Far Cry 3 GPU and CPU benchmarks [PCGH.de]

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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Unfortunately the pictures have a different contrast and colors that make it difficult to compare. But you can see the bush in the background with excessive shadows and this should not happen with HDAO. The problem does not occur with HBAO.

Every image looks to have darker shadowing on the Nvidia screenshots. Hard for me to tell without a full size image to look at but it appears that HBAO and HDAO look very similar. I won't say the same because there are some brighter spots in the background with HBAO but it's very hard for me to differentiate if you didn't tell me which is which.
 

supremor

Senior member
Dec 2, 2010
266
0
0
Did anyone notice the new 310.70 drivers? the notes seem identical to 310.64 but who knows maybe its an improvement, guess I'll find out soon.
 

Super8

Junior Member
Nov 29, 2012
12
0
0
You're analyzing IQ using screenshots from a game. Discussion is about saturation and color temperature and overall image quality judging from 800x600 pics. Get a life people.
 

Ibra

Member
Oct 17, 2012
184
0
0
So, HBAO for Nvidia and HDAO for AMD in benchmarks. Q _ Q for Nvidia being faster.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
The gamma settings are not going to affect areas that heavily without doing the same to the entire image.

The gamma is *extremely* high on the AMD shot- slightly to the left of the fence where the bush is- almost all color has been completely wiped out on the AMD shot due to the light. Broken bad shot. It's a white blob(in comparison). I'm not saying that AMD is doing anything wrong at all to render it that way- but those screenshots are certainly *not* using the same gamma values somewhere in the pipe(be it driver level, game, somewhere).
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
You're analyzing IQ using screenshots from a game. Discussion is about saturation and color temperature and overall image quality judging from 800x600 pics. Get a life people.

When someone, even a reputable site says one looks better when there are clear differences beyond simply one being darker in the shadows, yes I will say something. Even if things went the other way I would say that I cannot fully agree with their assessment. Isn't it great to be able to disagree and think for yourself sometimes?
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
1,329
126
The gamma is *extremely* high on the AMD shot- slightly to the left of the fence where the bush is- almost all color has been completely wiped out on the AMD shot due to the light. Broken bad shot. It's a white blob(in comparison). I'm not saying that AMD is doing anything wrong at all to render it that way- but those screenshots are certainly *not* using the same gamma values somewhere in the pipe(be it driver level, game, somewhere).

Extremely high, hyperbole ? Extremely high gamma would white out your image. FYI that is a cloud in the AMD shot to the left of the fence....

All I'm seeing here is the same thing I am experiencing on my system, HDAO results in heavy shadowing and at times the shadowing is smearing out of context.

I'm in agreement with Gamegpu.ru's conslusion that HDAO and image quality is better on AMD. AO is supposed to provide soft shadowing, which is what I am seeing in the screenshots for AMD. I called this myself before even seeing this review with my own experiences, others have noted it on guru3d and the geforce forums. HDAO feels 'heavily' applied on nvidia, it looks similar to HBAO when HDAO is supposed to be an improvement that provides a softer shadowing effect.
 

Lepton87

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2009
2,544
9
81
Finally? Didn't the game come out just over 24 hours ago?

There were some earlier tests where 6990 almost didn't scale at all. Besides where I live the game is out since 29.11.2012. I wish someone would test 4-way scaling because that's the main criteria for such a graphics intensive game if I buy a game or not and I don't want to download the trial version.
 
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omeds

Senior member
Dec 14, 2011
646
13
81
You're ignoring what I'm saying. The colors are not identical. That has nothing to do with HDAO. Look at the other shots from that site. They all show Nvidia with a reddish color tone. That could be from many things and could most definitely affect the way the shadows look.

Until this is explained, I can't sit here and claim one is proper and the other is not. For all I know the washed out look of the AMD shot could be incorrect. Especially if you consider that the wood panel has some writing on it that you almost can't see in the AMD screenshot but it clearly visible on Nvidia. There is also a stone like archway on top of the shed toward the top right of the shot. On the AMD side it's clearly lacking some details and some of the cracks aren't as visible.

