Far Cry New Dawn Benchmarked: 1080p, 1440p, 4K All Tested

Introduction

Ubisoft has just unleashed Far Cry New Dawn onto the world, the latest in the Far Cry franchise which is a narrative sequel to the successful Far Cry 5. Far Cry New Dawn has been receiving mixed reviews since its launch on February 15, but with Far Cry 5 being part of my benchmarking ritual, its successor will succeed it in my benchmark runs from now on.

Far Cry New Dawn is powered by a tweaked version of the Dunia Engine, the same graphics engine that powered the last handful of Far Cry games for Ubisoft. It looks great, is well-optimized and features some pretty decent multi-GPU support that we'll be playing around with in a future article. For now, we'll be looking at the 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160 resolutions and seeing how well our GPUs do.

If you haven't played Far Cry 5 you might want to jump into that game before you buy Far Cry New Dawn, and if you end up buying Far Cry New Dawn, well we have a bunch of graphics cards benchmarked here to show you what you'll need before you dive in.

Test System Specs

Our New GPU Test Rig

Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.

We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.

Detailed Tech Specs

• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO
• MB: Z370 AORUS Gaming 7
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933
• SSD: 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• SSD: 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• PSU: InWin 1065W PSU
• Chassis: In Win X-Frame
• OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

Additional Images

Benchmarks - 1080p

1920 x 1080 - Ultra

Benchmarks - 1440p

2560 x 1440 - Ultra

Benchmarks - 4K

3840 x 2160 - Ultra

Performance Analysis & Final Thoughts

Performance Analysis

4K

Far Cry New Dawn looks pretty damn good at 4K but you'll need a beast of a graphics card to hit over 60FPS average, with just a few cards on the market that can achieve this. NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is at the top of the Far Cry New Dawn benchmark charts at 4K with 83FPS average, with second place taken by the RTX 2080 with 66FPS and third place with the Radeon VII at 63FPS. Thankfully AMD released the Radeon VII, or else the closest card to it is the older Radeon RX Vega 64 with just 49FPS at 4K in comparison.

1440p

Running the game at 1440p is nowhere near as punishing as 4K, with even mid-range cards in the Radeon RX 580 reaching 55FPS average, or the older GTX 1060 with 52FPS, and the newer RTX 2060 with 85FPS average. If however you have a 1440p 120/144/165Hz gaming monitor then you're going to need much more GPU horsepower, with the RTX 2080 Ti spitting out 115FPS at 1440p, the GTX 1080 Ti is capable of 103FPS and the new Radeon VII achieves the same 103FPS average at 2560x1440.

1080p

Mainstream gamers will have no problems running Far Cry New Dawn at 1920x1080, with the super-cheap Radeon RX 570 capable of 67FPS even on the Ultra preset, the newer RX 590 hits 83FPS average, the GTX 1060 is capable of 72FPS and the new RTX 2060 pushes 106FPS average. Far Cry New Dawn maxes out at around 120FPS anyway, so you can throw all the GPU power in the world at it and it's not going to change much, even our RTX 2080 Ti reached 117FPS average.

Final Thoughts

All in all you're going to have a cracking time with Far Cry New Dawn no matter what graphics card you've got, as even the Radeon RX 570 which only costs $150-$170 at the time of writing on Amazon, is capable of over 60FPS average at 1080p. NVIDIA's higher-end but previous-gen GeForce GTX 1070 plugs away with 94FPS average at 1080p meaning you don't need to spend an arm and a leg to play a great-looking game like Far Cry New Dawn at 1080p.

If you want to crank things up even higher, Ubisoft offers a HD texture pack which can be downloaded into Far Cry New Dawn as a 12GB option. It will improve character and weapon models, but didn't do much to our testing (1-2FPS change, if that). In the single-player side of the game I would advise using it if you're graphics card has enough beef sitting there waiting for it.

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti definitely takes the cake as it maxes out at 115-117FPS average at both 1080p and 1440p and is still capable of an incredible 83FPS at 4K. AMD's newly-released Radeon VII does well here as well, with 113/103FPS for 1080p and 1440p respectively while 4K gaming can be had on the $699 card with 63FPS average in Far Cry New Dawn.

Next up we'll have some multi-GPU results and 8K benchmarks to share, which is where things get a little more interesting, so stay tuned!