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Far Cry 4 PC performance thread

If i buy a game used, is it considered sticking it to UBIsoft?

I'm uninstalling the game and just going to borrow the xbone copy from my friend when he's done. Gonna pick up ubisoft games used from now on just b/c i want to play their games and give them no support!!

EDIT: for consoles, of course.
 

plc268

Member
I must not be very sensitive to stuttering then because it does not seem to be happening much at all in my case except when I'm gliding. I distinctly remember stuttering/hitching in Watch Dogs around launch but even then it seemed really tame in my case and didn't hamper my enjoyment at all.

I get light stuttering, and it simply makes me nauseous after 5 minutes. It's hard to explain, but my fps counter says 90 fps (with no major dips), but it sure as hell doesn't feel like 90fps. I've played gamese at 30fps that felt smoother than this.

And this is with the mipmapping disabled, running on SLI 980.

Among other things, it took me forever to figure out some other issues I had with the game. I have a 21:9 monitor, and the only way I could get it to not stretch 16:9 was to use borderless window mode (even setting the in game resolution to 2560x1440 stretched it out to the full 3440x1440, even with my scaling mode set to "Aspect Ratio" or "No scaling" in the nvidia control panel). I'd happily play in borderless window, but I lose FoV settings, and it doesn't respect the vsync setting. I'd rather play with vsync off and get the tearing than to play with the input lag. In borderless, my fps is locked to 60.

On top of that, in borderless, I have to turn AA off, otherwise I get visual artifacts like screen burn in. There's probably a different term for it (although I'm not sure it's even common), but if you look at a scene for a second or so, and then move the camera, you get trace outlines of the previous scene. I had this in Far Cry 3 as well, to some extent, but not nearly as bad as this. Going to full screen fixes this (or disabling AA), but I get stretched video again.

I'll just reiterate what everyone else is saying, this port is an absolute mess on the PC. I'd be even more pissed if I actually paid for the game instead of receiving it for free.
 

b0bbyJ03

Member
I NVidia FC4 guide shows that soft shadows have less of a performance impact than shadows on high. Is this actually the case? If so that's weird but I'll take it.
 

riflen

Member
I get light stuttering, and it simply makes me nauseous after 5 minutes. It's hard to explain, but my fps counter says 90 fps (with no major dips), but it sure as hell doesn't feel like 90fps. I've played gamese at 30fps that felt smoother than this.

And this is with the mipmapping disabled, running on SLI 980.

Among other things, it took me forever to figure out some other issues I had with the game. I have a 21:9 monitor, and the only way I could get it to not stretch 16:9 was to use borderless window mode (even setting the in game resolution to 2560x1440 stretched it out to the full 3440x1440, even with my scaling mode set to "Aspect Ratio" or "No scaling" in the nvidia control panel). I'd happily play in borderless window, but I lose FoV settings, and it doesn't respect the vsync setting. I'd rather play with vsync off and get the tearing than to play with the input lag. In borderless, my fps is locked to 60.

On top of that, in borderless, I have to turn AA off, otherwise I get visual artifacts like screen burn in. There's probably a different term for it (although I'm not sure it's even common), but if you look at a scene for a second or so, and then move the camera, you get trace outlines of the previous scene. I had this in Far Cry 3 as well, to some extent, but not nearly as bad as this. Going to full screen fixes this (or disabling AA), but I get stretched video again.

I'll just reiterate what everyone else is saying, this port is an absolute mess on the PC. I'd be even more pissed if I actually paid for the game instead of receiving it for free.

FYI, SLI wont work properly in any windowed mode. Full screen modes only. So, another thing to deal with.

The "burn in" problem sounds like a bug. An incompatibility between anti-aliasing methods that have a temporal component (SMAA in this game and TXAA) and SLI. I get it too, but only if I alt-tab or change window modes after the game is loaded.
After a while I got fed up and just forced FXAA through the NVCP and turned off in game AA. At 2560x1440 it's an OK solution until we get something less broken imo.
 

plc268

Member
FYI, SLI wont work properly in any windowed mode. Full screen modes only. So, another thing to deal with.