So claiming one is worse looking without taking into account these details is a little unfair to be sure. It's obvious to me that there's more there than simply darker shadows.

I have asked those with inside connections to AMD and that run AMD marketing events etc at R3D and B3D what the go is a couple years ago, they informed me that Nvidia colours and LOD are more "accurate", but AMD's slight colour difference and slightly sharper LOD (at the expense of shimmering) produce what they consider to be a better image.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
I have asked those with inside connections to AMD and that run AMD marketing events etc at R3D and B3D what the go is a couple years ago, they informed me that Nvidia colours and LOD are more "accurate", but AMD's slight colour difference and slightly sharper LOD (at the expense of shimmering) produce what they consider to be a better image.

This might be true and in which case it's a matter of personal taste I suppose.
 

VulgarDisplay

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2009
6,188
2
76
The gamma is *extremely* high on the AMD shot- slightly to the left of the fence where the bush is- almost all color has been completely wiped out on the AMD shot due to the light. Broken bad shot. It's a white blob(in comparison). I'm not saying that AMD is doing anything wrong at all to render it that way- but those screenshots are certainly *not* using the same gamma values somewhere in the pipe(be it driver level, game, somewhere).

I'm sure it's not something nearly as sinister as gamma, but just a different TOD in game.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
I'm a dope.... Here I was complaining earlier in this thread how I thought the graphics were just meh...Turns out I played for 2 hours without realizing that "high" wasn't the highest settings. Also turns out that the graphics are pretty darned good.

They are good but I hate to admit it, Crysis 1 is still more advanced overall than Far Cry 3. Ya, it lacks all the latest DX11 effects but does it look more realistic or less? For me Crysis 1 still looks more realistic/closer to real-life graphics, not to mention it has real physics effects on trees, buildings, explosions, something Far Cry 3 completely lacks. Even the bullet ripples in the water, explosions/smoke and vegetation are still superior in Crysis 1. Maybe it's because FC3 looks a lot more cartoonist with such bright colours? I am not buying this as the vegetation is mostly static in it.

Most people never give Crysis the respect it deserves but when you compare FC3 to Crysis side-by-side, you have to wonder which of them is really a 2012 game?

FAR CRY 3 VS CRYSIS - BATTLE

There are also some hideous looking textures in FC3 for a 2012 game.

farcry3texture.png


It's been 5 years since Crysis 1 was released and nothing truly blows it away!! Some games are better here and there and in some areas FC3 is better but overall it just isn't considering we are comparing a 2012 to a 2007 game.

Why isn't there a next generation game that looks like this out of the box?
http://www.overclock.net/t/1165090/your-best-skyrim-awesome-pictures/7070#post_18308022

Maybe my expectations are too high or consolitis is fully in effect. FC3 looks great compared to other 2012 games but it's because games like Black Ops 2 and Assassin's Creed 3 are so ugly in comparison that it skews the real advancement in PC graphics, or lack thereof. :D
 
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
And schocking news: Kepler has no problem with DirectCompute.

I am not seeing how DirectCompute is widely used in this game to accelerate soft shadows, post-processing, global illumination, like it is done in Dirt Showdown, Sleeping Dogs and Sniper Elite V2. I actually didn't even find any references to DirectCompute in this technical document related to global illumination. As far as I read, only HDAO is accelerated via DirectCompute, unless you have a link that says the DirectCompute acceleration is used in other areas as in the 3 titles I listed above?

It's like tessellation, you can have a ton of it like Crysis 2 or barely any like Deus Ex:HR. HD5870 performs completely differently depending on the level of tessellation, much in the same way GTX680 performs differently based on the level of compute acceleration featured in the game. It's good to see that FC3 at least runs well on both GTX680 and HD7970Ghz unlike AC3 that looks like it was made in 2007 and on AMD cards runs as it's a next generation game.
 
