The recommended specs have been released for Ubisoft’s next big triple-A title, Far Cry 5. Despite the lack of SLI and Crossfire support from game devs, and the tech largely being ditched by Nvidia and AMD themselves, Far Cry 5 will support dual-card rigs in a quest to reach 4K 60fps – but it won’t come cheap.
Not fussed on 4K? Here are the best gaming monitors for any resolution.
The recommended specs for running Far Cry 5 at 4K and 60fps are certainly demanding. It’s no surprise considering the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti – the most powerful single gaming GPU available in the market today – struggles to consistently manage that feat in many recently launched triple-A titles. To crank those rookie frame rates up from 30 to 60, you’ll need to grab yourself tandem graphics cards.
Dual Nvidia GTX 1080s, or AMD Vega 56s, are required. If you want to push those 8.3 million pixels around the screen at a decent speed you’ll need to pay the miner’s tax – that is, the now excessive pricing for a GPU thanks to miners gobbling them all up before they even reach the shelves. Not even some recent lip-service from Nvidia is going to change the fact that graphics cards are ridiculously priced right now.
A standard GTX 1080 retails for around $850 (£680), while Nvidia’s original MSRP for the same card is $549 (£529). Be thankful two GTX 1080 Ti cards are not required because they retail for well over $1300 (£930) a piece.
The CPU recommended specs aren’t exactly minimal either, you’ll need the flagship Intel Skylake i7 6700K or AMD Ryzen 7 1700X to cope. Thankfully miners don’t care for these so prices haven’t been going ballistic for CPUs. But don’t forget the 16GB of pricey DDR4 memory, too. All in all, with a fairly minimal rig – at least considering what would usually accompany dual GTX 1080s – you are looking at a build valued at somewhere in the ballpark of $2,500.
There is potentially a way out. A way to play 4K at 60 fps in Far Cry without selling your organs on the black market or dropping your quality down to a measly ‘medium’. It also might mean you can ditch the often unstable SLI. Nvidia’s Volta is expected to launch within GDDR6-powered gaming cards sometime early this year. In fact, the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) and Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) sandwich the launch of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 at the end of March. Coincidence? I think not.
Okay, fine. It’s probably coincidence.
But there is still some chance that you won’t be needing dual GTX 1080s to power a 4K 60fps experience when the game finally launches. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, and maybe Nvidia won’t release their next-gen cards in March, and maybe Miners will snatch up all the cards off the shelves again and we will be back at square one…. I’m holding out hope, if only because dropping $2,500 on a machine for 4K 60fps in the latest titles is a huge drag.
Can you run it? Take the Far Cry 5 requirements test at PCGameBenchmark.