The "burn in" problem sounds like a bug. An incompatibility between anti-aliasing methods that have a temporal component (SMAA in this game and TXAA) and SLI. I get it too, but only if I alt-tab or change window modes after the game is loaded.
After a while I got fed up and just forced FXAA through the NVCP and turned off in game AA. At 2560x1440 it's an OK solution until we get something less broken imo.

I forgot to mention that most of those bugs were present before I started testing with the second 980... it wasn't until after I added the second 980 that I realized what was giving me the AA artifacts.
 
For the love of CHRIST. Is there a way to skip cutscenes????

Pissing me off having to sit through a 5 minute cutscene during certain missions over and over again...
 

ELCID777

Neo Member
It's weird.....

I uninstalled the game, wiped registry, and reinstalled. Went into the .xml and setGPUMaxBufferedFrames to 1 and now it's smoother than ever.

Still getting the very occasional, slight hitching, but it almost never happens now. It's actually pretty damn smooth.

It's weird because when I tried that "fix" before, it did nothing.
 
i have a problem now with the game

if i use the borderless setting the game looks mudier but the controls are way better, ( gamepad) but is choppy sometimes,with the fullscreen setting the game looks more vivid but the gamepad controls are laggy as hell

gtx770 4gb here,btw shangrila its a system hog in this game
 

Corpsepyre

Banned
The mip map thing helped a LOT. Was stuttering its ass off, but is MUCH better now.

Textures have turned crap-ish, but nothing too bad. Atleast its playing good now.

R9 270x here, and I've set textures to ultra, shadows to high, post-fx to medium and just about everything else at very high to ultra, with SMAA and SSAO. No Godrays or fur. Godrays look like utter shit, and volumetric fog makes everything look super blurry.

Getting around 40-60-70 fps now, with relatively much less stuttering.
 

b0uncyfr0

Member
Its like there's a f*cking radius around the player in every Ubisoft game where rendering is ok and anything outside that radius is just plain shite. Similar thing in Unity with the pop in and npc gender change as you move.

Its ridiculous.
 

Evo X

Member
Can't do the mouse fix. Everytime I drag and drop patch.dat into the unpacker, it crashes.

Edit: Never mind. Ran as Admin and it worked. Gonna go try it now and see if it made a difference.
 

Skyzard

Banned
Wild guess b0uncyfr0, but tried forcing 16x AF?

Yeah, wasn't sure if it was new but I notice it every time i'm in a vehicle.

Yup, have the same issue.

Thanks for confirming guys. I had it before 1.04 as well.

Not sure what setting it was, perhaps in-game triple buffering, but it feels smoother now.

This game is damn good tbh. Road poppin, standing stutter and watch/time issues aren't huge. Still enjoying this a lot.

I'd love to disable godrays too, but sometimes it looks incredible. Then other times you walk a meter towards a mountain and the piss smear sets in.

https://dl2.volafile.io/get/gZuZPpF0VEUz/Far Cry 4 11.26.2014 - 04.33.49.13.webm

I wish all these issues were sorted before launch. Hopefully they'll actually get sorted.
 
Wild guess b0uncyfr0, but tried forcing 16x AF?





Thanks for confirming guys. I had it before 1.04 as well.

Not sure what setting it was, perhaps in-game triple buffering, but it feels smoother now.

This game is damn good tbh. Road poppin, standing stutter and watch/time issues aren't huge. Still enjoying this a lot.

I'd love to disable godrays too, but sometimes it looks incredible. Then other times you walk a meter towards a mountain and the piss smear sets in.

https://dl2.volafile.io/get/gZuZPpF0VEUz/Far Cry 4 11.26.2014 - 04.33.49.13.webm

I wish all these issues were sorted before launch. Hopefully they'll actually get sorted.

LOL that's the exact same area I noticed it in too.. Seems like a bug or something. Doesn't seem normal..
 

derFeef

Member
I remember FC3 not saving video settings right and only a restart would apply them properly, is this problem still present?

Man I feel like I should get good performance out of my two 7950's :/
 
I'm gonna try the FC4 demo on PS4 n see how smooth it feels. I'm gonna laugh my ass off if it feels smoother than my PC version which generally stays over 60fps but with mad stuttering.
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
I'm gonna try the FC4 demo on PS4 n see how smooth it feels. I'm gonna laugh my ass off if it feels smoother than my PC version which generally stays over 60fps but with mad stuttering.

