Far Cry 2 Dissected: Massive Amounts of Performance Data

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.