Far Cry 3: frame rate issue

[ohfour238]

I'm having a weird problem with Far Cry 3. No matter what resolution or quality configuration I use (even everything down to low), the higher I look up, my frame rate drops. For example: on Ultra, i average around 40-45fps if i'm looking down. As I look up more, the frame rate starts to decrease. By the time I am looking directly up into the sky (no complex scenes, just a blue sky) the frame rate is down into the single digits. If I put the overall quality on Low, looking at the ground, i average about 75-80fps and as I look up, it also decreases to about 20-25 by the time I am looking directly up. Also, that frame rate will carry over into the pause menu if I pause at that time. Meaning, if I pause it when it's at 5 fps, I have to navigate the pause menu at 5 fps; it's so weird.

I've messed with each individual setting: resolution, vsync, direct x, etc... Nothing seems to make a difference. I don't exactly have a crappy computer so I think it should be able to run this game on a decent quality level at least. Is this yet another issue with my 2 GPU video card and games not being very compatible with it? I know I could not get Shift 2 to run well at all and I was told it was because of my video card. On the other hand, I can run some games like Grid maxed out without a hiccup.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I think your cpu is a major issue. Its holding you back.

 

[Face2Face]

I'm having a weird problem with Far Cry 3. No matter what resolution or quality configuration I use (even everything down to low), the higher I look up, my frame rate drops. For example: on Ultra, i average around 40-45fps if i'm looking down. As I look up more, the frame rate starts to decrease. By the time I am looking directly up into the sky (no complex scenes, just a blue sky) the frame rate is down into the single digits. If I put the overall quality on Low, looking at the ground, i average about 75-80fps and as I look up, it also decreases to about 20-25 by the time I am looking directly up. Also, that frame rate will carry over into the pause menu if I pause at that time. Meaning, if I pause it when it's at 5 fps, I have to navigate the pause menu at 5 fps; it's so weird.

I've messed with each individual setting: resolution, vsync, direct x, etc... Nothing seems to make a difference. I don't exactly have a crappy computer so I think it should be able to run this game on a decent quality level at least. Is this yet another issue with my 2 GPU video card and games not being very compatible with it? I know I could not get Shift 2 to run well at all and I was told it was because of my video card. On the other hand, I can run some games like Grid maxed out without a hiccup.

Make sure you have the newest drivers installed. You want to make sure both of your GPU's are being utilized, so open up Afterburner or a program like it with an OSD of your GPU usage.

I would also change the POST FX setting in the game to LOW.

I doubt it's your CPU. I play the game all on ultra with MSAA @ 2X on 1080P with POST FX to MED and run the game between 50-60 + FPS. I have to enable Vsync because the tearing gets really annoying.

It would dip down to the 12-15 FPS when looking out into the ocean - I had to lower the POST FX setting to MED and now it doesn't drop frame-rate at all.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Your system isn't powerful enough, especially the CPU.

 

[JamesV]

While the power of his PC may be an issue, it's the game itself that has major issues. I get the exact same thing; looking at the sky drops frames for some reason.

I also had the stutter, where @ 60+ frames per second, it would stutter every time you moved the mouse. No change at all from DX9 to DX11, lowest settings to ultra - same stutter always present, yet no drop in frames.

I did however fix it to a point by turning off post processing. It's still not entirely smooth (and again, no frame rate drops), but it's much more playable now. You might want to try this OP...

My Docs->My Games->Far Cry 3, open Gamerprofile.xml and set the value PostFxQuality="false". It probably says "low", just change it to false. After doing that, set the file to Read Only, or the game will rewrite the old values.

 

[ohfour238]

Turning off the Post FX helped a bit. at 1920x1080, no MSAA, everything except Post FX maxed, I was getting 50-60 fps. It would still drop to about 25-30 if I looked straight up into the sky though. Running, shooting, jumping through water and all that didn't even make it drop as much as it does just looking straight up, very weird.

I'm not understanding the lack of CPU power though. If I can achieve 50-60fps with almost everything maxed while running around busy environments, why would my CPU power become an issue if i'm simply looking up at a blue sky? I'm not arguing it, just legitimately not understanding why that would be.

