Another year, Another un-optimized Ubisoft game. Far Cry 6 is the latest installment in Ubisoft’s Far Cry franchise. Even on a lot of High-end PCs, Far Cry 6 runs terribly. Hardly achieving 60 FPS on Ultra settings even on PCs with RTX 3070s and 3080s at 1440p. Although Ubisoft has improved the graphics in a few areas, the visual upgrade is not enough to justify the game’s terrible performance.
I’ve tested Far Cry 6 on the following PC specifications:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 3600
- GPU: RTX 3070
- RAM: 16GB DDR4
- Storage: 1 TB SSD
- Operating System: Windows 10 Pro
To run Far Cry 6, you’ll at least need to have an AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel i5-4460 CPU, AMD RX 460 or NVIDIA GTX 960 GPU, and 8 GB RAM.
The following settings are the most demanding in Far Cry 6:
- Shadows
- Geometry & Vegetation
- Environment
- HD Textures
- DXR Reflections
- DXR Shadows
Far Cry 6 is an un-optimized game keeping Ubisoft’s tradition of releasing half-baked games alive. With my PC specs, I was able to barely hit the 60 FPS target with DXR options. Additionally, there was an issue with random FPS drops and textures not properly loading in some scenes. Our FC6 reviewer Abdul Haddi also faced a similar problem during his playthrough.
Best Far Cry 6 Graphics Settings
In this section of our Far Cry 6 Optimization Guide. We will be looking at all of the different graphics and best Far Cry 6 settings – comparing each setting to see which ones provide the most FPS without sacrificing the visual quality of the game.
Overview Of All Graphics Settings
Texture Filtering | Ultra |
Shadows | Low or Medium |
Geometry and Vegetation | Medium |
Environment | Medium |
Water | Medium or High |
Terrain | Ultra |
Volumetric Fog | High |
HD textures | Off |
Anti Aliasing | TAA |
Motion Blur | Off |
Camera Shakes | Minimal |
Poisoned and Drunk Effects | Optional |
DXR Reflections (Ray-Tracing) | Off |
DXR Shadows (Ray-Tracing) | Off |
FidelityFX CAS | On |
Texture Filtering – Ultra
The Texture Filtering setting allows you to tweak the sharpness of textures. We tested this setting in many different areas of the game and saw little to no improvements at all on the surfaces of different objects in the world. This setting also had no impact on performance or overall VRAM consumption.
As you can see, changing this setting did not affect the visual quality of these wooden planks and they appear to be the same on the lowest and the highest setting. Since this setting doesn’t have any impact on performance or the visual quality, we recommend keeping Texture Filtering on Ultra.
Shadows – Low or Medium
Shadows appeared very sharp when set to Low. Increasing this setting from Low to Medium increased the smoothness of the outlines of the shadows. However, we did not see much of a difference between the game’s Medium, High, and Ultra settings.
We saw an increase of 7-8 FPS when changing this setting from Ultra to Low. You can easily turn this setting to Low or Medium and have the same experience, and gain 5-8 more FPS without sacrificing the overall visual quality of the game.
Geometry & Vegetation – Medium
This setting changes the render distance of different types of vegetation like grass, trees, bushes, and the geometry of different buildings and structures. By far, this setting has the most impact on the performance of the game. We saw a 30% increase in FPS when going from Low to Ultra.
Here is a comparison screenshot of the different far cry 6 settings in the game.
We recommend keeping this setting on Medium because the overall visual quality of the vegetation is very similar to the Ultra setting. The Medium setting has a decent render distance for vegetation and it will also give you a huge increase in FPS over the Ultra setting.
Environment – Medium
Turning up the Environment setting increases the render distance of different types of lights, most noticeably the street lights and it also adds reflections to the water puddles on the streets that form after heavy rain. On low settings, the puddles would not reflect anything at all. Aside from that, we didn’t notice any big changes to the environment.
