Far Cry 2 benchmark overview: Test system
Up to now we published an article that dealt with AMD's Far Cry 2 Hotfix and one about Nvidia's Geforce 180.42 Beta. Now we combined the results and also added some more values. The problems with the Radeon HD 4870 512 MiByte mentioned in the articles, have been solved in the meantime.

The graphics cards and drivers listed below have been used for this benchmark article:

• Geforce GTX 260-216 (GF 178.13 and 180.42)
• Geforce GTX 260-216 SLI (GF 178.13 and 180.42)
• Geforce GTX 280 (GF 180.42)

• Radeon HD 4870 512 MiByte (Catalyst 8.9 WHQL and FC2 Hotfix)
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 (Catalyst 8.9 WHQL and FC2 Hotfix)

Far Cry 2 benchmark overview: Results
In DX9 mode with very high details and 4x FSAA/4:1 AF the Radeon HD 4870 X2 with the Far Cry Hotfix is about 3 to 6 percent better than the two Geforce GTX 260-216. Without the Hotfix Crossfire is not working. The Radeon HD 4870 reaches identical results with both drivers. The SLI combo and the single GTX 260 are accelerated by about 5 percent with the 180.42 Beta driver.

In DX10 mode the multi GPU systems lose their dominant position and the GTX 280 shows surprisingly good results. While the GTX 260 package is boosted between 13 to 16 percent by the 180.42 Beta, the performance of a single GTX 260 is increased by 27 to 30 percent. This might be caused by the use of the Multisampled Depth Buffer, but we assume that Nvidia made additional optimizations. We are currently checking if the visual quality has been altered. The Radeon HD 4870 doesn't benefit from the Far Cry 2 Hotfix, but the X2 does a little better.

By the way: We will publish an article dealing with micro stuttering in Far Cry 2 and other games in the next days.

Far Cry 2 benchmark overview: Conclusion
Especially the tested Geforce cards received a benefit from the 180.42 Beta, while the HD 4870 X2 makes the most out of the Crossfire profile. So all in all, AMD and Nvidia were able to increase their performance in Far Cry 2 with the driver updates.

You can find the individual benchmark results on the next page.