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Far Cry AMD64 Edition - A First Look at 64-bit Gaming
Far Cry AMD64 Edition - A First Look at 64-bit Gaming
Date: May 10th, 2005
Topic: CPU & Chipset
Manufacturer: AMD
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi
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64-bit Far Cry Performance

For the most part, 32-bit games run at the same speed or slightly slower under x64 Edition compared to 32-bit Windows XP Professional. And from what we've seen with titles that have native 64-bit binaries (e.g. Chronicles of Riddick), there aren't any real performance gains to be had there either. In order to find out if Far Cry was any different, we looked at two separate platforms: an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and an Intel Pentium D 3.2GHz. All benchmarks were conducted with an ATI Radeon X850 XT and at 1024x768 with Very High quality settings enabled.

We compared performance under 32-bit Windows XP, as well as x64 Edition, while running both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Far Cry under the latter. We used our standard Far Cry demo that we've used in all other reviews, and in order to isolate the performance differences from the extra content, we only looked at performance changes with the first 64-bit patch installed - not the Exclusive Content Update.

Far Cry 64-bit vs 32-bit Performance Comparison

First, we see that the difference between running the 32-bit binary in XP Professional and x64 Edition is basically nothing. Next, there's a modest performance gain seen by the Athlon 64 X2 when using the 64-bit binary - we see a boost of 4%. Note that this sort of a performance improvement isn't noticeable at all to the end user, but there is a numerical advantage.

Interestingly enough, Intel actually does a little better - showing a 6.5% increase in performance. It's tough to say exactly why Intel gets more of a performance boost here, other than assuming that for whatever reason, Intel is facing more register pressure in our particular benchmark.

We're just happy that there is any sort of performance improvement at all - but to those looking for major increases in performance by moving to 64-bits, it's less and less likely to happen.

64-bit Far Cry Image Quality   Next Page

 
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59 Comments - Last by magnusfl, 157 days ago
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No Subject by Pjotr, 1736 days ago
What a pity, still, 4-6 % improvements are nothing to sneeze at, some 200 GHz meaning you can opt for a speed grade lower CPU and save some money.

Reply
No Subject by weiran, 1736 days ago
Heh, can't get Safedisc working in 64-bit?

Reply
No Subject by wien, 1736 days ago
Hmm.. That was mildly disappointing. I was sure the extra registers would have more of an impact than that.

Reply
No Subject by AnandThenMan, 1736 days ago
#2, exactly right.

Mildly impressed with the gains, better than nothing.

Reply
No Subject by rqle, 1736 days ago
nothing big, but the improvement is very much welcome.

Reply
No Subject by nserra, 1736 days ago
Well I’m impressed the image quality is superb, but I don’t know if the added image quality has more to do with the graphics card than to the processor.

Amd and Ubi should have made the older "image quality" mode available just to compare.

Reply
No Subject by Anemone, 1736 days ago
Nice to see ANY improvement, but it's tiny really. The painful detraction to this gain is that most 32 on 64 programs are running slower such that the gain in one is offset by losses in a dozen or more other apps.

But we KNEW it would take years before the power of 64bit would become commonplace even having the hardware and an OS for the hardware. But I'm seeing nothing to make me compelled to switch yet, which kind of hurts the progress :(

$.02

Reply
No Subject by Backslider, 1736 days ago
"AMD's goals are quite admirable, but the fact of the matter is that none of the visual improvements enabled by the Far Cry patches had anything to do with AMD64 or EM64T - they are artificially limited to run on those platforms alone, but could work just as well on a 32-bit platform."

This sickens me. Enable special things for people who bought special hard ware, EVEN THOUGH THE HARDWARE MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO HOW IT RUNS!

Thats just a pathetic ploy at the customer to convince them to adopt new hardware they dont need.

Sad Really. See if I buy anything from these assholes.

Reply
No Subject by AnnihilatorX, 1736 days ago
#8

You have to understand though, if AMD didn't put the money and effort in it these features won't be available at all.

Plus they didn't charge you for extra for their CPU because they put some money into FarCry did they?

Reply
No Subject by smn198, 1736 days ago
#3,5,8
I am impressed. If I understood correctly this is not comparing apples to apples. There are performance gains whilst having higher detail. That is great!

Reply
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