FarCry 1.2: Testbed and Methods

As in the case of Shader Model 3.0 investigation, we used six demos made on “Training”, “Research”, “Regulator”, “Pier”, “Catacombs” and “Volcano” levels. Each demo was recorded with an attempt to reflect the actual gaming situation. In addition, we recorded one more demo on the “Pier” level trying to exaggerate the importance of geometry instancing, which is why the sequence does not necessarily reflect the actual gaming process.

We used our typical system for benchmarking:

• AMD Athlon 64 3400+ CPU (2.20GHz, 1MB L1 cache);
• ASUS K8V Deluxe mainboard;
• OCZ PC-3200 Platinum EB DDR SDRAM (2x512MB, CL2.5-3-2-8);
• Seagate 7200.7 HDD (Serial ATA-150, 8MB buffer);
• Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 audio card;
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2, DirectX 9.0c;
• Drivers: NVIDIA ForceWare 61.45, ATI CATALYST 4.8 beta (2D version 6.14.10.6447, display driver version 8.041-040722a-016925E).

For some reason, Shader Model 3.0 could not be enabled on NVIDIA’s latest official 61.76 drivers, which is why used a beta driver provided earlier by NVIDIA.

We advice you to bear in mind that ATI’s and NVIDIA’s drivers we used, as well as Microsoft DirectX 9.0c are not released officially, whereas the 1.2 patch for FarCry was withdrawn by Crytek, which may condition certain results to differ from those obtained on the final versions of the software.

In order to render the game using Shader Model 3.0 and Shader Model 2.0b we used “\r_SM30PATH” and “\r_sm2bpath 1” console keys respectively. In order to set the vegetations to use geometry instead of sprites, we used “\e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio 100” console command. We run the game in the so-called “developers mode”, which requires to run the game with a special key: FarCry.exe –DEVMODE.