Prepare to laugh your ass off.

I remember FC3 not saving video settings right and only a restart would apply them properly, is this problem still present?

Man I feel like I should get good performance out of my two 7950's :/

The performance is not really a problem. It's the stuttering issues that are the bigger concern.
 
I played through the prologue and I think I need a new GPU. My 2GB 670 really does not cut it at 2560x1440 for this game. I'm also only getting like a 8-10 fps difference from max settings to the lowest settings (changed at the main menu so the texture setting actually sticks), so I'm a little confused.
 

BPoole

Member
I played through the prologue and I think I need a new GPU. My 2GB 670 really does not cut it at 2560x1440 for this game. I'm also only getting like a 8-10 fps difference from max settings to the lowest settings (changed at the main menu so the texture setting actually sticks), so I'm a little confused.
Ubigames are horrible indicators of hardware performance
 

pestul

Member
So all these changes we make, will a new little patch erase everything again each time? Is it a good idea to erase the gamerproxile.xml each time as well (save a backup)?
 

pestul

Member
Implemented all the changes from the OP. The mouse smoothing fix is the real deal. Definitely makes a big improvement. The MipMapping fix does completely get rid of the stuttering for me, but the textures look like ass. :(

I think I'm actually going to take the odd hiccup or too and go with the nicer textures.

EDIT: Hmm, I have forced 16x Anisotropic filtering in NVCP and yet it still seems like it's not working. Any ideas?
 

Elsolar

Member
Anyone else getting a very strange issue where shadows near the player don't render correctly? It's like there's a box near the camera where shadows don't render correctly (or at all) on the environment. It's incredibly jarring, and it started happening a couple days ago out of nowhere. Here's a video of the issue:

Youtube

You can see the shadows go haywire in the beginning of the video, and at the end you can see how shadows stop rendering when the camera gets too close. I'm running the game on a GTX 970 and i5-3570k. Anyone else seen this issue?
 
I really should have checked this thread before buying this game on PC. What a mess.

Black crush, stuttering, and LOD issues all over the place have made this incredibly frustrating. Why do I seem to get a completely black frame every now and then?
 

daninthemix

Member
Has anyone tried this for a stuttering fix?

Add '-disablepagefilecheck' to the end of a shortcut and use that to launch the game. Apparently the same command helped with Watch Dogs.
 

Kinthalis

Banned
This is the third Ubisoft game with the SAME stuttering issue on PC. What exactly is the problem?

Is it just inefficient use of the PCIE bus when streaming assets around from system RAM to GPU buffer?

What the hell could the issue be? There are other open world games that don't have this issue on PC, even on GPU's with small GPU buffers.
 
The mouse fix involving the Dunia unpacker definitely worked for me. Before, every shootout was frustrating.

I also did the tweak for GPUMaxBufferedFrames (changed it from 0 to 1) and it SEEMS to have reduced my stuttering. However, I need to test it a bit more to know for sure. I used 1 because it was recommended on another board, but I'll be sure to test 2 and 3 when I have the time.

Has anyone else tried the alpha-to-coverage tweak, mentioned by the Nvidia guide in the OP?

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...aking-guide#far-cry-4-alpha-to-coverage-tweak

I didn't notice any difference (in fps or visual quality) by turning it off but my friend swears it got him 2-3 more fps. For anyone that's hovering at their framerate preference threshold, it might be worth trying.
 

Elsolar

Member
The mouse fix involving the Dunia unpacker definitely worked for me. Before, every shootout was frustrating.

I also did the tweak for GPUMaxBufferedFrames (changed it from 0 to 1) and it SEEMS to have reduced my stuttering. However, I need to test it a bit more to know for sure. I used 1 because it was recommended on another board, but I'll be sure to test 2 and 3 when I have the time.

Has anyone else tried the alpha-to-coverage tweak, mentioned by the Nvidia guide in the OP?

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...aking-guide#far-cry-4-alpha-to-coverage-tweak

I didn't notice any difference (in fps or visual quality) by turning it off but my friend swears it got him 2-3 more fps. For anyone that's hovering at their framerate preference threshold, it might be worth trying.

It'll only make a difference if you have some sort of multi-sampling enabled, which is why the guy from the Nvidia guide reports such a performance benefit - I'm pretty sure he did all his benchmarks with 4x TXAA enabled.
 

