Far Cry 2 Dissected: Massive Amounts of Performance Data
by Derek Wilson on November 21, 2008 5:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Alright. That was a lot of data, and I applaud anyone who was able to successfully wade through it all. For those who didn't want to (or just couldn't stomach it), here's a quick summary of the results.
Most cards, including all cards that come in at >$100, are able to handle Far Cry 2 at Ultra High quality. Adding AA on top of that is fairly stressful and might require a drop back down Very High quality, though we don't see much need for AA in this game as it is low contrast and the effects do a good job of hiding or distracting from aliasing.
DX10 offers a performance improvement over DX9 for Ultra High and Very High settings. DX9 is only useful for High quality mode which offers a very large boost in performance over DX10 and should be enough to get almost any relatively recent discrete graphics card running at a passable resolution. Going forward we will be using our custom timedemo for testing Far Cry 2 at Ultra High quality under DX10.
The stand out in this test is the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. This $300 AMD single GPU part performed on par with NVIDIA's much more expensive GeForce GTX 280. Some tests favored the GTX 280 while others the 4870, but only 2560x1600 with 4xAA was a runaway victory for the NVIDIA part. Obviously this puts the Radeon HD 4870 1GB ahead of the GeForce GTX 260 variants, but they are generally $50 cheaper. If you can afford the price difference, the 4870 1GB won't disappoint. But $50 is a good chunk of change and the GTX 260 parts are still very capable under Far Cry 2. That decision will come down to budget, performance at the target settings and resolution, and simple preference.
Because CrossFire doesn't work yet, we can't really compare how multi-GPU scales against NVIDIA hardware. NVIDIA hardware does scale fairly well, going anywhere from 75% to 85%+ faster with a second card.
While some of the AMD parts, including the Radeon HD 4670 and 4850, performed consistently well against the competition, we don't feel comfortable solidly recommending any AMD part other than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB for Far Cry 2 because of the massive trouble we've had with their drivers. So we'll stick with recommending against the 9600 GSO, 9600 GT, and 9800 GTX... in case that helps. We do honestly believe that AMD will fix this performance issue (that shouldn't be there in the first place), but we just aren't comfortable putting our stamp of approval on hardware when there are these kinds of issues being sorted out.
At what we see as a key gamer price point, $200 - $250, for playing Far Cry 2 we heartily recommend the GeForce GTX 260 core 216. You can save money and go with the GeForce GTX 260 (original version) for $20-$30 less (or more with rebates) as they are on their way out the door (NVIDIA is no longer making the 192 core GPU), but the 512MB Radeon HD 4870 just doesn't stack up to these cards in these tests. To top that off, if you haven't picked up Far Cry 2 yet, EVGA is offering overclocked GTX 260 parts at stock prices bundled with the game. Now if that isn't the sweet spot, I don't know what is.
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DerekWilson - Monday, November 24, 2008 - link
the issue is overlapping development cycles for drivers. once features for a WHQL driver have been frozen, non-critical changes can't be made. This means that once one month's catalyst ships, it is not likely that any bugs that were found at the time of the release of the driver will make it in to the next months driver. This means it'll be at least two months before a fix is seen.i don't see how this disagrees with either what i said or what you said.
MichaelD - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
I'm curious about two things. Why wasn't the 4870X2 included in the test? With GTX280 SLI tested, an X2 would've been a good inclusion due to both price and performance. Also, why is it stated that "Crossfire doesn't work" when it works just fine on my X2.Before AMD released it's latest "FarCry2 Patch" (newer driver) there were XFire issues with the X2 and some games like FC2 and Stalker CS, but those have been fixed.
smokenjoe - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
I never had any problems with my x2 unless it was in windowed mode or it had wait for V sink on. Then there were massive slowdowns. In regular play my card had very consistant frame rates with around 2 hrs play. I did not use the benchmark. FC2 is not the only game with this problem. I know a lot of reviewers like to have the game in window mode to multi task wile benchmarking and Vsink on for pics but it doesnt reflect real world game play with any kind of crosfire set up.Unfortunatly I dont know the easy way of getting out of windowd mode I did not see it in the options so I had to edit the config file. To make more annoying the game reset to windowd mode after driver updates.
The game looks good to me maxed out but I havent had time to play it with other games first on the list.
rocky1234 - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
No had to comment on that as well...No taking longer for driver releases is not the answer because when I had a Nvidia card if there was a bug or something did not work you were pretty much sol until nvidia released their 8 month old driver to you & you had to hope that it would fix your problem or their bug if it didn't you were hooped until the next release or had to rely on leaked beta drivers. I was glad to get rid of that headache & have not looked back since I got my AMD/ATI card yes there have been issues but most if not all have been worked out & it has been done so in 3 months not 8 months. This is a new game & yes there will be problems with it & I personally have not had any issues with my 4870x2 2GB so far with this game it runs fast & looks good & yes there are pauses for maybe half a second once & a while but it only happens when the HDD reads & while driving so to those that complain about this get a faster drive or please stop whining...enough said. No need to comment on this to me as I don't care & have better things to do like go & play farcry 2 or Grid.rocky1234 - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
Well personally I have had no issues with this game & it is maxed out & no stuttering to be found there may be a very brief pause once & a while but it happens whenever the HDD is reading & I am driving something so this clearly is not the fault of the Graphics card.I have found no problems with this game & the Radeon drivers do far even before & switched to the hotfix drivers. I did find that the game does run a lot better from Windows Vista than it did with my Windows XP install & DX10 of coarse. I am glad that AMD took the time to make hot fixes for this game it shows that they are trying to make their cards run properly with this game. With Nvidia if it is not time for a driver release you unlucky souls would have to wait 6 to 8 months for a driver fix or have to depend on a leaked beta driver to fix the problem so to Anandtech take it easy on AMD at least they did something about it & released a hot fix.
I run most every game at 1080p on my HDTV & I found that crysis is a far more unstable game & just poorly optimized for any platform no matter how much power you give it. This is not AMD's or nvidia's fault this is the fault of the dev. Yes crysis does look a little better here & there but farcry 2 is very close & it just runs fast & smooth.
PrinceGaz - Saturday, November 22, 2008 - link
It's funny how soon older cards are forgotten here now. I've got one of those ancient relics, a G80 based 640MB 8800GTS, but like all cards of its generation, it was ommitted from the review. I suppose I can guesstimate that it will be around or just under the performance level of the 9600GT as they have a very similar architecture, but GeForce 6/7 users are totally left out by this review.In the current economic climate, it is unlikely everyone will be replacing their graphics card every year (or even every two years), so testing with some older generation cards, at lower detail settings of course, would be a good idea.
strikeback03 - Monday, November 24, 2008 - link
This review already contains data for 16 configurations, and they probably tested other configurations as well due to the Crossfire issues. If you are going to start throwing in every other reasonable configuration from the past few years and both companies, you would easily top 25-30 configurations, and the time required would be insane.daniyarm - Monday, November 24, 2008 - link
I completely agree with you. I bought 8800gt when it came out and bought another one 3 months ago for SLI. 8800GT SLI is by no means a low end graphics solution, it's on par with current single card GPUs. This is the problem with most review sites, they show benchies for new hardware to get you to upgrade because it pleases sponsors. They forget that unlike them, we pay for our hardware and can't afford to buy a new high end GPU every 6 months.Hawkmoon - Saturday, November 22, 2008 - link
Can anyone tell me what CPU was used with these videocards for these tests?Thanks
Hawkmoon - Saturday, November 22, 2008 - link
Hmmm, maybe I missed it... but can anyone tell me also what drivers they used for the Nvidia videocards?Thanks