Far Cry 2 Dissected: Massive Amounts of Performance Data
by Derek Wilson on November 21, 2008 5:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
AMD Driver Caveats and Major Open Issues
The issues with AMD's driver and hotfix for Far Cry 2 have been fairly public. The 8.10 driver didn't really deliver on some performance points while the first hotfix had some rendering issues. The next couple hotfixes fixed some things and broke others, and we still don't have a driver from AMD that gives us the results we want. The 8.11 driver only incorporates the final hotfix changes, but we will have to wait until a newer hotfix is released or 8.12 for any hope of a better experience on Far Cry 2 with most AMD hardware.
While people have been talking about the issues, we've spent quite a bit of time looking at this problem (and the AMD driver issues are one of the major reasons this article is as delayed as it is). And we'll lead off with the bottom line: the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the only AMD card not in some way afflicted, and it also happens to be the card we would recommend for the best single GPU experience on Far Cry 2 at any setting except 2560x1600 with 4xAA. But that is not an excuse for the kind of horrific experience we've had with every single other AMD solution when playing this game.
The stuttering issue people have pointed out with AMD hardware is not an issue with the 1GB part in our experience. The rest of the line up suffers greatly from random hitches that aren't so much stuttering in our tests as they are temporary slow downs. We were also unable to test CrossFire, as CrossFire only works with 4xAA enabled. Even then CrossFire performance is erratic and stutters more than single card solutions (except for with the 4870 X2 or two 1GB 4870 cards that is). We aren't quite sure what the CrossFire issue is, but it seems clear that there is some graphics memory issue somewhere, and not only because of the huge discrepancy between the performance of the 4870 512MB part an the 1GB part.
In our tests, we initially wanted to take the 3 run average for each test. This was not something we could do with AMD hardware as even our benchmark sessions were marred with ridiculous stuttering and slow downs. We would have performance range from 25 to 55 frames per second on any given test. Rather than take the average, we decided to take the highest performance run for NVIDIA and AMD. It is worth noting that most of the performance results for NVIDIA were within less than a frame per second difference, so average versus max performance run isn't that different.
This does mean that our tests paint AMD hardware in a better light than the actual experience will be, at this point in time, with every card except the 4870 1GB. The average FPS data was just not usable as our line graphs looked more like sine waves than anything logical; nothing made any sense at all. Our choice to publish this article now is based on the fact that we absolutely expect AMD to fix their performance issues in Far Cry 2 as soon as possible. Far Cry 2 is a major title and AMD is a major GPU maker: there is simply no excuse for this sort of problem.
So the trade off for going forward with best-case scenario numbers is this page explaining the problems and a plea to AMD to change their approach to driver development for the good of the consumer.
Maintaining a monthly driver release schedule is detrimental to AMD's ability to release quality drivers. This is not the first or only issue we've seen that could have been solved (or at least noticed) by expanded testing that isn't possible with such tight release deadlines. Yes, consistent and frequent driver releases to improve compatibility and performance are a necessity, but doing anything to excess is a very bad idea. Moderation is key and AMD severely needs a better balance here.
We've been mentioning this as an issue in passing when it pops up and causes us problems, but this is starting to get ridiculous. It is one thing when previous fixes are broken or when older games fall off the grid and are neglected. But when a major title like Far Cry 2 is released to incredibly poor driver support, it is time to wake up and realize that something is wrong. This is not the first time we've seen issues with a newly released game, but the problems we've had with AMD drivers and Far Cry 2 are some of the worst we've ever experienced.
And this time it isn't just us. This isn't prerelease hardware or a beta software package. This isn't a quick fix "oops I forgot something" kind of bug. Though we tend to see problems a lot more frequently than end users, we do see a lot more issues with AMD drivers than NVIDIA. Even though not all those issues are things that we need to bother end users with, the probability of hitting a bug that will affect end users is much higher when you've got a higher number of bugs to worry about in general.
Now don't get me wrong, AMD drivers are still much better than they were before Catalyst. Back during the transition to Vista, ATI drivers were hands and feet above NVIDIA drivers for a long time (and they didn't hang XP out to dry either). AMD has maintained a unified driver model where NVIDIA had to break up their driver for different hardware generations for a while.
And now it is time for AMD to learn from their mistakes and change over to a more manageable and sensible driver release policy. Double the time between driver releases, do much much more testing across hardware platforms and games, and maybe even regularly release partly QA'd beta drivers in between WHQL drivers if there's something that needs a quick fix.
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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