FarCry v1.2 SM3.0 Path Analysis

by Derek Wilson on 7/2/2004 12:21 AM EST
Comments Locked

36 Comments

Back to Article

  • misnad - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link

    Hey guys, when playing an adrenaline pumping game like far cry or doom 3, how on earth does one take the time to notice the minute details??? True enough you need decent quality, but what's required the most is a decent framerate!!! Or else, we'll end up with a slideshow of hi-res pictures! My 2 cents.
  • misnad - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link

  • KJ1a - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link

    I noticed a difference in the comparison pictures.
    I lloks like Nvidia is rendering less and in lot of the areas the quality is lower and bumpmapping is a little less pronounced as well.
    I have owned ATI and Nvidia cards and I can honestly say my games allways look better on the ATI cards.
    Look at the detials in the pictures.
    Thats my 2 cents.
  • bangbilo - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link

    I once was a really happy ATI customer, until i bought my 9600 ( this was before the XT ) and i liked the card at the time it was kicking the crap out of any game out there. Then one day i decided to have some fun with a thing called Linux. I started out with the Suse 9.0 distro and i quickly noticed i did not have 3D support. After a week of my life slaved over forums and people saying that this works and ATI's drivers not i decided my next card was going to be a NVidia. Ati has always had crappy support issues with there drivers in my opinion and if they would just get that fixed i would be buying me a X800 XT not a 6800 Ultra (Ordered that baby today) I love ati they have allowed me to be a somewhat descent gamer for 4 years not its time to try out the other guy. If i'm not satisfied with them and ati figures out a few things that the customers have been wanting for years. Then i might be buying me an XI800 XT ULTRA PLATNUM EDITION with CHROME HUBCAPS.... yes i said it HUBCAPS... :) thats my 2 cents

    -Bangbilo
    "pain is weakness leaving the body"
    Bangbilo@dynxweb.com
    www.dynxweb.com/sort
  • Staples - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link

    In some of those first few screens, you may want to fix the gamma in an image editor. They are dark in the game but not that dark, at least they shouldn't be unless you are playing at default settings.
  • DerekWilson - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link

    I could use those burgers ...

    Thanks again, Pete :-)
  • Pete - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link

    Craziness! Nice to see that you're on top of things, Derek. Now that you've averted an aliased crisis, head out to the grill and set some burgers to medium. :)
  • Dasterdly - Saturday, July 3, 2004 - link

    Then you gotta get the Ultra Hyper (Kung Fu) Fighting Edition.
    Or dont forget the Ultra Extreme XT Platinum Edition or the GT2 Pro Turbo Extra-Special Edition.
    .
  • bearxor - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Wow, that little change with the AA really changed the look of those benchmarks.

    The ATi X800 XT PE Alpha 3 Pro Turbo doesn't look so bad now.
  • nordlaw - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    9800 Pro's referred to as 'Older' video cards - Moore's Law is being smashed open, lately by GPUs.

    CPUs, not so, of course.

    I need a slightly better CPU so I can keep up with GPUs. ;)
  • DerekWilson - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Thanks Pete, we'll be setting AA and AF in the benchmark batch file from now on ... We've updated the site to reflect the fact that the first run of numbers had NV 4xAA set in the control panel (which means it was off in the game).

    We appologize for the problem, and these new numbers show an acurate picture of the NV vs. ATI playing field.

    Again, we are very sorry for the mistake.
  • Bonesdad - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Wait till you see the numbers for NV's 6800 Ultra Extreme with Cheese!!!
  • Pete - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Derek, was AA on for the nV cards? Apparently nV's latest drivers change behavior once again, to require AA to be set in-game, rather than via CP (which does nothing).

    Perhaps you could avoid this mess of ever-changing AA settings by using AA+AF for comparison screens? It'd also have the added benefit of showing the games in a more positive light. :)
  • joeyd - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

  • gordon151 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    pio!pio! x-bit labs tested the difference between performance with the 1.2 and 1.1 patch on the NV3x (5900 Ultra) and well it wasn't pretty. NV3x actually saw a rather big performance drop using the new patch. I dunno if nVidia is gonna do anything about this since they seem to be turning a blind eye to the NV3x line with respect to future optimizations.
  • DerekWilson - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    trilinear optimizations are on
    anisotripic filtering optimizations are off

    AA has less noticable benefit as resolution increases, but nearly vertical and nearly horizontal lines are still obvious in games with high contrast scenes.
  • kmmatney - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Do you really need AA on when running at 1600 x 1200, as in these these benchmarks? Just wondering if its much of a benefit at this high of a resolution. I never go past 1024 x 768, so I wouldn't know.
  • pio!pio! - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    So how about just the performance jump from FarCry 1.1 to 1.2 w/o using these high end shaders? (Ie for the previous generation Geforce 5900 crowd and lower)
  • AnnoyedGrunt - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Does that mean trilinear optimizations on, or trilinear filtering on?

    Thanks,
    D'oh!
  • DerekWilson - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    we used driver default:

    trilinear on
    anisotropic off
  • Illissius - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    For these benches, were nVidia's trilinear and/or anisotropic optimizations on or off? (This would help in comparing results with other sites, for example.) I don't recall seeing them mentioned, but they're getting to be as important as the driver revision these days.
  • DerekWilson - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    DAPUNISHER:

    I'm not sure about the 64bit version of any game, as game developers are much more likely to hold everything until MS releases WinXP64 than hardware vendors. My guess is that we can expect not to see any visual improvements or differences with the 64bit move. There's much less reason to alter the graphics of the game when gaining more registers and memory address space than when you add the ability to do conditional rendering, floating point frame buffers, instancing, and all that...