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Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
1,329
126
They are good but I hate to admit it, Crysis 1 is still more advanced overall than Far Cry 3. Ya, it lacks all the latest DX11 effects but does it look more realistic or less? For me Crysis 1 still looks more realistic/closer to real-life graphics, not to mention it has real physics effects on trees, buildings, explosions, something Far Cry 3 completely lacks. Even the bullet ripples in the water, explosions/smoke and vegetation are still superior in Crysis 1. Maybe it's because FC3 looks more a lot more cartoonist with such bright colours? I am not buying this as the vegetation is mostly static in it.

Most people never give Crysis the respect it deserves but when you compare FC3 to Crysis side-by-side, you have to wonder which of them is really a 2012 game?

FAR CRY 3 VS CRYSIS - BATTLE

There are also some hideous looking textures in FC3 for a 2012 game.

farcry3texture.png


It's been 5 years since Crysis 1 was released and nothing truly blows it away!! Some games are better here and there and in some areas FC3 is better but overall it just isn't considering we are comparing a 2012 to a 2007 game.

Why isn't there a next generation game that looks like this out of the box?
http://www.overclock.net/t/1165090/your-best-skyrim-awesome-pictures/7070#post_18308022

Maybe my expectations are too high or consolitis is fully in effect. FC3 looks great compared to other 2012 games but it's because games like Black Ops 2 and Assassin's Creed 3 are so ugly in comparison that it skews the real advancement in PC graphics, or lack thereof. :D


Thanks for that Crysis vs Far Cry 3 video link. Watching that Crysis still is untouchable taken as a whole package. BF3 is pretty impressive, I really enjoy the game, but still think it would look and be more impressive if it was running on Cryengine 2 instead of Frostbite 2.

Crysis is the last next generation game designed around the PC. Doubt we will ever see another one.
 

Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
7,163
819
126
They are good but I hate to admit it, Crysis 1 is still more advanced overall than Far Cry 3. Ya, it lacks all the latest DX11 effects but does it look more realistic or less? For me Crysis 1 still looks more realistic/closer to real-life graphics, not to mention it has real physics effects on trees, buildings, explosions, something Far Cry 3 completely lacks. Even the bullet ripples in the water, explosions/smoke and vegetation are still superior in Crysis 1. Maybe it's because FC3 looks a lot more cartoonist with such bright colours? I am not buying this as the vegetation is mostly static in it.

Most people never give Crysis the respect it deserves but when you compare FC3 to Crysis side-by-side, you have to wonder which of them is really a 2012 game?

FAR CRY 3 VS CRYSIS - BATTLE

There are also some hideous looking textures in FC3 for a 2012 game.



It's been 5 years since Crysis 1 was released and nothing truly blows it away!! Some games are better here and there and in some areas FC3 is better but overall it just isn't considering we are comparing a 2012 to a 2007 game.

I am stunned after watching that video. I had no idea Crysis 1 still looked so good compared to modern games. Some of the Far Cry 3 shots looked a little better, some looked on par, and some were embarrassingly poor quality. Overall Crysis easily looked the best.

Can anyone tell from the comments what settings they were using for each game? It's almost unbelievable how much better Crysis looked in some of those areas.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
0
I am stunned after watching that video. I had no idea Crysis 1 still looked so good compared to modern games. Some of the Far Cry 3 shots looked a little better, some looked on par, and some were embarrassingly poor quality. Overall Crysis easily looked the best.

Can anyone tell from the comments what settings they were using for each game? It's almost unbelievable how much better Crysis looked in some of those areas.
its looks modded there to me. I have fired up Crysis plenty of times recently and it does not look anywhere near as good as in that video. in fact Crysis is ass ugly in many areas and also looks very outdated in any inside environment. now the outside areas can be modded to look quite stunning though.
 

raghu78

Diamond Member
Aug 23, 2012
4,093
1,475
136
Crysis was a landmark game for the PC in terms of graphics. No game has come close to pushing graphics cards as much as Crysis did in late 2007. Also in comparison to today's games, even after 5 years Crysis looks better. this is a huge embarrassment. Developers need to really push forward in terms of photo-realism, realistic global illumination, shadowing, physics. Because of consoles being the primary development platform game textures look horrible. BF3, Max Payne 3, Deus Ex HR all looked pretty good on the PC. Tesselation was used to good effect in Deus Ex to give an organic look to human characters in the game. Very few games are using tesselation in a way which significantly impacts the visual quality of the world and characters.

