We’ve done plenty of Far Cry 5 posts leading up to its launch covering the game-play mechanics, settings and story line so on the eve of its official launch date we’re going to delve in to the hardware requirements as we know a lot of you are customising gaming PCs on our site right now specifically for it!
While Far Cry 5 is a brand new title, we do know quiet a bit about the game engine it’s built on (Crytek) and have had many years of Far Cry PC releases from which to gauge the delivers target graphics settings / performance ratios.
Baring all that in mind along with our extensive research of anecdotal evidence from those who have played it already, these are still just estimates. Estimates we are confident in and definitely should get you in to the ballpark, but as with all PC games, background applications, patches, drivers and your specific hardware, your mileage may vary.
Pre-amble
So for those of you who are not necessarily PC hardware geeks and just want to focus on playing the dam games, there is some basics to cover before we proceed. The key components that effect gaming performance in a PC is the GPU, CPU and RAM (and to a lesser extent, the storage device for load and data streaming time). Now as long as the RAM and CPU don’t bottleneck the GPU (aka Graphics or Video Card) the GPU does all the heavy lifting when it comes to frame rates (the typical unit of measure for gaming performance)
24FPS is considered “playable” if steady but not very desirable. Most gamers target 40+ (ideally around 60FPS) for a truly smooth play-through that doesn’t hit you with any lag or gittering that pulls you out of the experience. This is what our recommendations below will be targeting.
Baseline (1080P / High) Settings
Lets face it, no one wants to play at anything below high settings in a series like franchise where the look and feel of the gorgeous game engine is the center-peace to the entire experience. So we’re not even going to bother with going below ‘high’ presets and trying to figure out the absolute lowest end system you get the game to run on because you wouldn’t be getting the full Far Cry effect.
- Intel i5 8400 or 7600 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
- 8 – 16GB of DDR4 RAM
- GTX 1060 6GB
Great (1440P / High) or (1080P Max) Settings
The number of pixels on screen greatly impacts the game’s performance so whether you prefer higher effects and rendering settings, or higher resolutions, it’s a trade off either way. 1440P doesn’t sound like much more than 1080P but it’s effectively 70% more dots on the screen for your GPU to render!
- Intel i5 8600K or 7600K / AMD Ryzen 7 1700
- 16GB of DDR4 RAM
- GTX 1070 OC 8GB
Great (4K / High) or (1440P Max) Settings
4K is extraordinarily demanding (4x more than 1080P) and even though we are pretty confident you can pull it off at 40-60FPS at high settings with the configuration below (namely the GTX 1080 TI) you may have to tweak a few of the graphics settings to avoid any nasty FPS dips when the proverbial shit hits the fan and explosions, fire and mayhem fill the screen.
- Intel i5 8600K or 7600K / AMD Ryzen 7 1700
- 16GB of DDR4 RAM
- GTX 1080 TI 11GB
In Conclusion.
It’s still very early so we will be updating this post and the above specs if any of it’s slightly out of line once we’ve had the chance to test it out ourselves. That being said, all the early benchmarks and reviews indicate we were pretty accurate in our estimations and we err’ed on the safe side so as to not disappoint. If you have any further questions or need any assistance at all in customizing your next gaming PC don’t hesitate to reach out to us at any time via our contact page and we will get back to you ASAP. In the meantime, why not head over to our custom PC store page and apply some of what you’ve just learned!
Update (Reviews).
As the clock strikes midnight in regions around the world, reviews at hitting the internet and we are very happy to see a lot of 8s and 9s out of 10 from the likes of major review sites like IGN, Gamespot, AusGamers and CG Magazine. Bare in mind reviews are subjective so if your not a Far Cry forumula fan, this might not change your mind, but for those who are… well it’s looking like a no-brainer!