 

[codyray10]

OP, are you willing to overclock your cpu/nb at all? I have the same CPU @ 4ghz and NB @ 2600. OC'ing may help with your minimum FPS. This is assuming your mobo has overclocking options.

 

[Face2Face]

Run MSI afterburner and enable the OSD for GPU usage and GPU mem usage - I am interested to see what's going on there. Also, keep tabs on your CPU usage as well.

 

[ohfour238]

OP, are you willing to overclock your cpu/nb at all? I have the same CPU @ 4ghz and NB @ 2600. OC'ing may help with your minimum FPS. This is assuming your mobo has overclocking options.

I would if it would ultimately resolve this issue.

Run MSI afterburner and enable the OSD for GPU usage and GPU mem usage - I am interested to see what's going on there. Also, keep tabs on your CPU usage as well.

I ran AMD OverDrive, which has a CPU and GPU status monitor. I'm confused with it's results. While running around, when the game is playing at it's smoothest, all 4 CPU cores are averaging around 70-80% and all GPU cores (OverDrive shows 4) averages around 90%. When I look up into the sky to trigger the frame rate loss, the CPU cores drop all the way down to 10-30% and the GPU cores drop to about 75%. Anybody make sense of that?

Also, this may be comparing apples to oranges but I just looked at the status monitors while playing Grid. 1920x1080, 8X MSAA, everything set to it's highest possible quality setting - the game does NOT skip a beat, constant 60fps, and both my CPU and GPU core monitors average around 50%.

 

[Face2Face]

I would if it would ultimately resolve this issue.



I ran AMD OverDrive, which has a CPU and GPU status monitor. I'm confused with it's results. While running around, when the game is playing at it's smoothest, all 4 CPU cores are averaging around 70-80% and all GPU cores (OverDrive shows 4) averages around 90%. When I look up into the sky to trigger the frame rate loss, the CPU cores drop all the way down to 10-30% and the GPU cores drop to about 75%. Anybody make sense of that?

Also, this may be comparing apples to oranges but I just looked at the status monitors while playing Grid. 1920x1080, 8X MSAA, everything set to it's highest possible quality setting - the game does NOT skip a beat, constant 60fps, and both my CPU and GPU core monitors average around 50%.

Hmm... Did you happen to keep tabs on your video memory usage? I know your dual-gpu card only has 1GB of vram for each GPU which may cause the frame-rate loss? Have you tried lowering the settings to High or medium too see how it runs?

I also wouldn't compare GRID to FarCry 3 - Not really the same level of requirements or graphics.

 

[ohfour238]

Dropped all quality settings down to medium (with post FX still on low). GPU1 and GPU2 usage was usually maxed out at 98-99%. Afterburner only had memory usage for GPU1 and that was hovering around 1070, regardless of smooth play or not.

 

[ohfour238]

I'm not exactly sure what it was but I figured it wouldn't hurt to check and update my mainboard's bios. Well, now I'm noticing a considerable increase in performance, even outside of Far Cry. With the game on Ultra (except Post FX), I was averaging around 50-55 fps now, sometimes into the 60's. If I look into the sky, it still dips down into the 40's but at this point, I'll take it. How often am I gonna look straight up into the sky? Here's a video of it playing nice and smooth (and gorgeous).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSDNceFrQ4o

 

[Face2Face]

Nice! I'm glad that helped. I would have never figured... I forgot to ask you if you have the most recent video drivers as well?


Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

 

[ohfour238]

Yep. That was the first thing I did was grab the newest drivers for the 5970 and get the application profiles, then applied Far Cry 3's. I figured since I don't think I've updated the mainboard's bios and drivers since I built the thing, it probably wouldn't hurt to do so now and it seemed to help it significantly. Also helped some other things outside of the game like my raw camcorder videos that I have stored on here. Before, they would play kind of choppy and I just thought it was because they were huge, uncompressed files. But now, they play smooth too. So it's all good. Maybe that sky issue is on the developer's end now or AMD, who knows. Thanks for the help Face2Face and others that chipped in.