    Zak,

    We could try to guess performance based on these numbers:

    http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&...

    But we didn't use those because they're based on the 1.1 version of farcry under dx9b and Catalyst 4.4 ...

    Our focus was the impact of SM3.0, not on overall relative performance, but in the future we will include older generation cards even when looking at next gen features. You are right, it does provide a way to relate to the numbers, and those cards should be in there for completeness' sake as well. Thanks for the suggestion.
  • Zak - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    I wish you guys would include one or two benchmarks on some older video cards to give a point of reference for those, such as myself, who still run R9800 and older generation cards. Without seeing how the game performs on R9800 or eqivalent card it's hard to relate to these benchmarks.

    Zak
  • DAPUNISHER - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Very impressed with the GT's performance in this version. When can we expect your preview of FarCry 64bit version with the SM3 path Derek? and will 64bit bring some new eye candy or more performance? Inquiring minds want to know :-)
  • Warder45 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Interesting. Some odd stuff like ATI's X800 line actually decreasing in performace with the 1.2 patch. I wonder if thats a driver issue that now needs to be fixed, but if I was an ATI owner I'd stick with the 1.1 version of the game. I'd really like to see someone benchmark with omega's drivers for ATI, and see if there's any difference in performace there.

    #9, That article at tom's is from the NV40 review months ago. This new verison, 1.2 fixes most of the IQ problems nvidia was having.

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/far...

    So far the only IQ problem I've seen mentioned with the new version.
  • araczynski - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    very nice, that 68UE sure is kicking some tail, before AND after the SM3.

    perhaps this will lead to developers optomizing (to some small degree at elast) their code for the 2 camps? (or at least for the camp that pays them the most...)

    in any case, here's to hoping the 68U/UE are priced acceptably by xmas, or at least next tax time :)
  • Shad0hawK - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    "Then, during the ATi refresh,we will all be greeted the the Geforce 6900, 6900 Ultra, 6900 Turbo and 6900 Ultra Hyper Fighting Edition."

    actually that will probobly be after ATI anounces the super golden/silver platinum extra extra XT edition with not only one but TWO "free" certificates for games not out yet
  • nserra - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    #1, #2, #3, #4:
    I think the huge hit is because nvidia is not doing AA to the all scene as ati does.
    The new drivers from nvidia have this ability. How do you think nvidia have come to top so soon, after some driver release ... Trilinear optimizations, Shader optimizations and now AA optimizations...

    I also don't understand why only toms site notes differences between ati and nvidia image quality...
    http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/...
  • ZobarStyl - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Bearxor, though I agree the overclocked editions are silly, don't act like ATi doesn't do the exact same thing...
    Ultra Extreme = XT Platinum Edition
    Ultra = XT
    GT = Pro
    vanilla 6800 has no direct competitor, but it held it's own occasionally against the Pro in the review.
    Both of the double-named cards are just the top end overclocked, so I tend to ignore them in the reviews, but then the GT was beating all of the ATi cards in some of those demos too...
  • RyanVM - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    #6, Ditto :p. Dell 2001FP for life :D
  • Anemone - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Am one of the increasing numbers of folks who does ues 1600x1200 on everything that supports it, just fyi. Now it's lcd, but before my 19" crt happily did that res too, and that's now many years old.

    Just for note only. :)
  • bearxor - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Yea, when are we even going to be able to buy a Ultra or "Ultra Extreme".

    Heck, I never even heard of "Ultra Extreme" until this preview.

    I guess when ATi releases new drivers, nVidia will have to launch the long-rumored and much-hyped Geforce 6800 Ultra-Extreme Hyper Edition.

    Then, during the ATi refresh,we will all be greeted the the Geforce 6900, 6900 Ultra, 6900 Turbo and 6900 Ultra Hyper Fighting Edition.

    They're getting as bad as Capcom these days...
  • Pete - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Whoa, some huge gains for nV. I honestly didn't expect to see such clear differences this early--props to them.

    ATi's AA hit may be due to an under-performing programmable memory controller, per ATi ppl. We may see them improve memory-intense AA+AF numbers with newer drivers that better utilize the controller. Dunno if that can compensate for nV's huge SM3.0 gains, though.

    I'm still a little baffled by the ever-faster "Ultra Extreme" models, though, considering we haven't seen one for even presale (AFAIK) in the many weeks since the 6800U's launch.
  • TheSnowman - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    well Jeff, that explains why ati's peformace tanks, but it does nothing to explain why nvidia's doesn't.
  • Jeff7181 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    Very nice article guys.
    Only thing I'd like to see that I didn't was lower res benchmarks, since I think it's safe to say that most people don't have monitors that support 1600x1200 at a decent refresh rate. Hell... mine can't do 1280x1024 at a decent rate.

    Oh... and gordon151... I wonder if it could be because of the large amounts of objects to be anti-aliased. Grass, trees, etc. ... combine that with the HUGE draw distances and you've got quite a task on your hands. Just my theory anyway :)
  • gordon151 - Friday, July 2, 2004 - link

    I've been wondering lately why performance tanks so much with the x800 series when AA is enabled in Farcry. It almost cuts in half when applying 4xAA, which is something you don't see in other games.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now