Get Best Far Cry 5 Performance: 10 Graphics Cards Tested at “Ultra” Quality
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Page 1:How We Tested
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Page 2:Graphics & Rendering Settings
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Page 3:Far Cry 5 Benchmarks: FPS, Frame Time & Smoothness
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Page 4:Benchmarks at 1080p and 1440p
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Page 5:How Far Cry 5 Uses CPU, RAM & Video Memory
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Page 6:How Far Cry 5 Uses Multiple Cores
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Page 7:Our Conclusions (Plus Bonus Testing With Two High-End Cards)
How Far Cry 5 Uses Multiple Cores
We are always looking for games that can truly exploit the resources offered by multi-core CPUs. According to our findings thus far, Far Cry 5 seems capable of utilizing physical and logical cores equally well. How does this affect performance?
Let's take a look at what happens when we start dialing down the number of available cores. For this experiment, we're using MSI's Radeon RX 580 Gaming X 8G and several core/thread combinations with our Ryzen 5 1600X.
- Far Cry 5 - FPS - 1920x1080, Ultra +TAA MSI RX 580 Gaming 8G
- Far Cry 5 - AvFPSoB - 1920x1080, Ultra +TAA MSI RX 580 Gaming 8G
- Far Cry 5 - FrameTime - 1920x1080, Ultra +TAA MSI RX 580 Gaming 8G
- Far Cry 5 - FrameTimeoB - 1920x1080, Ultra +TAA MSI RX 580 Gaming 8G
- Far Cry 5 - FrameTimeVariance - 1920x1080, Ultra +TAA MSI RX 580 Gaming 8G
- Far Cry 5 - Unevenness - 1920x1080, Ultra +TAA MSI RX 580 Gaming 8G
Without question, this is a unique case compared to other games we've tested. Having two physical cores is clearly insufficient for Far Cry 5. But adding two logical cores, yielding four total threads, enables a performance burst. AMD's simultaneous multi-threading technology is apparently put to good use.
Four physical cores are even better, though. And if you're using a mid-range graphics card such as AMD's Radeon RX 580, the game doesn't benefit from additional host processing resources. Eventually, the GPU does limit peak performance.
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Does anyone remember ID Soft's "Rage" launch from a few years back? That game was highly anticipated and also got good reviews, but suffered from a wide variety for technical problems on PC. The engine was so glitchy that it barely ran on AMD video cards for a week before they released drivers to make it playable. Also, there were hardly any configurable graphics options besides resolution. ID Soft didn't make the engine from scratch either. It derived from Doom 3's Tech Engine 4.
Comparing the Far Cry 5 launch to Rage reveals a night and day difference.
Also, would have been interesting to see a 8400 system compared to the 1600x at these resolutions with these cards.
You can't even shoot through a wooden fence in this game. For anyone interested, the video below shows all the things left out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCeEvQ68jY8&t=621s
"This is also the first time we have encountered a game that monopolizes CPU resources to such an extent. Could this be due to the Denuvo DRM and/or the physics engine?"
How are the CPU resources monopolized if you have minimal benefit beyond TWO cores plus hyperthreading?
That's not a very heavy load.
You're right about the reasons why Rage was such a mess at launch. As I recall, the drivers at the time were underdeveloped for OpenGL and Rage was asking for more than the drivers were used to. This was largely an AMD problem. I think Nvidia wasn't plagued the same way.
I used Rage for the comparison because it offered VERY few graphics customization options and it wouldn't run for a significant part of the PC user base, regardless of reason.