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 6800 GS was 3.45% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 9.17% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 11.92% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT and 19.92% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS achieved a performance similar to MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT, ATI Radeon X600 XT and factory-overclocked GeForce 6600 256 MB from XFX.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was beaten by HIS Radeon X800 GT, which was 7.88% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, which was 7.84% fasterthan its rival HIS Radeon X800 GTO, which was 7.77% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XT, which was 7.58% faster, ATI Radeon X1600 XT, which was 7.52% faster, Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, which was 7.41% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XL, which was 7.12% faster, ATI Radeon X1600 XT, which was 7.05% faster and ATI Radeon X1900 XTX, which was 6.74% faster.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 without any image quality enhancement, nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was 3.77% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 4.15% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 12.9% faster than factory-overclocked GeForce 6600 256 MB from XFX, 48.63% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT, 50.88% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600 and 81.63% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS achieved a performance similar to MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT and ATI Radeon X1900 XTX.

GeForce 6800 GS da nVidia was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E., which was 8.05% faster, HIS Radeon X800 GT, which was 7.89% fasterthan its rival HIS Radeon X800 GTO, which was 7.46% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XL, which was 6.95% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XT, which was 6.18% faster, ATI Radeon X1600 XT, which was 6.01% faster, ATI Radeon X1600 XT, which was 5.76% faster and Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, which was 4.46% faster.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 without any image quality enhancement, nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was 3.10% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 3.65% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 9.33% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 11.76% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 21.04% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 25.74% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 48.63% faster than factory-overclocked GeForce 6600 256 MB from XFX, 108.77% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600,121.16% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT and 170.83% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS achieved a performance similar to MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT and ATI Radeon X1900 XTX.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E., which was 8.53% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XT, which was 7.56% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XL, which was 7.20% faster and HIS Radeon X800 GTO, which was 5.28% faster.

At a resolution of 1024x768 enabling image quality enhancements, nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was 4.11% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 12.16% faster than its rival HIS Radeon X800 GTO, 29.00% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 47.61% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 50.31% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 73.67% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 84.74% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 90.26% faster than factory-overclocked GeForce 6600 256 MB from XFX, 198.77% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 246.50% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro and 277.37% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS achieved a performance similar to ATI Radeon X1900 XTX.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was beaten by ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E., which was 8.33% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XL, which was 8.24% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XT, which was 7.72% faster, nVidia GeForce 7800 GT, which was 7.21% faster and MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 6.59% faster.

At a resolution of 1280x1024 enabling image quality enhancements, nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was 4.42% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 17.49% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GTO, 40.02% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 51.19% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 58.68% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 90.82% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 108.40% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 117.68% faster than factory-overclocked GeForce 6600 256 MB from XFX, 257.07% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 280.28% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro and 295.08% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was beaten by ATI Radeon X1800 XT, which was 39.90% faster, MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 32.19% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XL, which was 30.09% faster, ATI Radeon X1900 XTX, which was 27.47% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, which was 26.24% faster and nVidia GeForce 7800 GT, which was 24.68% faster.

At a resolution of 1600x1200 enabling image quality enhancements, nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was 16.45% faster than nVidia GeForce 6800 GT, 17.23% faster than its rival HIS Radeon X800 GTO, 43.94% faster than HIS Radeon X800 GT, 62.91% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 66.24% faster than ATI Radeon X1600 XT, 99.55% faster than Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro, 104.45% faster than XFX GeForce 6600 GT, 131.61% faster than factory-overclocked GeForce 6600 256 MB from XFX, 253.99% faster than Albatron GeForce 6600, 396.64% faster than Sapphire Radeon X600 Pro and 469.61% faster than ATI Radeon X600 XT.

nVidia GeForce 6800 GS was beaten by ATI Radeon X1800 XT, which was 80.02% faster, ATI Radeon X1900 XTX, which was 71.85% faster, ATI Radeon X1800 XL, which was 48.66% faster, MSI GeForce 7800 GTX, which was 45.50% faster, ATI Radeon X850 XT P.E, which was 35.81% faster and nVidia GeForce 7800 GT, which was 31.10% faster.