We recommend keeping this setting on Medium as it will give you a 5-8% of performance boost over Ultra. There isn’t a lot of difference in terms of visual quality between Medium, High, and Ultra. The low setting is not recommended as it completely removes any type of reflection from the water puddles on the streets, as seen in a screenshot below.
Water – Medium or High
We tested all the Far Cry 6 Water settings in many different areas in the game and could not find any noticeable difference between the Medium, High, and Ultra settings of the game. Low looks noticeably worse than all the other settings but it gave us a 9% increase in performance.
Medium looks very identical to High and Ultra and it will give you 6% more performance than Ultra. We recommend turning this setting to Medium since it is a nice balance between visual quality and performance.
Terrain – Ultra
Higher settings did improve the ground textures to some degree but it isn’t very noticeable when you’re playing the game. Changing this setting from Low to Ultra had no impact on the performance whatsoever. We recommend you crank this setting to Ultra as it doesn’t hurt the performance of the game and there is some improvement to the textures of the terrain.
Volumetric Fog – High
Low and Medium-quality fog appeared to be very inconsistent and pixelated compared to High and Ultra. We didn’t notice a big increase in performance when turning this setting to Low from Ultra.
I recommend changing Volumetric Fog to High because it looks a lot better than Low and Medium, and it will give you 2-3 more FPS than Ultra.
HD Textures – Off
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test this setting on my RTX 3070 to its full potential as the HD Textures pack requires 11GB of VRAM to properly function. Still, I turned this option on to see if I notice any difference in the visual quality. The biggest difference I noticed was on the player’s hand model. The textures of the dirt and the tattoos looked a lot more detailed in comparison. If you are following Best Settings For Far Cry 6, this isn’t very necessary.
I tested this setting in many other areas of the game and couldn’t notice any difference to the textures whatsoever. The textures on some objects were even worse with the setting turned on, as seen in the screenshot below. This happens due to streaming issues when texture details don’t load completely when the VRAM hits the 6GB mark. Keeping this setting OFF gave us a 5% performance increase.
Anti-Aliasing – TAA
This setting has 3 different modes in Far Cry 6. Anti-aliasing can be completely disabled, or it can be set to use SMAA or TAA. We recommend using the TAA setting as it will only cost you 2 to 3 more frames per second than the SMAA and it greatly improves the image quality. SMAA isn’t recommended because the image quality starts to look very noisy as you move around. Below are the comparison screenshots for all 3 Anti-Aliasing modes.
Notice how the edges of the wire look a lot more jagged on AA off and SMAA compared to TAA.
Motion Blur – Off
Far Cry 6 Motion Blur settings control various effects in the game that are related to motion. Changing these settings will not have any impact on the performance of the game. You can change these settings based on your personal preference. Turning these settings off could help in reducing motion sickness for some people.
You can change the motion blur setting based on your personal preference. We recommend keeping this setting OFF because it results in cleaner image quality.
Camera Shakes – Minimal
Too much camera shake can be annoying and it could also induce motion sickness. If it doesn’t bother you much, you can leave this setting on Full.
Poisoned and Drunk Effects – Optional
As the name suggests, this setting lets you adjust the effects when you’re under the influence of alcohol or the red poison gas in the game. You can change this setting based on your personal preference.
These settings include the Nvidia Ray-Tracing Technology and FidelityFX CAS. These features have been newly added to the Far Cry franchise for the first time.
DXR Reflections (Ray-Tracing) – Off
Part of Extended Features – These settings include the Nvidia Ray-Tracing Technology and FidelityFX CAS. These features have been newly added to the Far Cry franchise for the first time.
The current implementation of the Ray-Traced Reflections technology in Far Cry 6 leaves much to be desired. I recommend keeping this setting OFF because it will give you a well-needed performance increase.
The only time reflections become really noticeable is when it rains in-game and the streets become wet. Even then, The default Screen Space Reflections do a good enough job of reflecting the nearby objects and the difference between the SSR and DXR Reflections is nominal.
