Far Cry debuted back in March of 2004 and continues to remain one of the most graphically demanding games of the DirectX 9.0 era. Shader Model 3.0, Geometry Instancing, and a beta implementation of High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering were added in patch 1.3. HDR has an obvious impact on image quality, which is demonstrated by the following comparisons.

Far Cry - High Dynamic Range Comparison

HDR Disabled - HDR Enabled

Far Cry - High Dynamic Range Comparison

HDR Disabled - HDR Enabled

All in-game graphics options were configured to their maximum setting.

Far Cry Benchmark Settings

The Far Cry Regulator demo turned out to be the most demanding benchmark in this article. The underlying geometry in the following scene contains close to 158,000 polygons and is where the minimum frame rate occurs.

Regulator Demo - Minimum Frame Rate Occurrence

The following results are with no antialiasing and 2X antialiasing enabled.

Far Cry Performance - No AA and 2X AA

And results with 4X antialiasing enabled.

Far Cry Performance - 4X AA

In SLI, the minimum frame rate doubled when compared to a single GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB at resolutions of 1600x1200 and 1920x1440 with 4X antialiasing enabled.

Far Cry - Percent Increase from SLI

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