Far Cry AMD64 Edition - A First Look at 64-bit Gaming
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 10, 2005 4:51 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
64-bit Far Cry Image Quality
Performance is only one aspect of the new Far Cry patches - the biggest impact will be visual. The visual improvements in the new patches are definitely noticeable, but not across the board.
Hold mouse over image to see the same scene with the new 64-bit patches applied.
Hold mouse over image to see the same scene with the new 64-bit patches applied.
Hold mouse over image to see the same scene with the new 64-bit patches applied.
Hold mouse over image to see the same scene with the new 64-bit patches applied.
Hold mouse over image to see the same scene with the new 64-bit patches applied.
Final Words
Although AMD and Ubisoft are definitely trying to provide 64-bit gamers with added value, it's honestly going to take games that depend on the benefits of a 64-bit OS to really sell the gaming population on 64-bit. For fans of Far Cry, there's no reason not to try the new patches, but we wouldn't expect a mass exodus to x64 Edition because of the content that's been enabled here.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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
gbrux - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
I'd like to see a performance comparison when each configuration, 32-bit and 64-bit, includes the maximum amount of memory for the motherboard.It is reported that Windows 64 with AMD 64 handles large amounts of memory better than a 32-bit system, thereby producing better performance.
Why did AT use just 1GB memory?
So, test that.
magnusfl - Saturday, September 5, 2009 - link
what i not see so far is any testing with more then 4 gigs of memory as I sure there a big jump in some games due to the limitation of 2 gig for the game which is not the case in the 64 bit OSas when the level is reached the memory overflow goes to the Hard drive which is much slower then memory
Carfax - Saturday, May 14, 2005 - link
Anand may have underestimated how GPU bound 1024x768 at VERY HIGH quality is. The guy who claims the 46% increase used Medium quality settings, which may have exposed the processors influence a lot more.Carfax - Saturday, May 14, 2005 - link
Doug, I was just about to post that. We need more testers to verify that performance boost though, because it was done by an amateur.If it's true though (and I hope so) it bodes well for games which are optimized for AMD64.
dougSF30 - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
And here is a real comparison that actually makes sense:64b FarCry runs up to 46% faster than 32b.
Gosh, who would've thought that not making the GPU the bottleneck would expose the code speed improvement?
http://www.aceshardware.com/forums/read_post.jsp?i...
maynardc - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link
I have the XP Pro x64 disc and have a few questions:1. If I install XP Pro x64 over XP Home Edition, will I still be able to run all of currently installed 32-bit apps OR will I have to reinstall everything?
2. Also, if I uninstall it, will it automatically go back to XP Home Edition SP2?
Concillian - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link
Who is the tard? The person who wrote the review, or the person who didn't read it well enough to realize that the performance comparisons weren't including the exclusive content that brought the increased visuals? Personally my vote is for the latter."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."
Reading Comprehension is your friend.
islandtechengineers - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link
I thought the same when i saw it. the improved graphics are better than the 5 to 6% performance increase! visually there's a noticeable difference; I doubt anyone would notice a 5 or 6% on performance.TWilliams - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link
Who ever wrote this article is a flipping tard!!! LOL... Look at it like this; The game runs 5% to 6% faster and it has greatly improved graphics! One would think we are comparing the same game and only getting 5 or 6 percent increase from the review, but that is not the case! We are getting 5 to 6 percent increase with greatly improved graphics, there is nothing to laugh at when you look at it like that... Any how, crappy review.. hehesmn198 - Thursday, May 12, 2005 - link
#25 I can't see how your reference to [H]ard|OCP helps your argument. See the final page. http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzY3LDY="Our performance results show that we did not have an increase or a decrease in performance with 64-bit FarCry with the new content. This is actually quite reassuring considering that the ECU patch is actually adding in a lot of new content, including a new rendering feature called Offset Mapping.
What CryTek and AMD have managed to do is to give us more content and world quality in the game without losing performance! They are taking the power of the AMD Athlon64 CPU and leveraging that to offset any performance differences and adding more detail in the game.
What we found the most demanding on performance is the new Offset Mapping 3D technique. In Catacombs, which employs this feature all over the scene since you are basically surrounded by stones the entire time, we found performance here to drop the most compared to 32-bit FarCry without Offset Mapping. There were instances where the frame rate was lower by 10-15FPS with Offset Mapping compared to without. However, in most of those scenes, the frame rate was already very high at approximately 70FPS, so losing 10FPS off that wouldn’t cause any change in gameplay experience. Indeed, it seems where Offset Mapping is used, performance is slightly slower in those situations than without from our experiences. There are also scenes and maps though where performance can be slightly faster, a few FPS here and there with 64-bit FarCry, and that’s with the extra content.
It seems to be both a give or take relationship. Depending on the scene or map, performance could be slightly slower, or slightly faster with 64-bit FarCry. Nevertheless, it is never too drastic to affect real world gameplay."
In light of your link, I’ll amend my first comment from “#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!” to “#3,5,8 I am impressed. If I understood correctly this is not comparing apples to apples. There is negligible performance deviation whilst having higher detail. That is great!” Hope you are happy now.