Far Cry 4 Game Performance Review

Image Quality, Settings, And Test Setup

To the casual eye, Far Cry 4 looks like Far Cry 3. That's not a big surprise, since both are powered by the Dunia Engine 2. The landscape is noticeably different, though. Kyrat is no tropical jungle. It's a large, mountainous land with canyons, lakes and waterfalls. I can't think of a more expansive, beautiful game setting. It can be breathtaking. 

The animation above shows what you can expect from the various quality presets. Even low detail offers an attractive environment you can lose yourself in. With the ultra setting enabled, though, it's a sublime experience.

For our custom benchmark, we found a spot that's not only repeatable, but also demanding enough to really press the hardware. Vegetation and environmental effects seem to be the primary factor in dictating frame rate. A few animals or a small shootout won't have any meaningful impact. A 30-second run through the forest from inside an outpost is where we chose to test.

Test System And Hardware

As always, we strive to represent results across a wide range of graphics hardware. We tested every modern card we could get our hands on, from the Radeon HD 6450 to the new GeForce GTX 980 and dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2. We even tried testing GeForce GTX 970 and 980 cards in SLI. However, our samples aren't identical models, and SLI wasn't cooperative when we used different third-party solutions in tandem.

We tested the game at low, medium and ultra detail levels across a number of resolutions from 1280x720 (720p) to 3840x2160 (Ultra HD). The 4K resolution is equivalent to four 1080p monitors. Despite that massive number of pixels, 4K monitors are becoming more popular every day thanks to sub-$600 options like Asus' PB298Q:

Unlike older models that require splitting a single video stream into two HDMI inputs, this 28" display is capable of 3840x2160 video at 60Hz over a single DisplayPort 1.2 cable. You can read more about the screen in Asus PB287Q 28-Inch 4K Monitor Review: Ultra HD For $650.