InsaneTek

Far Cry

Far Cry may mark the beginning of a new era of graphical prowess as Crytek's successful engine and game were released several months prior to Doom 3 and Half-Life 2.  The game itself set a new standard in the recommendation for new hardware since its graphics, during its time, were rivaled by no other game in existence.  And even when other graphically intense games were later revealed, Crytek wowed us again with Far Cry's immediate support for the latest technological and graphical breakthroughs, such as the use of HDR lighting with Pixel Shader 3.0 and 64-bit capability.  Unfortunately, the game does not support standard time demos, so I had to make a custom time demo.  I recorded some game play during one of the game's most graphically demanding levels.  Using the outside volcano sequence during the "Dam" level, I managed to record a demo with intense fire fights with bullets and rockets and with "heatwave" effects coming from all around the volcano.  Unfortunately, the recorded demo only records a sequence and is not a direct copy of the original sequence taken, which means that each time the demo was run the enemies and environment could react differently every time.  In order to keep my results as objective as possible, I played each demo three times and took the average of the three instances.  While not too different in results, each FPS may count in delivering the best possible results for analysis.  Far Cry patch 1.3 was also applied for testing.

On our first test, you can easily see the power behind the Gigabyte 7800 GTX.  In Far Cry, the 7800 GTX was able to edge out a 6800 GT SLI setup, especially at the highest resolution.