One of the areas where improvements have been vast has been animations. Today's games have much better animations than the ones which are 5 years old. Hopefully other areas also improve in a meaningful and significant way.
 
Feb 19, 2009
10,457
10
76
It's not a fair comparison and you know it, Crysis only looks good with mods. Heck, you an even mod Fallout 3/NV to make it look good.

I agree with Raghu, games have gotten better but the emphasis is just not on textures, but better lighting, shadows etc. The problem is there's a huge diminishing returns, these features consume a lot of GPU grunt for very little IQ gains. It's not as obvious as low res vs high-res textures or static vs dynamic lights. Just compare SSAO vs HDAO, big difference? HECK NO, yet you lose 20-25% peformance.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
0
Crysis was a landmark game for the PC in terms of graphics. No game has come close to pushing graphics cards as much as Crysis did in late 2007. Also in comparison to today's games, even after 5 years Crysis looks better. this is a huge embarrassment. Developers need to really push forward in terms of photo-realism, realistic global illumination, shadowing, physics. Because of consoles being the primary development platform game textures look horrible. BF3, Max Payne 3, Deus Ex HR all looked pretty good on the PC. Tesselation was used to good effect in Deus Ex to give an organic look to human characters in the game. Very few games are using tesselation in a way which significantly impacts the visual quality of the world and characters.

One of the areas where improvements have been vast has been animations. Today's games have much better animations than the ones which are 5 years old. Hopefully other areas also improve in a meaningful and significant way.
Deus Ex HR is not an impressive looking game at all and has some horrible textures and tons of color banding.
 

SPBHM

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2012
5,066
418
126
Crysis 1 to me still more impressive, it seems to have a lot more real time stuff going on (like physics), and overall I enjoy more the graphic style of it...

Far Cry 3 is a new game, but the PC version is clearly also limited by being a multiplatform game, made to run on consoles from 2005/2006... on the PC it's better no doubt about it, but still mostly the same game, and that's I think is one of the main reasons why Crysis 1 still look so good compared to this game (and any other new game)
 

MrK6

Diamond Member
Aug 9, 2004
4,458
4
81
They are good but I hate to admit it, Crysis 1 is still more advanced overall than Far Cry 3. Ya, it lacks all the latest DX11 effects but does it look more realistic or less? For me Crysis 1 still looks more realistic/closer to real-life graphics, not to mention it has real physics effects on trees, buildings, explosions, something Far Cry 3 completely lacks. Even the bullet ripples in the water, explosions/smoke and vegetation are still superior in Crysis 1. Maybe it's because FC3 looks a lot more cartoonist with such bright colours? I am not buying this as the vegetation is mostly static in it.

Most people never give Crysis the respect it deserves but when you compare FC3 to Crysis side-by-side, you have to wonder which of them is really a 2012 game?

FAR CRY 3 VS CRYSIS - BATTLE

There are also some hideous looking textures in FC3 for a 2012 game.

It's been 5 years since Crysis 1 was released and nothing truly blows it away!! Some games are better here and there and in some areas FC3 is better but overall it just isn't considering we are comparing a 2012 to a 2007 game.

Why isn't there a next generation game that looks like this out of the box?
http://www.overclock.net/t/1165090/your-best-skyrim-awesome-pictures/7070#post_18308022

Maybe my expectations are too high or consolitis is fully in effect. FC3 looks great compared to other 2012 games but it's because games like Black Ops 2 and Assassin's Creed 3 are so ugly in comparison that it skews the real advancement in PC graphics, or lack thereof. :D
Wow RS, thanks for linking that video; what a great comparison. :thumbsup: It just goes to show that Crysis 1 was truly the last great PC FPS and it's really been all downhill since. Watching the whole video, there are parts of Far Cry 3 that mimic the effects of Crysis 1 well, but overall Far Cry 3 looks much flatter, less detailed, and less realistic than Crysis 1 (5 years later, sadly enough). It just goes to show how much PC games have stagnated due to consoles holding them back. Terrible shame.