10 - Multi GPU Far Cry 2 (1)

Far Cry 2 graphics performance

Remember Jack Carver and things were about to get seriously messed up for you? Well, tough luck. You are no longer at that deserted tropical island yet hop into a jeep and arrive at the sandy savannah surroundings of Africa. And that's a change... as much as you'll no longer run into any mutants, aliens, or any superpowers or psychic powers. Also, you are no longer Jack Carver, you assume the role of one of nine different mercenaries who are embedded in the midst of a brutal civil war which rages in an imaginary African nation.

In Far Cry 2 we selected an image quality setting, applied similarly to all cards. Since the graphics engine can deal with a lot, we opt for some of the very best image quality available in-game, DirectX 10 mode and then enable 4 levels of anti-aliasing in very high image quality settings mode. A pretty tough configuration for sure. The result is excellent image quality, yet it remains quite playable throughout the scope of tested cards and resolutions.

Image Quality Settings:

• 4x Anti Aliasing
• Textures: Very High
• Shadows: Very High
• Overall Quality: Very High
• DirectX 10

ATI Radeon HD 4870 CrossfireX (2 GPUs - 2 Cards)

** Blue line is of course a X48 not X58 as the chart mentions.

Obviously I could not leave out Far Cry 2, currently one of the hottest titles available on this globe we call Earth. This new title is surely not CPU bound as it's such a new title. Well, that's what we figured anyway. But give any system enough GPUs and somewhere you'll run into a bottleneck anyway.

Colored in blue -- The Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz system, we see a flat line of ~50 FPS. Definitely very CPU limited.

Colored in green -- Our performance seriously sees massive boost once we move onwards to the X58 platform. But, we see GPU limitation. Let's kick butt with some X2's setup in CrossfireX.

* 2560x1600 - the results are low due to the 512MB frame buffer on the 4870 cards.

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossfireX (4 GPUs - 2 Cards)

** Blue line is of course a X48 not X58 as the chart mentions.

With two 4870 X2 1024 MB cards set up in CrossfireX, we instantly see much higher performance, yet do stumble into a CPU limitation. QuadFire would like an even faster CPU. We'll show you in the overclocking session the effect of this thesis.

And guys keep in mind -> Very High Image Quality settlings are enabled with 4xAA samples.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 SLI (2 GPUs - 2 Cards)

To be honest, it's quite amazing what a set of 250 USD GTX 260's in SLI can do in this game really. Again a fantastic noticeable platform difference in performance. We do see some GPU limitation. But just look at the blue line, it's nearly embarrassing how much CPU limitation there is on our trusted old now common PC.