Far Cry 6 GPU performance not bad at all but is severely bottlenecked by CPU

[LtMatt]

Pc Games Hardware have done some more in-depth testing showing the impact of HD Textures + Ray Tracing on video memory.

4K + HD Textures + RT On

Spoiler

Geforce RTX 3080 10GB: If the HD texture package is installed, sometimes the maximum texture resolution is not loaded, as can be seen here on the game character. In addition, the frame rate in Ultra HD collapses with active ray tracing. With 8 GiB VRAM, the symptoms are felt even more strongly - on a Geforce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB, however, the memory is sufficient.

Spoiler

4K + HD Textures + RT Off

Spoiler

Enabling FSR and things change round interestingly.

Spoiler

 

[dualsense1673]

If the FSR implementation is good does it really need DLSS? Both would be nice ofc but I can't see it happening

stooeh i want to be honest with you, fsr is really good this game. it does not feel oversharpened as well. reasons are simple: ubisoft game engines in far cry and ac games usually work very well with sharpener filters. probably has something to do with art direction of these games; some games i hate sharpen filter. but in ac/far cry games i always seem to enjoy it. i think this is what is happening here, it works very natural with far cry 6's graphical art style, and so it enhances image quality for free

but then again, as have been said in the above, comparing non sharpened native versus ssharpened 1800p is a bit misleading, since sharpening will also improve the native image hugely also. but then again, getting the amount done is also a hard task. fsr does it automatic for you. thats something at least. clearly fsr ultra quality looks better than non sharpened native 4k. and you get extra performance too. seems a good deal to me. game looks gorgeous. but im never interested in far cry titles. i left it at far cry 3. repetetive tower climb and collect stuff. they cant seem to get out of that formula

 

[nvidiamd]

Until we see more results from a variety of hardware, we can't say for sure if vram is the main reason for the substantial drop in perf...

It is the VRAM there is no other explanation, you won't get that much gain from FSR if there was another problem.
No reason to deny it since anyone can drop a few settings and play on the 3080 like a boss, but it looks like if you enable HD, RT and the R-bar and set everything on Ultra, the VRAM goes above the 10Gb.

Pc Games Hardware have done some more in-depth testing showing the impact of HD Textures + Ray Tracing on video memory.

4K + HD Textures + RT On

Spoiler

Spoiler

4K + HD Textures + RT Off

Spoiler

Enabling FSR and things change round interestingly.

Spoiler

Probably the max VRAM usage is a little over 10Gb if you enable everything so if some reviewers haven't enabled every feature or they didn't played long enough the 3080 was still able to run the game. But it is clearly a VRAM limitation if you enable everything.
For example in their testing HU didn't used RT shadows and also they kept Rbar disabled.

 

[LtMatt]

It is the VRAM there is no other explanation, you won't get that much gain from FSR if there was another problem.
No reason to deny it since anyone can drop a few settings and play on the 3080 like a boss, but it looks like if you enable HD, RT and the R-bar and set everything on Ultra, the VRAM goes above the 10Gb.

Probably the max VRAM usage is a little over 10Gb if you enable everything so if some reviewers haven't enabled every feature or they didn't played long enough the 3080 was still able to run the game. But it is clearly a VRAM limitation if you enable everything.

I can imagine there will be one or two denying it, don’t worry. Not planning to read those posts as I can already imagine the content.

It really comes down to the area tested and the settings used, it's not hard to work out.

It’s just a meme at this point but that’s now three independent media outlets saying the same thing regarding this.

Shame this in depth testing was not done on Godfall, because a similar thing would have been discovered, trust me. Guess that game was not well received enough though to warrant it.

 

[Nexus18]

It is the VRAM there is no other explanation, you won't get that much gain from FSR if there was another problem.
No reason to deny it since anyone can drop a few settings and play on the 3080 like a boss, but it looks like if you enable HD, RT and the R-bar and set everything on Ultra, the VRAM goes above the 10Gb.

Probably the max VRAM usage is a little over 10Gb if you enable everything so if some reviewers haven't enabled every feature or they didn't played long enough the 3080 was still able to run the game. But it is clearly a VRAM limitation if you enable everything.

