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, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was 3.35% faster than PowerColor Radeon X800 GT, 3.46% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 9.17% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 11.93% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, and 19.93% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT achieved a performance similar to MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX, MSI – DOT GeForce 7800 GTX and ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was beaten by HIS Radeon X800, which was 7.87% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, which was 7.83% faster, and Sapphire Radeon X700, which was 7.40% faster.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 without any image quality enhancement, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was 3.19% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 3.24% faster than PowerColor Radeon X800 GT, 3.57% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 47.80% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT, 50.04% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, and 80.62% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT achieved a performance similar to MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX and MSI – DOT GeForce 7800 GTX.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, which was 8.66% faster, HIS Radeon X800 GT, which was 8.50% faster and Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, which was 5.05% faster.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 without any image quality enhancement, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was 3.79% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 4.34 faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 9.22 faster than PowerColor Radeon X800 GT, 21.85 faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 26.57 faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 110.16 faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 122.63 faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT, and 172.63 faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT achieved a performance similar to MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, MSI – DOT GeForce 7800 GTX and XFX GeForce 7800 GTX.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was beaten only by ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, which was 7.82% faster.

At a resolution of 1024x768 enabling image quality enhancements nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was 11.61% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 35.85% faster than PowerColor Radeon X800 GT, 38.31% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 86.20% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 98.07% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 220.32% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 271.48% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro, and 304.59% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT achieved a performance similar to ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX and MSI – DOT GeForce 7800 GTX.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 enabling image quality enhancements, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was 30.20% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 68.19% faster than PowerColor Radeon X800 GT, 74.58% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 137.91% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 159.84% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 345.19% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 374.13% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro, and 392.58% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT achieved a performance similar to ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was beaten by MSI - DOT GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 8.76% faster, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 8.27% faster, and MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 6.02% faster.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 enabling image quality enhancements nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was 52.67% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 86.23% faster than PowerColor Radeon X800 GT, 88.72% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 161.62% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 168.05% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 364.10% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 551.12% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro, and 646.79% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 7800 GT was beaten by MSI - DOT GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 20.40% faster, XFX GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 15.66% faster, MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 10.98% faster, and ATI Radeon XT P.E, which was 3.59% faster.