Far Cry is a game based on the new Shader 3.0 (DirectX 9.0c) programming model available on series 6 and 7 from nVidia and series X1000 from ATI graphics chips. We’ve updated the game to version 1.3.
 
As we’ve done on other programs, we ran this game at three resolutions, 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 and 1600x1200x32. This game allows several image quality levels and we’ve done our benchmarking on two levels, low and very high. To measure the performance we used the demo created by German magazine PC Games Hardware (PCGH), available at http://www.3dcenter.org/downloads/farcry-pcgh-vga.php. We run this demo four times and made an arithmetical average with the results. This average is the result presented in our graphs.

This game has a very important detail in its image quality configuration. Antialiasing, instead of being configured by numbers (1x, 2x, 4x or 6x) is configured as low, medium or high. The problem is that on nVidia chips both medium and high mean 4x, while on ATI chips medium means 2x and high means 6x, making the comparison between ATI and nVidia chips completely unfair. Because of that we configured antialising at 4x and anisotropic filtering at 8x manually at the video driver control panel.

For further details on how to measure 3D performance with Far Cry, read our tutorial on this subject.

At a resolution of 1024x768 without any image quality enhancement, GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX achieved the same performance level as Radeon X600 XT, being 4.22% faster than GeForce 6600 GT, 9.98% faster than GeForce 6600, 12.75% faster than GeForce 6800 GT and 20.81% faster than Radeon X600 Pro.

In this test, however, Radeon X850 XT P.E. was 7.05% faster and Radeon X700 Pro was 6.62% faster than the video card being tested.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 without any image quality enhancement, GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX was 4.10% faster than GeForce 6800 GT, 4.48% faster than GeForce 6600 GT, 49.10% faster than Radeon X600 XT, 51.36% faster than GeForce 6600 and 82.21% faster than Radeon X600 Pro.

In this test Radeon X850 XT P.E. was 7.71% faster and Radeon X700 Pro was 4.13% faster than the video card being tested.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 without any image quality enhancement, GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX was 4.51% faster than GeForce 6800 GT, 22.05% faster than GeForce 6600 GT, 26.78% faster than Radeon X700 Pro, 110.51% faster than GeForce 6600, 123.00% faster than Radeon X600 XT and 173.08% faster than Radeon X600 Pro.

In this test Radeon X850 XT P.E. was 7.64% faster than the video card being tested.

At a resolution of 1024x768 enabling image quality enhancements, GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX achieved a performance similar to Radeon X850 XT P.E., being 10.97% faster than GeForce 6800 GT, 85.12% faster than Radeon X700 Pro, 96.92% faster than GeForce 6600 GT, 218.46% faster than GeForce 6600, 269.33% faster than Radeon X600 Pro and 302.24% faster than Radeon X600 XT.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 enabling image quality enhancements, GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX was 6.93% faster than Radeon X850 XT P.E., 40.97% faster than GeForce 6800 GT, 157.59% faster than Radeon X700 Pro, 181.33% faster than GeForce 6600 GT, 382.02% faster than GeForce 6600, 413.36% faster than Radeon X600 Pro and 433.33% faster than Radeon X600 XT.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 enabling image quality enhancements, GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX was 11.65% faster than Radeon X850 XT P.E., 76.58% faster than GeForce 6800 GT, 202.60% faster than Radeon X700 Pro, 210.04% faster than GeForce 6600 GT, 436.79% faster than GeForce 6600, 653.11% faster than Radeon X600 Pro and 763.77% faster than Radeon X600 XT.