Far Cry 4 AMD tweaks?

I know we have a specific game forum, but its mostly Nvidia users and finding any place to share and discuss only AMD specific tweaking info for this game is nearly impossible.

I'm running...
2600k @4.7ghz
16gb DDR3
Sapphire Tri-x R9 290
1920x1200 monitor
14.11.2 beta drivers
Running Ultra preset with motion blur disabled. (cuz I hate motion blur)

I just don't seem to be able to get a completely smooth experience no matter what I try.
I can turn down the game settings, but all that does is increase my FPS in areas where its already high and I don't need more FPS, yet seems to have zero effect in places where a FPS boost is needed. (ie: the first town as an example, I drop into the mid 40's sometimes)

And the stutter when traveling is a bit annoying too.
The only tweak that seems to smooth things out and remove almost all stutter is the DisableLoadingMip0="0" in the GamerProfile.xml file and changing it to a 1, but that really degrades texture quality, so I don't consider it a viable tweak.

I mean if a single R9 290 cannot run the game well at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200, then us AMD users truly are screwed in this title!
I won't even try this game on my 2560x1440 monitor with just a single R9 290!

I'd try it on my other rig with a pair of 7950's in x-fire, but AMD has disabled x-fire for this game for now.

So does anyone care to share what in-game settings and/or tweaks that are working for you in this game for the best / smoothest game-play?

Oh and B4 someone says the usual...
1: Yes we all know its a Nvidia Gameworks title
2: Yes we all know lowering AA helps framerates
3: Yes we've all already heard the "wait for a patch from UBI" comments

What I wanna know is has anyone managed to hit a settings "sweet-spot" for the best playable settings NOW on their AMD GPU, and can you share your settings with the rest of us?

 

Ok, here is what I have for now and it seems to be playing pretty well for me.

GamerProfile.xml changes
Alpha to Coverage - AlphaToCoverage="1" changed to AlphaToCoverage="0"
FOVScaleFactor=FOVScaleFactor="1.1934" (this is my in-game FOV slider setting value of course)
DisableLoadingMip0="0" - I will NOT change this, it degrades the textures too much if set to "1", so I leave it at default "0".

In-game settings

Aspect Ratio - 16x10
Display Resolution - 1920x1200
Refresh Rate - 60
Window mode - Borderless (so I have no tearing with v-sync disabled)
V-sync - off

Triple Buffering - Off
V-sync mode - Normal
FOV - about 75% on slider (1.1934 in the GamerProfile.xml file)

Below is all Ultra preset except for two settings as noted.
Motion Blur - Off (changed from default Ultra preset)
Textures - Ultra
Shadows - Ultra
Post FX - Ultra
Geometry - Very High (changed from default Ultra preset)
Vegetation - Ultra
Terrain - Ultra
Water - Ultra
Enviroment - Ultra
Ambient Occlusion - SSBC
Anti-Aliasing - SMAA
Godrays - Volumetric Fog
Fur - On
Trees relief - On

But it still doesn't seem as smooth as it should be even though my FPS are just fine.
Any suggestions?

 

It's really not a frame rate issue with Far Cry 3/4. No matter what setting I use, it still spikes 10FPS lower which causes the stutter/lag that makes it appear not smooth. There's nothing you can do right now and I don't expect it to ever get better.
Some AMD users run these games fine (or don't notice the stutter).
The only setting that gets rid of general panning stutter is locking FPS below 60, but once in a fast action area like driving or getting shot at, it stutters like crazy. I've even tested locking to 40FPS, it still drops to 30/20 there, it's the games optimization, they haven't done any.

 

Yeah, I'm actually one of the rare ones that has no stutter in Watch Dogs. (with the right "combo" of settings of course)

I actually did get Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3 to run really well with the right "settings /combination".

But its definitely present in this game also and I just cannot seem to eliminate it like I did in Watch Dogs / FC3.
Was hoping to find that "magical combo" of settings with this game also.


I already tried a FPS limit of 60 - 50 and even 40...still seems to stutter as you said.
Its weird, no matter how low you limit the framerate, you're right, it always dips to about 10fps less than you have the limit set at in some spots...now that is "ODD" to say the least!
Its almost like it's programmed to do that on purpose regardless of your framerate.

I'm gonna try it with HT off on my cpu and see what happens, this game seems to only be utilizing my four real physical cores anyway.

