Guru3D.com
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • Channels
    • Archive
  • DOWNLOADS
    • New Downloads
    • Categories
    • Archive
  • GAME REVIEWS
  • ARTICLES
    • Rig of the Month
    • Join ROTM
    • PC Buyers Guide
    • Guru3D VGA Charts
    • Editorials
    • Dated content
  • HARDWARE REVIEWS
    • Videocards
    • Processors
    • Audio
    • Motherboards
    • Memory and Flash
    • SSD Storage
    • Chassis
    • Media Players
    • Power Supply
    • Laptop and Mobile
    • Smartphone
    • Networking
    • Keyboard Mouse
    • Cooling
    • Search articles
    • Knowledgebase
    • More Categories
  • FORUMS
  • NEWSLETTER
  • CONTACT

New Reviews
FSP Dagger Pro (850W PSU) review
Razer Leviathan V2 gaming soundbar review
Guru3D NVMe Thermal Test - the heatsink vs. performance
EnGenius ECW220S 2x2 Cloud Access Point review
Alphacool Eisbaer Aurora HPE 360 LCS cooler review
Noctua NH-D12L CPU Cooler Review
Silicon Power XPOWER XS70 1TB NVMe SSD Review
Hyte Y60 chassis review
ASUS ROG Thor 1000W Platinum II (1000W PSU) review
ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 WIFI6E router review

New Downloads
Media Player Classic - Home Cinema v1.9.22 Download
AMD Chipset Drivers Download v4.06.10.651
CrystalDiskInfo 8.17 Download
AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.6.1 Windows 7 driver download
ReShade download v5.2.2
HWiNFO Download v7.26
7-Zip v22.00 Download
GeForce 516.40 WHQL driver download
Intel ARC graphics Driver Download Version: 30.0.101.1736
AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.5.2 WHQL driver download


New Forum Topics
AMD Radeon Software - UWP 525.14 Windows Insider drivers 3080 Owner's thread! 3060ti vs 6700xt a year later AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.5.2 driver download and discussion Fine Utilise Power of RadeonPRO Software & SweetFX Part 2 Review: FSP Dagger Pro (850W PSU) Dell has made a small and light 6-in-1 USB-C Multiport Adapter that can pass through 90W. Story details, release year, and a new map for GTA 6 Keychron K8 mechanical keyboard, which is wireless and has an aluminum frame




Guru3D.com » Review » Far Cry build 1318 - v1.2 » Page 1

Far Cry build 1318 - v1.2 - Far Cry build 1318 - v1.2

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 07/02/2004 07:00 AM [ ] 0 comment(s)

Tweet

Far Cry build 1318 - Patch 1.2
Shader Model 3 enabled on the GeForce 6800 Series !

As you know Shader model 2 versus 3 has been widely discussed among new graphics cards. Let's quickly sum it up. If you program or play computer games or even recently attempted to purchase a video card, then you will have no doubt heard the terms "Vertex Shader" and "Pixel Shader". NVIDIA recently introduces Shader model 3 in their GeForce 6800 Series where ATI witrh their x800 series stuck to Shader model 2.

What is a Shader ?
Vertex and pixel shaders allows graphics and game developers to create photorealistic graphics on the PC. And with DirectX, programmers have access to an assembly language interface to the transformation and lighting hardware (vertex shaders) and the pixel pipeline (pixel shaders).

All real-time 3D graphics are built from component triangles. Each of the three vertices of every triangle contains information about its position, color, lighting, texture, and other parameters. This information is used to construct the scene. The lighting effects used in 3D graphics have a large effect on the quality, realism, and complexity of the graphics, and the amount of computing power used to produce them. It is possible to generate lighting effects in a dynamic, as-you-watch manner. Each shader is basically nothing more than a relatively small program executed on the graphics processor to control either vertex or pixel processing.


Far Cry uses Shader technology bigtime !

The discussion we noticed a lot from ATI customers are like these "Hey, who needs Pixel and Vertex Shader 3.0?; there is not one game that supports it and it that won't happen this year also". So that fact has now been changed a little. ATi proclaims that Shader Model 3.0 is not important right now which on a certain level is very true. It's not rather important right now. Shader model 3 is not about better image quality either, it's about small performance increases. Now that alone is a valid reason to at the least consider this over the current Radeon x800 generation.

Shader Model 3.0 titles that we can expect soon: Lord of the rings; Battle for Middle-Earth, Stalker, Vampire; Bloodlines, Splinter Cell X, Driver 3, Grafan, Painkiller, Far Cry and more...

