FarCry 2 Gameplay Performance @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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FarCry 2 Gameplay Performance - We play FarCry 2 and find the best gaming experience served up by seven video cards from AMD and NVIDIA. A2A testing is done as well with all seven video cards. We spell out what GPU you need to get the FarCry 2 gaming you want. New drivers are used too!

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Nailing down one video card for the job is tough, but if we have to give it to one, the...
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Off Topic posting will get you banned ITT.
 
Thanks again for another great review, Kyle and Brent. Your reviews are always very enjoyable and very informative to read.


I'm glad to see that even a HD 4850 performs very well for its price range. I didn't really expect that.


I look forward to part 2.
 
Article was well layed out and direct as always, but no 8800gt or 3870 was sort of a glaring omission.
 
Woot. HD4870 X2 can get up to 2560x1600 with 4x AA and still faster than GTX280 @1920x1200 with 8xAA !!!

The best part: link to new driver!!!

2 > 1 :D
 
chameleoneel said:
Article was well layed out and direct as always, but no 8800gt or 3870 was sort of a glaring omission.
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It would have been nice to see a 8800GT or 3870 in the mix as well. It helps one decide if a jump to these new cards are needed. However, from my experience with my 8800GTS setup it's not as I can play FarCry 2 maxed out (1680x1050) with no issues. Good article regardless.
 
bpmurrGT said:
It would have been nice to see a 8800GT or 3870 in the mix as well. It helps one decide if a jump to these new cards are needed. However, from my experience with my 8800GTS setup it's not as I can play FarCry 2 maxed out (1680x1050) with no issues.
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If someone already has the older card in his machine, he can find out himself how well his card can perform in the game and he will know how well the newer cards perform in the same game.
 
Sweet deal Kyle. Dunno what I'm going to get still :( I want an X2 but I don't need it, I want a 280 but I don't need it either (Still rocking CRT's and DDR1 ;) )

Damn you! I urge to spend money...
 
So if anyone here is using Vista, right click on the Far Cry 2 shortcut, go to properties, then the compatibility tab, then check the disable desktop composition box. This basically disables Aero while the game is running. This gave both my friend and I i significant playability increase on G92 chips.

Figured it be worth mentioning since i had no idea about it.
 
Kyle, did you test a 4850 1gb?

The article says the 1gb 4870 was faster then the 512 version but i did not notice any mention of a 1gb 4850.

I ask because I own one, and bought it for 192 dollars. could possibly be a better option then the gtx 260 for the price/performance crown. especially when overclocked :)
 
chameleoneel said:
Article was well layed out and direct as always, but no 8800gt or 3870 was sort of a glaring omission.
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I own a 8800gt, and I don't see anything wrong with leaving it out.

This article would be primarily for people that want to know which new video card to buy for this game. At this point, I think the 8800gt and 3870 have had their time in the sun. I don't think I would recommend them anymore considering what is to be had for just a little bit above their price point.

Great article. I love the opinions on each different screen resolution. Keep it up!
 
Excellent evaluation and good to see a DX10 game performs well. I'm really digging how good this game looks with everything on.

Great to see the new driver increases performance for Crossfire, but what did you happen to test for CrossfireX or 3-way SLI? Not that this stupid amount of GPU power is necessary for this game, but it would be interesting to see if there is support.
 
chameleoneel said:
Article was well layed out and direct as always, but no 8800gt or 3870 was sort of a glaring omission.
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The fact is that we do not have the resources to cover cards a year + old. Many of our forum members do however have these cards and should be a great resource for you as they love to share their information.
 
Rockaholic said:
Kyle, did you test a 4850 1gb?

The article says the 1gb 4870 was faster then the 512 version but i did not notice any mention of a 1gb 4850.

I ask because I own one, and bought it for 192 dollars. could possibly be a better option then the gtx 260 for the price/performance crown. especially when overclocked :)

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No we did not test the 4850 1Gb, but given that fact that a 260-O now can be had for less if you factor in the price of the game, it is still a better deal IMO.
 
Love-Man said:
I own a 8800gt, and I don't see anything wrong with leaving it out.

This article would be primarily for people that want to know which new video card to buy for this game. At this point, I think the 8800gt and 3870 have had their time in the sun. I don't think I would recommend them anymore considering what is to be had for just a little bit above their price point.

