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3D Performance with FarCry 1.3 November 04, 2004 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: Just as we were beginning to focus on Half-Life 2, Crytek delivers the highly anticipated 1.3 patch for Far Cry. This new patch adds official support for the 2.0b shaders supported by ATI's X700/X800, and shader model 3.0, which is found in all GeForce 6 cards. But that's not all, Crytek has also thrown in normal map compression and HDR! In this article we've rounded up ATI's latest X800 cards, the X800 PRO, X800 XT AGP, and X800 XT PE, and paired them against the latest and greatest from NVIDIA: GeForce 6800 128, GeForce 6800 GT, and 6800 Ultra. See which cards come out on top, and check out the HDR screenshots and performance all inside!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 19 ) |
Far Cry is also a technological tour de force, with 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders and a good physics engine. With the 1.3 patch however, Crytek takes a good product and makes it even better. First, Crytek adds official support for pixel shader 2.0b and the 3.0 shader models. As we mentioned in our last Far Cry article, these newer shader models are used to improve performance and don’t affect image quality. For instance, using shader model 2.0b and 3.0, Crytek is able to collapse multiple lights into one pass in Far Cry 1.3: three lights per pass in the case for ATI X800 cards and four for NVIDIA GeForce 6. Geometry instancing is used to render common items such as jungle foliage in Far Cry’s multiple outdoor levels.
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In the recalled 1.2 patch, these features were considered beta and had to be activated via the command line or console, with no official support if something went wrong. In Far Cry 1.3 however, both the 2.0b and 3.0 shader models are used by default if you have the supported hardware and set your visual quality options to the “Very High” setting in the main menu.
Arguably the most discussed new feature in Far Cry 1.3 however is high dynamic range lighting. As Cevat Yerli told us in our Far Cry interview, Crytek has implemented the GeForce6’s OpenEXR technology for HDR, and the results are pretty impressive:
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As you can see in the screenshots, bright objects emit significantly more light with HDR turned on. The original source isn’t the only object that’s lit brightly either, light reflects brightly off of other objects within the your environment, including the weapon you’re currently carrying. HDR is disabled by default, to turn it on use the “r_hdrrendering” command at the console or command line. Values range from 1-11, with 1 being the least intense lighting setting, and 11 being the highest; we used a setting of 6 for all our tests.
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Unfortunately you’ll have to disable anti-aliasing if you chose to use HDR. As you’ll see in the following pages, HDR comes with a huge performance hit, even on the latest high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, so this isn’t as big of a loss as you’d initially think.
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In addition to HDR, Crytek has also added normal map compression for both ATI (X800 cards or better) and NVIDIA (GeForce FX or better) into Far Cry 1.3. This feature, like HDR, is disabled by default, but can be enabled by typing “r_TexNormalMapCompressed 1”. Unfortunately, Crytek currently uses normal map compression to optimize performance, rather than increase visual fidelity. In our initial quick and dirty testing with normal map compression we witnessed limited performance gains, so we elected not to run more detailed tests with it on for this article. What we have done however is test ATI and NVIDIA’s latest and greatest with and without shader model 2.0b/3.0, as well as HDR. Breaking from tradition, we’re using the stock demos that come with the 1.3 patch. This should make comparisons easier. If you recall in Far Cry 1.2, the biggest gains came in the indoor demos with lighting, Research and Volcano.
Let’s get on to the results!
| Test systems | Page:: ( 2 / 19 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939
1GB OCZ EL DDR400 Platinum Edition Rev 2
ATI RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition
ATI RADEON X800 PRO
Sapphire RADEON X800 XT AGP
Driver version beta 8.07 driver
Leadtek WinFast A400 Ultra GeForce 6800 card
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT reference card
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra reference card
Driver version 66.81
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
| HDR Research performance | Page:: ( 3 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| HDR Regulator | Page:: ( 4 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| HDR Training | Page:: ( 5 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| HDR Volcano | Page:: ( 6 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Research demo | Page:: ( 7 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Research 4xAA | Page:: ( 8 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Research 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 9 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Regulator demo | Page:: ( 10 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Regulator 4xAA | Page:: ( 11 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Regulator 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Training demo | Page:: ( 13 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Training demo 4xAA | Page:: ( 14 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Training demo 4xAA/16xAF | Page:: ( 15 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Volcano | Page:: ( 16 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Volcano 4xAA | Page:: ( 17 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Volcano 4xAAx16AF | Page:: ( 18 / 19 ) |
Far Cry – Direct3D
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 19 / 19 ) |
With HDR enabled, the game literally comes alive. Lights are incredibly intense, some would probably argue a little too intense, but that’s why Crytek has made the setting adjustable, simply tune HDR to your tastes, or, if you don’t like it at all, turn it off completely. The biggest downside to HDR is its performance hit, performance is roughly sliced in half once HDR is enabled, even with the mighty GeForce 6800 Ultra. As a result, the highest playable resolution for most of you will probably be 1024x768.
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Normal map compression is another nice addition, but we don’t think this feature will be used as often.
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In the performance department, we’re still seeing the biggest gains from the research demo, which has scenes with multiple light sources in them. Performance improvements for all cards are up, with the RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition and X800 XT AGP seeing gains of 16% in research in many cases once 4xAA/16xAF were enabled (the gains were even greater with just 4xAA), the X800 PRO saw slightly reduced gains of around 14-15%. On the NVIDIA side, GeForce 6800, 6800 GT and Ultra performance improved by even more, 43% for the GeForce 6800 at 1280x1024 with 4xAA/16xAF and 23% for the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT at the same settings.
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Despite NVIDIA’s impressive gains in Far Cry 1.3, the ATI RADEON X800 cards still come out on top, with the X800 XT Platinum Edition consistently outperforming GeForce 6800 Ultra, while the X800 XT AGP is able to outgun GeForce 6800 GT. In fact, the 16-pipe X800 XT AGP bests the GeForce 6800 Ultra overall as well. The X800 PRO finishes in the middle, with the 128MB GeForce 6800 coming in the rear.
Now that the 1.3 patch is out and normal map compression and HDR are in there, Crytek has one more promise to deliver: AMD-64 support! We eagerly look forward to seeing what improvements Crytek has in store for Athlon 64/FX users with this addition.