Last night I received an email from NVIDIA, they have the new FarCry patch on their FTP available for the press to test. Goodness ! I was hey .. what the hell ... Shaders 3.0 finally something to test ! So I downloaded Directx 9.0c, not yet available to the public, but use google will ya ? After installing and patching Windows towards DirectX 9.0c, and upgraded towards ForceWare 61.45 SM3 compatible we where ready to take Far Cry for a little test drive in Shader model 3 mode.

Monday the patch will be publicly available. If you grab the new patch and update everything yourself and would like to try a test-run then this is what you need to observe for the proper codepath:

FarCry.exe -DEVMODE "#demo_num_runs=1" "#demo_quit=1" "map volcano" "demo guru3d" "r_sm30path 0"

This is the shader model 2.0 Path.Now to enable shader model 3 you need to take this line:

FarCry.exe -DEVMODE "#demo_num_runs=1" "#demo_quit=1" "map volcano" "demo guru3d" "r_sm30path 1"

The 1 equals enable there. Of course you need to select your own timedemo.

If you haven't played the demo or the game, well shame on you! Far Cry's story centers on Jack Carver, who has put a mysterious past behind him in favor of a less stressful life chartering boats in the South Pacific... or so he thinks. After delivering a female journalist to an uncharted island, Jack's boat is attacked and he subsequently finds himself stranded against a group of mercenaries, at which point his adventure begins. Graphically Far Cry is amazing; the action takes place in a huge, brightly colored environment with dense jungle style shrubbery, peacefully quiet beaches and large indoor areas. The excellent shadow effects simply bring the game to life with reflections on walls and even on your own weapons as you creep through the trees. It’s like something straight out of a movie, helped along by the lighting and tight, crisp textures. 

Test system

  • ASUS A8V (AGP 8x enabled)
  • 1024 MB DDR400 - Dual Channel
  • Radeon x800 Pro, XT, GeForce 6800 GT, Ultra
  • Athlon 64 3800+

System Software:

  • Windows XP Professional Pro SP1
  • DirectX 9.0c
  • Detonator 61.45 WHQL Candidate for GeForce cards
  • Latest reference chipset and graphics card drivers

Far Cry itself then, build version 1318 patch v1.2 - We heavily modified the system.config file to make it as hard as possible on the graphics core !

We took four different levels of the game, on each level we ran a timedemo. This is a little different compared towards our standard Far Cry time-demo so don't compare the results just yet with our reviews please.

To measure the power of the graphic's card we benchmarked in 1600x1200x32 with 16x Anisotropic filtering, because ... well that's the stuff why you spend 400 USD for right ?. At driver level we selected: Anisotropic optimizations disabled. Trilinear enabled. We did this so that we can compare the results towards ATi's x800 series later on.

This is just a quick test to show some results, nothing more. We barely had time to do anything at all .. I just got everything running fine a couple of hours ago. Here we go:

Far Cry SM3 Volcano Training Regulator Research
SM 2 44 45 43 40
SM 3 53 48 47 51

It's impossible to play Far Cry without being completely blown away by the graphics engine; the game engine is THAT good. Volcano, Training, Regulator and Research are the different levels we submitted a timedemo on. I must add that we did give the time demo's several runs; here and there we noticed small FPS differences, but think in terms of like 1-2 FPS differences.

The SM3 performance differences between the levels are big, some levels simple make more use of shaders.The demo's provided come from CryTek and not from NVIDIA to kill of a presumtion. These levels are inside the new patch.

Hey as you can see, that's extra performance people. We measured an up to 25% (not overall) performance increase on the overall framerate which makes Shader Model 3 somewhat more interesting then it did a few weeks ago. The performance increase is level dependant though and in some level just a few percent. The NVIDIA 6800 cards obviously have room for small performance gains making the 6800 series even more interesting.




Related Articles

Far Cry 6: PC graphics performance benchmark review
Ubisoft presents  Far Cry 6, and we'll test it with 40 graphics cards and technologies like the shading engine, Raytracing as well as FSR, which can be applied toGeForce graphics cards as well.  We...

Far Cry New Dawn PC graphics performance benchmark review
We check out and benchmark the PC version of Far Cry New Dawn (2019) for Windows relative towards graphics card performance with the latest AMD/NVIDIA graphics card drivers. Multiple graphics cards ...

Far Cry 5 PC graphics performance benchmark review
We check out and benchmark the PC version of Far Cry 5 (2018) for Windows relative towards graphics card performance with the latest AMD/NVIDIA graphics card drivers. Multiple graphics cards are bei...

Far Cry Primal: PC graphics performance benchmark review
We take a look at Far Cry Primal in our usual in-depth ways. That would be tested on the PC gaming wise relative towards graphics card performance with the latest AMD/NVIDIA graphics card drivers. Mu...

© 2022