Introduction

Far Cry HDR disabled

Far Cry with HDR set to 1

HDR at 6

Far Cry with HDR set to 11

With Half-Life 2’s release earlier this month, Crytek’s Far Cry 1.3 patch has largely been forgotten by most, but we decided to revisit the topic with ATI’s RADEON 9800 PRO/XT and X700 PRO, arguably the most common cards from ATI that are talked about in the $200-$300 segment (since the X700 XT is still impossible to find), and the GeForce 6600 GT and GeForce 6800, which are the clearly the superior solutions of choice right now from NVIDIA at that price point.

HDR off

HDR set to 1

HDR set to 6

Far Cry with HDR set to 11

The argument is that with Far Cry’s unique position as the only title currently available with support for both shader model 3.0 and 2.0b we could get an indication of how NVIDIA and ATI’s latest products will perform with titles that will be coming out next year. There are a few cards that are absent, such as the GeForce 6800 LE and RADEON X800 SE, both of which are parts that have been focused on the OEM, rather than retail market.

HDR disabled

HDR set to 1

HDR 6

HDR set to 11

Our X700 XT board was a prototype engineering sample and isn’t running well at all with Far Cry 1.3, posting numbers that are ridiculously low for such a speedy card. We have a feeling this is being caused because the board is overheating. ATI also has a few promising mainstream graphics cards in this price segment that will be launched shortly that you’ll want to keep your eye on. In any case, let’s see how things shake out!

System Setup

Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz

Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D

1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2

ATI RADEON X700 PRO 256MB
ATI RADEON 9800 XT
ATI RADOEN 9800 PRO 128MB
Driver version beta CAT 4.12 driver

Leadtek WinFast A400 Ultra GeForce 6800 card
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT reference card
Driver version Forceware 67.02

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

Windows XP Professional SP1

DirectX 9.0c

Benchmarks

Far Cry 1.3 patch