Far Cry 2 Dissected: Massive Amounts of Performance Data
by Derek Wilson on November 21, 2008 5:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Testing with RanchSmall
Our first test is with the built in RanchSmall demo. We did not run this as a timedemo. Again, this means that the camera follows a fixed path for a fixed amount of time and the game renders frames as fast as it can simulating game play. As for settings, we ran in DX10 mode with Ultra High quality and no antialiasing. AI was disabled, and we ran each test 3 times (the default). All driver options were left on their default settings except that we use centered timing for the display so that we can tell by looking at it what resolution is running.
The built in RanchSmall test is the one NVIDIA recommended we test with (AMD didn't recommend a particular test to us). We chose this test because it's the shortest built in demo and we wanted to acquire lots of data.
Generally, the GeForce GTX 280 leads the way followed by the Radeon HD 4870 1GB which performs essentially on par with the two GTX 260 parts. The 512MB variant of the 4870 suffers heavily from its limited framebuffer falling behind the two NVIDIA GTX 260 cards. The 4850 leads the 9800 GTX where it counts, and sometimes the 4830 is good competition for it as well. The 9800 GT comes in ahead of the 4670, which essentially performs on par with the 9600 GT.
With these settings running this test, everything from the Radeon HD 4670 / GeForce 9600 GT and up is playable at 1280x1024. The lower end hardware we tested doesn't post playable scores even at 1024x768, so less than Ultra High quality would be recommended for those parts. Dropping into DX9 mode would definitely make playability possible, while dropping back to Very High Quality DX10 might not provide enough of a boost.
SLI with the GT200 based parts shows very good scaling with at least a 75% improvement in framerate. We can't compare this to CrossFire at this point because of driver level consistency and performance issues. Without AA, GT200 SLI isn't taxed at all.
The cheapest playable card at 1024x768 with these settings is the Radeon HD 4670.
The cheapest playable card at 1280x1024 with these settings is the Radeon HD 4670.
The cheapest playable card at 1680x1050 with these settings is the GeForce 9800 GT.
The cheapest playable card at 1920x1200 with these settings is the Radeon HD 4830.
The cheapest playable card at 2560x1600 with these settings is the GeForce GTX 260.
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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