Ok, answer me these questions then:

- why didn't techpowerup, toms hardware, guru3d etc. etc. not see the same problems? If it was absolutely down to vram and nothing else, surely all sites should be reporting the same?
- why did jokers 3080ti drop to 5 fps (similar to what PCGH have reported for the 3080) in his game and all of a sudden taking a screenshot brought fps back up, seems a bit odd, no?
- iirc the game is also not launching/crashing on gpus with<6gb vram, funny how this seems to also be a first
- this is a first for where a game "runs" out of vram and fps drops entirely, do you really think that is normal or more a sign of something hasn't been optimised/implemented correctly? Bearing in mind, ubi have said they are working on it.....
- why does some footage with higher vram cards look like textures aren't rendering/loading properly too?

I'm not denying that a gpu with more than 10GB vram will provide a smoother experience when playing at max settings @ 4k with no FSR, as techpowerup and iirc, another site did say the game felt smoother gpus with >10gb vram.

The problem we have here is that it is only 1/2 (?) sites so far who have reported the fps drops to 5 fps when 5/6+ sites haven't had this issue, that's the problem..... If it was 100% just because there wasn't enough vram, it would be happening across the board.

I personally think there could be something up nvidias resize bar and the game, as we all know, nvidia have to turn it off for some games due to performance issues.

I can imagine there will be one or two denying it, don’t worry. Not planning to read those posts as I can already imagine the content. It’s just a meme at this point but that’s now three independent media outlets saying the same thing regarding this. Shame this in depth testing was not done on Godfall, because a similar thing would have been discovered, trust me. Guess that game was not well received enough though to warrant it.

Shame indeed you won't see the content but alas, as proven, you just have people who can prove you're wrong on ignore (another one being.... gsync adds input lag ), easiest to just keep the fingers in the ears And if you had people of ignore, you would have seen that godfall argument of yours was also nuked from orbit once we started looking at figures where ray tracing was used.

 

[LtMatt]

Have a look at Jokers video, you can see what the issue is.

Have a look at the video memory usage when the FPS drop hits.


Now look at how the video memory usage is reduced by him taking a screenshot, which clears over 1.5GB of video memory and the FPS climbs.

Joke is also using 16GB of system ram and according to his overlay, all of it is being used. So there's a few red flags as to why he has the FPS drop.

It looks like in some scenarios, even 12GB card might experience a FPS drop.

No FPS drops at all with a 16GB/24GB card at 4K + HD Textures + RT.

 

[Nexus18]

Have a look at Jokers video, you can clearly see what the issue is.

Have a look at the video memory usage when the FPS drop hits.


Now look at the video memory usage after the video memory is cleared by him taking a screenshot.


It looks like in some scenarios, even 12GB card might experience a FPS drop.

No FPS drops with a 16GB card so far at 4K + HD Textures + RT.

So that's the secret to downloading more vram, you just take a screenshot then........

 

[Nexus18]

For example in their testing HU didn't used RT shadows and also they kept Rbar disabled.

Where was that stated? I know they didn't have Rbar enabled but I thought he just said he wouldn't use rt shadows for when he plays the game as he didn't think it was worth it. Afaik, everything was maxed for the benchmarks though.

 

[Joxeon]

- why didn't techpowerup, toms hardware, guru3d etc. etc. not see the same problems?

I watched the HW unboxed testing and they didn't have any issues either and they are normally quick to jump on this sort of stuff.

 

[LtMatt]

I watched the HW unboxed testing and they didn't have any issues either and they are normally quick to jump on this sort of stuff.

As mentioned, it really comes down to the level of testing done and the areas tested. Different areas in the game will have different usage requirements, as we can see when you look at different reviewers who test different areas.

HUB tested the area at the start of the game in the base and walked forward for 45 seconds.

That's fine, but don't expect it to be completely representative of the whole game.

It's understandable, they did test like a million different graphics cards to be fair.

If you want proper in depth testing, multiple areas, multiple screenshots, read this, Far Cry 6 in the technology test: Raytracing for the graphics memory revolution (pcgameshardware.de) or this, Far Cry 6 in the technology test - ComputerBase.

HD textures require 12 GB VRAM in Ultra HD
However, the above only applies equally to AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce if the optional downloadable HD texture package is not installed. The reason: Only up to and including WQHD, the HD textures work well even with 8 GB of graphics memory. For Ultra HD, however, it must be more than 10 GB – a GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB jerks unplayable. 12 GB is sufficient.

