VGA performance: Far Cry 2 (DX10)

Far Cry 2

Throw your memory back to the year 2004 and the release of the innovative Far Cry on PC. Developer Crytek managed to fashion one of the most convincing and striking locales in all of gaming, and satisfied gamers with the freedom to pass through the landscape and tackle enemies in almost any way they saw fit. You surely remember Jack Carver and that things were about to get seriously messed up for you? Well, tough luck. You are no longer at that deserted tropical island but 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.
Everything that goes down is involved in a dirty little bush war in central Africa and you'll have to use a rusty AK-47 and whatever bits of scavenged land mine you can duct-tape together. Two factions struggle for supremacy: the United Front for Liberation and Labor and the Alliance for Popular Resistance, and both are known for blood and control.

Far Cry 2 is a title I like very much, not so much for the gameplay, but the rendered environment and how the game can react to it. We have selected high-quality DX10 mode with no less than 8x AA (anti-aliasing) and 16x AF (anisotropic filtering) as we want to make things really difficult to test.

Above, first the competitive chart. Again a title in which we enable 8x AA (anti-aliasing). We see the GPUs get a little closer to each other in terms of performance. But overall this a phat win for the GTX 260 SP216 over the HD 4890.

As you can see, the more extreme choice of high-quality mode, DX10 and 8x AA remains fairly difficult for the card. But fair enough, 1920x1200 is very playable and enjoyable.