Far Cry

Even if you turn on 4x full-screen antialiasing, Far Cry is not the monster application anymore that used to get ultra-high-end graphics cards to the knees just a little while ago. Today’s highest-performing solutions don’t even show their full power here, being limited by the performance of the system’s central processor. Even the single GeForce 7800 GTX 512 turns in 77fps and more in 1600x1200 resolution, which is very close to the CPU-imposed speed ceiling.

When we switch from the traditional 4x FSAA to 8x Super AA, the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire system doesn’t slow down too much. We can’t say the same about the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI – this configuration is limited by its slow memory and cannot ensure a comfortable frame rate in 1600x1200.

It is possible to turn 16x SLI AA on in Far Cry , but you’d better switch to the lowest resolution at that – the two GeForce 7800 GTX cards yield about 60fps then. Meanwhile, the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire platform doesn’t seem to lose much from its having to perform 14x Super AA. The small performance hit of the CrossFire platform is evident here. Besides, the screenshots taken in this game have revealed some differences in anti-aliasing quality, so we cannot blame CrossFire or FarCry for that. It is most likely to be happening because RADEON X1800 XT doesn’t really slow down when switching from FSAA 4x to FSAA 6x.

The Research level is less CPU-dependent than Pier and complex shaders are employed here for per-pixel lighting, so we can make our comparison in 1280x1024 already. In this resolution the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire is a little better than the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI platform, but CrossFire seems less efficient if you consider the speeds of the single cards.

The GeForce 7 architecture executes the version 3.0 shader code from Far Cry more efficiently, but the SLI system made of two GeForce 7800 GTX cards is far slower than the CrossFire system with two RADEON X1800 XT when performing full-screen antialiasing of level 8x. You can’t play comfortably in 1600x1200 resolution on the GeForce 7800 GTX SLI, but you can on the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire.

The RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire system slows down but very little as we switch over to the 14x Super AA mode and all the resolutions remain playable. The GeForce 7800 GTX SLI, on the contrary, yields over 60fps in 1024x768 only. A SLI system with two GeForce 7800 GTX 512 would surely have a higher result, but we don’t think it would outperform the RADEON X1800 XT CrossFire here because NVIDIA’s 16x SLI AA algorithm is more resource-consuming.