Great article. I love the opinions on each different screen resolution. Keep it up!
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Agreed and agreed.

I too was very happy that Brent took the time to get his feet wet on the lower resolutions and chime in on the performance. It is something that we assume is understood, but obviously we need to at the very least discuss what we see there.
 
Very informative and well laid out. Thanks again for the great article. Now I wait on the sli/crossfire article to just how silly things can get with this game. I'm pretty confident my sli 260 216 setup will slap this game sideways at 1920x1200.
 
Nice article, I'm glad you're at 'least mentioning performance across the lower resolutions (1680x1050 in particular, being so common out there w/all the cheap 22" panels). The selection of cards looks just perfect, you're totally right about the 4850 1GB vs the GTX 260, 'specially with FC2 itself bundled and those rebates.
 
Very good article, but I feel kind of sad that my poor little GTX 280 got a major case of whop ass, 4870x2 style. ouch ouch ouch... :(
 
Love-Man said:
I own a 8800gt, and I don't see anything wrong with leaving it out.

This article would be primarily for people that want to know which new video card to buy for this game. At this point, I think the 8800gt and 3870 have had their time in the sun. I don't think I would recommend them anymore considering what is to be had for just a little bit above their price point.

Great article. I love the opinions on each different screen resolution. Keep it up!
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reason people what to see the 8800, they want to see what kind of approvement they will get if they switch to a newer card
 
I'm only wondering why you don't include 1600x1200. Or am I really that antiquated to still use a 4:3 20" LCD?
 
Ludic said:
I'm only wondering why you don't include 1600x1200. Or am I really that antiquated to still use a 4:3 20" LCD?
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I still use a 20" CRT at 1600x1200. That being said, I can still extrapolate from the article that my single HD4850 will rape this game at that relatively low resolution. My own experience with this game confirms this.

4x3 resolutions in reviews are getting rare as widescreens become increasingly popular. However, if you see 1680x1050 widescreen resolution in any review, you can almost directly compare it to 1600x1200 which is only slightly more pixels to push.
 
Ludic said:
I'm only wondering why you don't include 1600x1200. Or am I really that antiquated to still use a 4:3 20" LCD?
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Because every resolution introduced includes a shitload of work along with it when you do gameplay analysis rather than benchmarks.

We did make mention of 1600 widescreen testing and the SAME EXACT STATEMENTS would apply to 16x12.
 
There's a typo on the GTX 260 216.

The Gameplay Advantages should say Higher AA not Higher Resolution :) We will get this fixed. - Kyle

BTW, I always thought the GTX 260 192 was a better buy than the 4870 512mb.. and it really shows here with the extra memory.

Good article!
 
Thanks for the prompt review, Kyle

54FPS min frames for the X2 @ 1920x DX10 all high 4xAA|16xAF. I like it :)

Oh yeah, and the rocks are no longer too far below the ground, weeee :p

I don't care what the haters say about you Kyle, you're the man.
 
Ok, first I'd like to say thanks for the review...well written and easy to understand as most of your articles are...

HOWEVER. I agree with a great many people here who'd like to see how an 8800GT/GTX card would stack up. There are a ton of us with "older" hardware and I think we'd like to know what we'd get for our hard earned money when we upgrade.

I think that should be something to consider for future reviews...throw in a very popular older series card, just for comparison. It'll really let us know how far hardware (and software I guess) have come!

Thanks again!
 
just for the record, a 3850 with 256MB runs it quite playable with everything set to medium (1680x1050), but I am thinking it's definitely time to upgrade :D
 
Kyle,

Some people are claiming FC2 stutters or is choppy with ATi cards and not with nVidia, did you encounter this? Primarily, I am speaking about the current gen cards.

It sounds like FUD to me. I am not saying some people don't encounter stutter, I am saying all ATi cards in all systems do not exhibit this behavior. Also by contrast all nVidia cards in all systems do not give smooth play in FC2.
 
VolvoR said:
Ok, first I'd like to say thanks for the review...well written and easy to understand as most of your articles are...

HOWEVER. I agree with a great many people here who'd like to see how an 8800GT/GTX card would stack up. There are a ton of us with "older" hardware and I think we'd like to know what we'd get for our hard earned money when we upgrade.