 

Graphic Settings:
All Ultra Settings SMAA
Motion Blur Off
Soft Shadows
HBAO+
Enhanced Nvidia Godrays
Fur On
Trees Relief On

Fullscreen
Vsync Off
FOV 75%

Tweaks:
DisableLoadingMip0="1"
GPUMaxBufferedFrames="3"
AlphatoCoverage="1"
All mouse tweaks in default value im ok with my mouse dont have problem with it.

Optional:
DOF Off
<Post>
<quality GameDepthOfField="0" CinematicDepthOfField="0" MotionBlur="0" id="ultrahigh" />
</Post>

paste between </CustomQuality></RenderProfile> must be check read only may cause crashing after editting some graphic settings or when click save auto saving no harm.

Optional:
Sweetfx On


1366x768Native Resolution also tried with DownSampling @1920x1080

FPS min: 40 max: 110 avg: 60

core i3 3210 @3.2ghz
r9 270x devil ed @1180 1400mhz
8gb ram ddr3 1600
1366x768 monitor
14.11.2 latest beta driver


played 10hours with minimal hitching thats all. Im OK with it!

 

Even If I run the game at 1280x800 it still performs poorer than your system. Shocking.

 

Try to play it with single card i dont know what is the problem in ur system but it runs smooth on mine the only problem i have is minimal hitching when traveling to other location like 1-3secs then goes back to normal

 

It seems that the game is more or less geometry bound than fillrate bound. I have played around a bit with various settings in the starting village and surrounding areas and it seems that the Terrain, Environment and Geometry have the biggest impact on the stuttering. With them on low the stuttering is minimal. Once you start to increase them the stuttering becomes more and more pronounced.

 

I don't run crossfire on this game.

 

Even if you had a crossfire setup (I do), the latest AMD drivers disable it in FC4 and if you force it on you get crazy lighting flickering.

 

The final solution of all those problms of shtuttering is to sale AMD gpu and go for a new GTX 970/980 ....AMD is HOPELESS

:no: :no: :no:

:no: :no: :no:

 

I run a single 1920x1200 monitor so only use both cards if needed.

The game is just badly optimized. They have hardware and drivers to test the game on before releasing, and obviously forgot to.

 

you'r right, the game is bad optimized, however, why often there are stuttering with AMD gpus but somehow no or less stuttering with NVIDIA gpus?

 

The game plays much better with HT turned off on my 2600k. (ie:less framerate dips)
I also added -skipintro -disablepagefilecheck to my desktop shortcut target box, not really sure if -disablepagefilecheck did much, but it didn't hurt anything either, so I left it there.

Now with all my settings as I stated above and these few last tweaks, its playing very well for me.

I still get a VERY RARE "hitch" once in a great while when traveling fast.
I'm running a 128gb SSD(for my OS) with 2tb of HDD's (For my games/steam).

Maybe I'll try FC4 on my SSD then and see if I can eliminate those rare loading hitches also, but for now, I'm happy with it.

But please keep sharing any tweaks that work, so we can all try them.

 

They trade blows.

 

What I did was overwrite the Far cry 4 profile using the BF4 profile

 

Nvidia is having the same issue with stuttering, check out TotalBiscuit's port review, he has sli 980's and have to turn off mipmaps to make it playable.

You are just being a troll

 

Doing that has absolutely no effect here.

 

I'm having frame rate issues with the game as well...bad enough that I just couldn't get past the first 2 hours....was running choppy.

 

Who Talks about Sli? do you forget Big stutters with Far Cry 3 ? AMD it self has admitted that. READ THIS:

Smoothness Issues

We would rate Far Cry 4's smoothness overall below average due to the fact that there is a consistent stuttering on AMD GPUs currently. We tested AMD R9 290X and R9 290 with the latest 14.11.2 Beta driver and experienced an odd consistent stutter as you play the game. It is annoying and distracts from the gameplay experience. The stutter is not present on GTX 970 or GTX 980.

This is also unacceptable for a high profile and highly expected game. Once again, AMD gaming base is getting a machete to the knee in this game. Perhaps future patches or drivers will fix this stuttering. We did not have time yet to pin it down to any specific quality setting, but we will see if anyone setting can be attributed to the stuttering in our full evaluation. Perhaps future game patches and or drivers will fix this. Right now, the smoothest gameplay is on GTX 970 and 980.

source: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/21/far_cry_4_video_card_performance_iq_preview/3