The third installment of the Far Cry series is more impressive as a game (to us, at least) than its predecessor. But do you need really powerful hardware to enjoy it? We benchmark 15 different graphics cards and eight different CPUs to find out.
The Far Cry franchise enjoys a distinguished place in the history of PC gaming. At the beginning of 2004, while we were busy drooling over how awesome John Carmack's upcoming Doom 3 looked in its promotional screenshots, upstart game developer Crytek shipped its own first-person shooter several months ahead of id's offering and wowed jaded enthusiasts accustomed to dark, enclosed environments. Although Doom 3 went on to become a huge commercial success, I personally think that Far Cry was the better game by far. It defined what a open-world sandbox shooter could be. There's no right or wrong way to play the game; we could use stealth or run-and-gun as we saw fit.
Crytek was not involved in Far Cry 2, and the franchise was (man)handled by Ubisoft's Montreal development team. It was a sequel in name, but didn't have anything to do with its predecessor, aside from the fact that they both featured palm trees. The game received generally positive reviews, but several of the Tom's Hardware editors remember Far Cry 2 as being forgettable. I don't think any of us bothered to finish that one.
As a result, my expectations of Far Cry 3 were deliberately held in check, as I half-expected a lame cash-in on the franchise. Happily, I was wrong; Ubisoft managed to create something very special. It has the original Far Cry's lush island setting and open-world freedom combined with The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion's exploration and loot mechanics, Battlefield's outpost capturing, Just Cause 2's vehicle variety and flavor, and a handful of unique innovations, including a crafting system that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out and a tattoo-based skill mechanic.
Outpost secured, raise the flag.
A huge interactive intro does an impeccable job of establishing the character and encouraging you to identify with his plight. I won't spoil any of the details, but I will issue a warning: this is one of those games that you should avoid if you don't have much self-control. That's how addictive it is. Allow it to, and it'll eat up the hours you should probably be spending with your family...
...and that's only the single-player campaign. I avoided the competitive and co-op modes because our goal here is to measure PC hardware performance; that's really difficult in the variable world of multi-player gaming. So, let's have a look at the game's graphics and detail settings.
Bad guys are red. Vehicular homicide is appropriate.



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 . . .