IronRinn

Member
I really want to keep playing this game but it's kind of difficult when twice an in-game day I can't see jack shit. Really hope they fix this SLI shit soon.
 

riflen

Member
Anyone else getting a very strange issue where shadows near the player don't render correctly? It's like there's a box near the camera where shadows don't render correctly (or at all) on the environment. It's incredibly jarring, and it started happening a couple days ago out of nowhere. Here's a video of the issue:

Youtube

You can see the shadows go haywire in the beginning of the video, and at the end you can see how shadows stop rendering when the camera gets too close. I'm running the game on a GTX 970 and i5-3570k. Anyone else seen this issue?

I've seen other videos of this problem recently. What build of the game are you using and does this problem only happen in the north area of the map?

Has anyone tried this for a stuttering fix?

Add '-disablepagefilecheck' to the end of a shortcut and use that to launch the game. Apparently the same command helped with Watch Dogs.

Pretty sure that was proven to do nothing for Watch_Dogs and came from some fix for a totally unrelated game. Worth the 5 mins to try though, I guess.

This is the third Ubisoft game with the SAME stuttering issue on PC. What exactly is the problem?

Is it just inefficient use of the PCIE bus when streaming assets around from system RAM to GPU buffer?

What the hell could the issue be? There are other open world games that don't have this issue on PC, even on GPU's with small GPU buffers.

I think there's more than one cause. It doesn't help that they've yet again been unable to parallelise their game logic very well. CPU thread 2 is pegged at 99% constantly for most configurations, while the other CPU cores sit underutilised. I know this is a weakness of the DX11API, but it seems to really flummox Ubisoft more than most.

Assuming MaLDo and others were right (it's pretty much proven to be the case, as his mod fixed the behaviour), their Watch_Dogs texture/mipmap handling was really odd and does not fill me with confidence that their teams are getting enough time to produce a polished product.
 

Akronis

Member
Pretty sure that was proven to do nothing for Watch_Dogs and came from some fix for a totally unrelated game. Worth the 5 mins to try though, I guess.

Correct, it was for Dawn of War 2. Everyone just wanted it to be a solution and ignored that part ;)
 

zychi

Banned
Where is the cheapest place I can buy this for PC? I know Steam Autumn sale starts soon, but I'd like to play it over this weekend
 

pestul

Member
It'll only make a difference if you have some sort of multi-sampling enabled, which is why the guy from the Nvidia guide reports such a performance benefit - I'm pretty sure he did all his benchmarks with 4x TXAA enabled.

Oh thanks. Probably don't need it with SMAA then.
 

b0bbyJ03

Member
Did they ever fix watch dogs stuttering? If they did then I'll just wait till they fix far cry, otherwise I might as well just play it now since I know I shouldn't expect a fix. And his is the last ubisoft game I ever buy without knowing for a fact that it works. This is bullshit
 
I really want to keep playing this game but it's kind of difficult when twice an in-game day I can't see jack shit. Really hope they fix this SLI shit soon.
change the sli compatibility bits in Nvidia inspector
search the thread
it fixed the black crush I was having w/ SLI
 

alife

Member
The mouse fix involving the Dunia unpacker definitely worked for me. Before, every shootout was frustrating.

I also did the tweak for GPUMaxBufferedFrames (changed it from 0 to 1) and it SEEMS to have reduced my stuttering. However, I need to test it a bit more to know for sure. I used 1 because it was recommended on another board, but I'll be sure to test 2 and 3 when I have the time.

Has anyone else tried the alpha-to-coverage tweak, mentioned by the Nvidia guide in the OP?

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...aking-guide#far-cry-4-alpha-to-coverage-tweak

I didn't notice any difference (in fps or visual quality) by turning it off but my friend swears it got him 2-3 more fps. For anyone that's hovering at their framerate preference threshold, it might be worth trying.

Setting GPUMaxBufferedFrames to 3 removed most of the stuttering for me.
 
Where is the cheapest place I can buy this for PC? I know Steam Autumn sale starts soon, but I'd like to play it over this weekend

Check out the Gaf buy/sell/trade thread. I bought someone else's Nvidia pick your path promo code for $35. There may be more floating about.
 
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