Far Cry 4 Crash Fixes – White Screen, Frame Stuttering & Drops, Stops Responding

I don't think we've ever tested any AAA games without a follow-up “crash fixes” article. Bugs run rampant – especially for PC users – in most modern triple-A titles, and that remains true for Far Cry 4. After last week's Assassin's Creed benchmark and crash fix posts, we've returned with a Far Cry 4 crash fix guide.

This crash fix guide addresses Far Cry 4 white screens, failure to launch, black screens, CTDs, frame stuttering, & AMD issues.

Our Other Far Cry 4 Content

Before getting to the crash fixes, some of this content may be of assistance or interest:

• $1087 Gaming PC Build Guide for Max Settings on Far Cry 4 & ACU.
• Far Cry 4 GPU Benchmark & AMD Issues.
• Far Cry 4 Max Settings Gameplay – 1080@60FPS.

Far Cry 4 Frame Stuttering, Lag, & FPS Drops

As unveiled in our GPU benchmark, Far Cry 4 suffers from severe frame stuttering and frame drops when using AMD video cards. When panning from left-to-right on an AMD card, users will notice jarring render output that repeats previous frames repeatedly, creating “stuttering.” Stuttering is sometimes described simply as “lag,” though that lacks the specificity required to determine an easy solution.

We found that there's no escape from stuttering on AMD devices, even the 4GB 290X we tested with. It's possible to mitigate frame stuttering on AMD cards by reducing settings and disabling anti-aliasing and AO entirely; these actions should make Far Cry 4 more playable, though it'll still frame drop with regularity.

Unfortunately, there's no solid solution beyond dropping these settings until Ubisoft releases a fix for AMD. That is, unless you wanted to buy an nVidia GPU, but that's a large investment for one buggy game.

If you're experiencing similar issues on nVidia hardware, we'd recommend dropping settings in accordance with our GPU benchmark. Disabling AA (or opting for SMAA), dropping AO, and disabling soft shadows will help tremendously.

White Screen / Failure to Launch

While testing with nVidia video cards, we occasionally experienced white screen freezes upon game launch; Far Cry 4 failed to launch at all, sitting on the white screen until terminated. We resolved this by first killing the Far Cry executable in task manager (processes), then re-launching the game. The white screen often occurs when uPlay is freshly-launched (the first launch of Far Cry after loading uPlay).

If that doesn't work, try disabling the in-game overlay in uPlay and Steam.

Driver updates are also in order. Move to 344.65 on nVidia or 14.11.2 on AMD.

Stopped Responding

We had sporadic crashes and “Far Cry 4 stopped responding” errors when minimizing or switching to borderless / windowed modes. Try playing in Full Screen and avoid minimizing to reduce chance of “stopped responding” crashes to desktop.

Some users have reported that disabling USB Bluetooth adapters, unplugging gamepads, and disconnecting unnecessary USB devices have resolved startup crashes.

Far Cry 4 Black Shadows

Some hardware configurations make it so that large, black shadows appear and hide graphics elements underneath them. The easiest way to resolve this issue is to disable shadows completely. Shader bugs can also appear if using incompatible graphics hardware – check the PC system requirements and ensure that your system meets them.

Post a comment below with solutions to your issues so that others may benefit!

- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.