, 2018

Thanks for your time too boju

boju · Feb 23, 2018

Your gpu usage is quite low should be hovering between 80s going on mid 90s, does it change if you raise the quality?

What Windows are you running?

Is it an upgrade? or fresh install?

Have you installed latest drivers? DDU first in safemode?

I don't think theres anything wrong with your 970, it's either Windows, gpu drivers or both.

boju · Feb 23, 2018

You welcome btw, its a shame you might have to reinstall Windows. 'Might'. It looks like maxalge could be right, something else is up.

sindel · Feb 24, 2018

Windows 10, falls creators

boju · Feb 24, 2018

Set windows and nvidia power plans to best performance

sindel · Feb 25, 2018

boju :

it is already set

boju · Feb 25, 2018

Found this, not sure if relevant now being a post from 2015 whether theres still a problem with cuda cores, but worth a shot.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/786223/geforce-900-series/gtx-970-low-performance-and-utilization/3/

I'm having the same issue myself, my MSI GTX 970 4G is having terrible framerate issues in both Far Cry 4, DA Inquisition, and Rome II. Processor is staying under half usage most of the time, yet my frame rate was dipping down in the 20's in both games whilst my GPU wasn't going about 40% usage. All my system drivers are up to date and firmware are flashed.

It's almost like the video card is stuck in energy saver mode and won't scale up to meet the needs of the game. One thing another person suggested in the 70+ page thread on the forums covering this same issue is to manually set CUDA - GPU's to All for each game executable under the NVIDA Control Panel. For some reason the global setting doesn't stick if you set it there.

Once I made that change I instantly got another 20 FPS in most of my games. Most games hover between 45-70 FPS now which isn't where I want them, but at least they're playable now until Nvidia figures out the driver issues with the 900 series cards.

My Rig:

Intel 4690K
MSI GTX 970 4G
16 GB RAM
520GB SSD

So in program settings under manage 3D, for Far Cry 4 > Cuda - GPUs > check option Use these GPUs and tick 970. Instead of global.

Fingers crossed.

loki1944 · Feb 25, 2018

sindel :

Make sure that you are running in full screen mode. You will take a performance hit if you are not.

Low FPS 48~55 on FarCry 4 GTX970+I54690

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