Far Cry 3 is powered by the Dunia 2 engine, a heavily modified version of Crytek's CryEngine. The game looks fantastic, and, more than anything, else it reminds me of the original Crysis (a testament to how ahead of its time that game was back in 2007). Some of Far Cry 3's visual elements may be superior to the original Crysis, though it appears that the environment isn't quite as detailed (this is subjective; I haven't played the original Crysis in a long time). No matter what, though, Far Cry 3 looks amazing. My one nitpick is that some of the animal animations seem to halt abruptly and unnaturally as they transition.

Far Cry 3 employs an advanced light culling system that brings down the overhead of shading many lights, some of which don't necessarily affect an entire scene. The title also optimizes multisample anti-aliasing by only applying the feature to "important" parts of the image, purportedly without sacrificing image quality. DirectCompute-accelerated HDAO and Direct3D 11 TSAA also serve to improve the title's better-looking graphics.

The game has five detail presets, but individual settings can be customized as you see fit. What follows are the options you see when you specify Low, Medium, High, Very High, and Ultra on the Overall Quality menu.

The changes between each detail level are often subtle. However, there are gradual improvements in shadow, geometry, and lighting quality as you go from one end of the spectrum to the other.

One thing you can't see in these screenshots is the LOD transition that happens as you approach objects. The developer chose a pixellated fade between levels of detail, rather than a softer transparency fade (perhaps to help performance?), and it's painfully obvious at times. The following screenshot captures the effect as it happens.
The pixellated LOD transition is obvious.
The good news is that this artifact is less apparent at higher detail settings because the transition happens further away from the camera. If you're using the Medium or Low preset, though, you're going to have to live with it.
I thinks it read like this
"The good news for folks with Piledriver-based processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i7-3960X (never mind the fact that the Core i7 costs more than $500..). "
hehe....
anyways good review...
My God... Are the reviewers of this website paid to make AMD look bad? Any person with a minimum hint of common sense can clearly see that there is virtually no difference between FX 8350, the i3, the i5 and i7. This is a big disservice to the community.
Why no middle ground? And why no 7970/680 tests in Crossfire/SLI? Why use single flagship cards, but then only use SLI/Crossfire for the medium bunch?
I'm very glad to see that this game uses Crossfire/SLI effectively, ~50% increase in performance for dual GPU configurations.
My God... Are the reviewers of this website paid to make AMD look bad? Any person with a minimum hint of common sense can clearly see that there is virtually no difference between FX 8350, the i3, the i5 and i7. This is a big disservice to the community.
I thinks it read like this
"The good news for folks with Piledriver-based processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i7-3960X (never mind the fact that the Core i7 costs more than $500..). "
hehe....
anyways good review...
LOL truthed ! I bet that 8350 when OCed can even close the tiny gap between it and the Intel processors. Can the i3 OC I don't think so.
Why no middle ground? And why no 7970/680 tests in Crossfire/SLI? Why use single flagship cards, but then only use SLI/Crossfire for the medium bunch?
I'm very glad to see that this game uses Crossfire/SLI effectively, ~50% increase in performance for dual GPU configurations.
Thanks Don for the great review as always.
Edit: These still screen shots don't do it justice.
The good thing is the game doesn't scale up with intel CPUs making the 8350 really look good in comparison.
Dude, the writer is only trying to point out that using a dual core i3 is more meaningful than using the 8core FX8350. AND B.T.W. its common sense than the latest games dont even benefit from so many cores. Stop moaning about whether or not the writer is an Intel fanboy because AMD performed well in the GPU section.
I use 310.70 drivers and evga GTX 580 in SLI
It's how it was worded as in they made it sound like the 8350 was at a grave disadvantage when that really was not the case at all in fact AMD needs to be praised as they made a good CPU for a change that is competitive with Intel's offerings in most tasks not to mention the AMD chip is a multithreading beast.
Until you go to Eyefinity modes, in which case the 7870s not only pull away from the 660s, but maintain a far more consistent frame rate. Purely academic at that framerate though.
Also, the fact that a heavily overclocked i7-3960X cannot beat the i5-3550 suggests it's GPU limited in the extreme. Piledriver cores are notably weaker per thread than Ivy Bridge (or Sandy Bridge, for that matter) which could explain the minimum frame rate being a little lower. If we really want to see CPU bottlenecking, I'd retest with lower quality graphics.
also toms should have done benchmark on high quality settings as well as thats the setting most people are going to play at
yeah i get the feeling this article was a little rushed. there are quite a few settings that when slightly lower without any apparent decrease in visuals can have a dramatic increase in frame rates. just simply going with HDAO and medium shadows raised my FPS from 35 to 48 on my GTX 570 OC'd to 855.
though it is a bit to ask for the author to spend 15 minutes tweaking out each card . . .