DXR Shadows (Ray-Tracing) – Off
Similar to the DXR Reflections, The implementation of Ray-Traced Shadows in Far Cry 6 is also quite underwhelming. You wouldn’t notice a huge difference between the game’s default shadows and DXR Shadows. Turning on DXR Shadows will cost you a 10% performance drop without greatly improving the visual quality. Keeping this setting OFF is the ideal option.
FidelityFX CAS
It is highly recommended that you turn on FidelityFX CAS and FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 regardless of what graphics card you are running, this setting works on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. CAS stands for contrast adaptive sharpening, this feature provides a mixed ability to sharpen and optionally scale and image. FidelityFX CAS aids your anti-aliasing by cleaning up shimmering outlines.
Far Cry 6 – Advanced Settings
While we move to the higher part of Best Far Cry 6 Settings, The Advanced Settings menu lets you adjust different features related to the framerate of the game. It also lets you adjust the FOV Scaling, FidelityFX Super Resolution, and Resolution Scaling.
Summary Of Advanced Settings
V-Sync | Off |
Enable Framerate Lock | Off |
Field of View Scaling | 90 |
Adaptive Resolution | Off |
Resolution Scale | 1.0 |
FidelityFX Super Resolution | ON |
V-Sync – Off
Vertical Sync synchronizes the frame rate of a game with a gaming monitor’s refresh rate. In my case, I’m running Far Cry 6 on a 165Hz Monitor and the framerate is nowhere near my monitor’s Refresh Rate, so I turned this setting off.
Enable Framerate Lock – Off
If you are bothered by an inconsistent framerate and want to lock the FPS to a specific number, this setting is for you. I personally don’t recommend locking the framerate and i kept this setting off for benchmarking purposes.
Field of View Scaling – 90
Field of View Scaling comes down to personal preference. In most games, I keep the FOV scaling on 90, but you can crank it up to 120 if you want to.
Adaptive Resolution – Off
It’s usually not a good idea to enable this setting as it can make the game look terrible during FPS drops.
Resolution Scale – 1.0
Lowering the Resolution Scale will improve performance but significantly reduce the visual fidelity. To enable this option, both FidelityFX Super Resolution and Adaptive Resolution need to be turned off.
FidelityFX Super Resolution – ON
It is absolutely worth switching this option on because it will give you a performance boost. When enabled, images are rendered in lower resolution and then upscaled with technique to provide results very close to the original resolution.
Bonus Optimizations For Far Cry 6
Now that we are done with the best Far Cry 6 settings, your FPS should have already increased by a big margin. If you are running on a low-end PC and want to make sure that your PC is running the game to its full potential, here are some Windows 10 Optimizations.
- Enable Ultimate Performance Power Plan
- Disable Third-Party Overlays
- Force Use Dedicated GPU For FC6
- Clear Your System Cache
- Run Far Cry 6 as Admin
- Update Your Drivers
- Increase FarCry 6’s process priority to high in Task Manager
- Terminate Any Unnecessary Background Applications
Wrapping Up FC6 Performance Guide
After applying all of the Optimizations and Graphics Settings that are shown above, you should be noticing a huge increase in the overall performance of the game.
Far Cry 6 is not a very optimized game, which isn’t very unusual for Ubisoft. For our Far Cry 6 Best Settings Guide, we spent a lot of time testing every individual setting to find the best settings that gave us maximum performance while maintaining decent visuals at the same time.
If you have a high-end PC, you can push these settings even further if you are willing to sacrifice some performance for a slight gain in visual quality.
After you’re done with Windows optimization, I also recommend optimizing your Nvidia Control Panel settings and AMD Radeon Settings.
Similar Game Settings Guides Reads:
Thanks! Do share your feedback with us. ⚡
How can we make this post better? Your help would be appreciated. ✍