 

[Grim5]

Did a couple quick tests

4K everything maxed including hd textures and raytracing on = 72fps average in benchmark. With FSR UQ = 90fps. VRAM usage sits at 13.7gb

The game looks better with FSR on, the TAA with it off is very blurry.

however it doesn't seem to matter what setting I use, the game has lots of aliasing issues - in the benchmark it's flickering and shimmering on most edges.

I can get rid of almost all aliasing by changing the resolution to 8k but then I only get 35fps and VRAM usage sits at 21.9gb - hopefully next gen cards will be able to do 8k 60fps in AAA games so we can remove the need for TAA by running native with no aliasing

 

[Jay85]

So is this one game where i can say im glad i have a 3090 with 24gb vram? The only time its really relevant in gaming lol.

 

[LtMatt]

So is this one game where i can say im glad i have a 3090 with 24gb vram? The only time its really relevant in gaming lol.

Yes, yes you can haha.

Jokes aside though, it's better to have too much and not need it, than have too little and get single digit fps. But I think everyone can agree that 24GB is overkill for games.

 

[LtMatt]

I can get rid of almost all aliasing by changing the resolution to 8k but then I only get 35fps and VRAM usage sits at 21.9gb

I will try that, bet I can gobble up all 16GB of video memory easily at 8K and get single digit FPS.

 

[Grim5]

Yes, yes you can haha.

Jokes aside though, it's better to have too much and not need it, than have too little and get single digit fps. But I think everyone can agree that 24GB is overkill for games.

based on my 8k benchmarks 24gb is definitely needed there, it's unfortunate that no gpu has the grunt though to drive it at 60fps - hopefully next years new models will do that!

 

[Nexus18]

I watched the HW unboxed testing and they didn't have any issues either and they are normally quick to jump on this sort of stuff.

Yup exactly.

As proven time and time again, certain people with an agenda just want to jump on anything straight away if it fits their narrative (or perhaps it's part of their job...) without looking at the big picture and various sources. People will even go as far as taking some randomers post from reddit to try and make their point aka horizon zero dawn so called vram texture loading issue which quickly got disproved too. You also just have to look at how some will hold up a certain piece from said site as the be all then come next article by said site saying something that doesn't fit their narrative anymore, said site all of a sudden is no longer trustworthy, it's laughable.

The fact that we always seem to get doom and gloom threads about vram performance "issues" and nothing about ray tracing performance "issues" should say it all tbh.....

 

[stooeh]

Without FSR game drops sub 60 fps in places such as the libertad camp but for 4K max'd the performance is pretty impressive and game looks pretty good too. Foliage doesn't look quite as sharp with FSR on but some other textures still look very crisp. FSR also exposes the engine's thread limitations but goes up a fair amount if you disable RT.

As an aside I have seen the per app VRAM hit 9GB+

 

[Nexus18]

Without FSR game drops sub 60 fps in places such as the libertad camp but for 4K max'd the performance is pretty impressive and game looks pretty good too. Foliage doesn't look quite as sharp with FSR on but some other textures still look very crisp. FSR also exposes the engine's thread limitations but goes up a fair amount if you disable RT.

As an aside I have seen the per app VRAM hit 9GB+

Is that from your testing? I see you have 5800x and a 3080.

Have you seen any fps drops to 5fps as per 2 other sites benchmark? and how long have you played for? And if it does happen, does taking a screenshot bring the fps back up?

 

[Mesai]

Ran a couple tests this morning and the game runs great considering it's the initial release build. Running a 3080 FE and 5800x.

1440p, max everything; obviously no issues with VRAM or FRP consistency at that resolution. Ray tracing implementation is pretty weak, but that's been the standard with AMD sponsored titles - will see what it looks like as I progress through the game.

 

[LtMatt]

It is the VRAM there is no other explanation, you won't get that much gain from FSR if there was another problem.
No reason to deny it since anyone can drop a few settings and play on the 3080 like a boss, but it looks like if you enable HD, RT and the R-bar and set everything on Ultra, the VRAM goes above the 10Gb.

Probably the max VRAM usage is a little over 10Gb if you enable everything so if some reviewers haven't enabled every feature or they didn't played long enough the 3080 was still able to run the game. But it is clearly a VRAM limitation if you enable everything.
For example in their testing HU didn't used RT shadows and also they kept Rbar disabled.

The interesting thing here is, using FSR is reducing video memory usage.

Although it's not entirely unexpected as you are rendering a lower resolution, its not one of the first considerations you think of when using FSR as you only really think about image quality and FPS.