I think that should be something to consider for future reviews...throw in a very popular older series card, just for comparison. It'll really let us know how far hardware (and software I guess) have come!

Thanks again!
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VolvoR, the thing is that [H] has already done many articles to show how far cards have come.

As a matter of fact, while researching which card I was going to buy, I was amazed at how much back in time I could go in researching video card performance,

Buy looking at those articles I was able to see how cards compared to each other over many reviews so I can compare 200 series to 9000, and 9000 to 8000 series cards directly and so forth.

I rather read at [H] good articles about the details of state of the art instead of lost of fluff about many cards..

There are other sites that give plenty of "here are the fps of 4870x2 compared to GeForce 6600".

Uhmmm, I have an idea. Let me get it done 1st, and then I'll post.

In the mean time, look at this gem from Tuesday , May 10, 2005 in case you are trying to figure out if you should upgrade from a GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Kyle, it was a good article but I wish you had compared it to a GeForce2 Ultra you reviewed back in 2000. It would have helped us decide if it is really time to upgrade or not :p

FarCry 64-bit: Test System Setup:

Our test system setup was exactly the same as we had in our Windows XP Pro x64 Gaming Comparison here. We are using the ATI RADEON X850 XT-PE and NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra with the latest drivers available for both 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows. The hardware platform is an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe with an AMD Athlon64 FX-55 and 1GB of RAM.

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EDIT: Look at this Kyle quote from 2000:

When we did the Voodoo 5 PREview here at the Hard|OCP we had the damn community about take our heads off over not showing resolutions above 1024x768.
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So he has been defending his choice of resolutions sinceat least 2000.

Give up Kyle, or try a differrent approach, cause u are obviousy getting the same result over and over. :D
 
Awesome article and with the 4870x2 performance, I'm really starting to get excited to see what the 4850x2 can do for $350.
 
Dugg! :D

Great article! Shows that my investment in the HD4870x2 was well worth the money, at least for Far Cry 2.
 
For what it's worth these are my benchmark results:

1680x1050, highest settings, no AA / AF:

* Average Framerate: 44.75
* Max. Framerate: 60.55
* Min. Framerate: 38.36

1680x1050, highest settings, 4xAA / no AF:

* Average Framerate: 31.91
* Max. Framerate: 48.34
* Min. Framerate: 22.68*

*) Taking screenshots with Fraps seems to drop my framerate...
 
Blacklash said:
It sounds like FUD to me. I am not saying some people don't encounter stutter, I am saying all ATi cards in all systems do not exhibit this behavior. Also by contrast all nVidia cards in all systems do not give smooth play in FC2.
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You shouldn't say that (4850):
bench1.png


2nd try:
bench2.png
 
My rig:
8800GTX @ 612/945
Q6600 @ 2.8
24" dell monitor
Everything set to ultra high but with no AA (because I'll be damned I just don't notice any more) = runs like a dream at 1920*1200 and looks stunning.

P.S: I'd love to know exactly what it was that nVidia did to their drivers to make AA *almost* redundant?
When Bioshock first came out it suffered the worst aliasing I think I've ever seen in a video game.
Then nVidia worked some magic and when I went through Bioshock for a second time I though that maybe the 1.1 patch enabled some kind of default AA in the Unreal 3 engine the aliasing lines were so reduced
Is this a DX10 thing or has nVidia done something rather cool?
 
Meocene said:
My rig:
8800GTX @ 612/945
Q6600 @ 2.8
24" dell monitor
Everything set to ultra high but with no AA (because I'll be damned I just don't notice any more) = runs like a dream at 1920*1200 and looks stunning.

P.S: I'd love to know exactly what it was that nVidia did to their drivers to make AA *almost* redundant?
When Bioshock first came out it suffered the worst aliasing I think I've ever seen in a video game.
Then nVidia worked some magic and when I went through Bioshock for a second time I though that maybe the 1.1 patch enabled some kind of default AA in the Unreal 3 engine - almost all aliasing was gone, and this is true of just about every other game I've played recently.
Is this a DX10 thing or has nVidia done something rather cool?
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Sounds about right out of a $200 video card. :)
 
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