Far Cry 3 Performance, Benchmarked

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

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.

Test System And Graphics Hardware

As always, we strive to represent game performance across a wide range of graphics hardware. We're including cards from the low-end Radeon HD 6450 and GeForce GT 210 to multi-card Radeon HD 7870 CrossFire and GeForce GTX 660 SLI setups. This title does support triple-screen setups, so we also have benchmark results at 5760x1080 to present.

Each graphics card is set to its reference specifications to best represent a majority of the boards on the market.

Because there aren't any repeatable sequences in the dynamically-generated game world, we're benchmarking by running the same path through outposts and the jungle for 50 seconds. Results are consistent, within 1 FPS of each repeated test.

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Test System
CPUIntel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E), 3.3 GHz @ 4.25 GHz , Six Cores, LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3 Cache, Hyper-Threading enabled.
MotherboardASRock X79 Extreme9 (LGA 2011) Chipset: Intel X79 Express
NetworkingOn-Board Gigabit LAN controller
MemoryCorsair Vengeance LP PC3-16000, 4 x 4 GB, 1600 MT/s, CL 8-8-8-24-2T
GraphicsGeForce 210 1 GB DDR3GeForce GT 630 512 MB GDDR5GeForce GTX 650 2 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 660 2 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2 GB GDDR5GeForce GTX 670 2 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 6450 512 MB GDDR5Radeon HD 6670 512 MB DDR3Radeon HD 7750 1 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7770 1 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7850 1 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7870 2 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7950 Boost 3 GB GDDR5Radeon HD 7970 3 GB GDDR5
Hard DriveSamsung 470-series 256 GB (SSD)
PowerePower EP-1200E10-T2 1200 W ATX12V, EPS12V
Software and Drivers
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows 8
DirectXDirectX 11.1
Graphics DriversCatalyst 12.11 beta 11, Nvidia 310.70 beta
Benchmarks
Far Cry 3v.1.02, running through jungle from outpost, 50-second Fraps run
Don Woligroski
184 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sugetsu
    "The good news for folks with Piledriver-based processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i3-2100 (never mind the fact that the Core i3 costs $90 less)."

    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.
    Reply
  • rdc85
    :D

    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...
    Reply
  • Tom Burnqest
    sugetsu"The good news for folks with Piledriver-based processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i3-2100 (never mind the fact that the Core i3 costs $90 less)."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.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.
    Reply
  • echondo
    Why did the benchmark go from Medium straight to Ultra? Why not High settings? Now I don't know how well my 7870 will do on High at 1080p. It does pretty good at medium, but then gets destroyed with everything else on Ultra/high resolution.

    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.
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    I've heard that FC3 was a demanding game but I never realized that ultra settings was SUPER demanding. Anyways, heard a lot of good things about this game, maybe I'll give it a try.

    Thanks Don for the great review as always.
    Reply
  • Heironious
    2 x 2GB Galaxy GTX 560's in SLI with everything maxed in game and control panel gives around 35 FPS average. (4 X MSAA only though) Ran the cards to 78 which is fine. Turned it down in the NVIDIA control panel to get steadier frames. Not the best looking game you've seen? I think it looks better than even BF 3.

    Edit: These still screen shots don't do it justice.
    Reply
  • sayantan
    This game can be really demanding on CPU depending upon the environment. In a firefight that involves flame throwers and explosions along with some AIs , you can see the framerates drop from 60 to 40 in no time. Also I would like to mention that game stutters like hell with anything below 60 fps . Even 57 -58 fps is unplayable and gives me headache. So it is essential to tweak the settings such that the fps is above 60 most of the time. The good thing is if you have a decent system you can maintain 60fps without loosing too much visual fiedelity. I can run the game at 0x AA @1080p with all other details maxed out using OCed 7970(1060,1575) and 2500k(4.0Ghz).
    Reply
  • ilysaml
    Too late to publish the article, but it's good and indicative as usual!
    Reply
  • sayantan
    sugetsu"The good news for folks with Piledriver-based processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i3-2100 (never mind the fact that the Core i3 costs $90 less)."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.
    rdc85I 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...
    The good thing is the game doesn't scale up with intel CPUs making the 8350 really look good in comparison.

    Reply
  • sharpies
    sugetsu"The good news for folks with Piledriver-based processors is that the FX-8350 is nearly as quick as Intel's Core i3-2100 (never mind the fact that the Core i3 costs $90 less)."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.

    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.
    Reply