Far Cry 1.2 Patch Performance

Results and Conclusion

First off, the composite results featuring all five data series.

At the initial setting the X800 is static with the new patch and the 6800 gains with the new patch, but that gain drops off when testing the SM3.0 path.

At the median setting (1024x768 with 4AA and 8AF) both 6800 and X800 lose performance with the new patch.

At the upper setting the 6800 gains with the new patch and that gain increases when using the SM3.0 path, while the X800's performance at the upper setting shows a drop of nearly 14%.

Let's examine that more closely.

X800 Performance

While initially static, the X800 loses 11% at the median setting and nearly 14% at the upper setting, compared to its performance with patch 1.1. With the patch's SM2.0 patch supposedly giving a speedup to all SM2.0 cards, it was a surprise to see the X800 drop any performance at all.

6800 Performance

Similarly to the X800, at the median setting the 6800 loses between 8 and 10% of its performance, depending on the render path, compared to the 1.1 patch base performance. While it's nice to see the SM3.0 path give higher performance, it's clear that the base performance is down slightly on both boards at the median setting.

However at the upper setting, the 6800 gains 3.8% with the new patch and then nearly 8% using the SM3.0 path.

Conclusion

On the Intel PCI Express platform at least, using our tested demo, there's very little to choose between the X800 and 6800 in Far Cry using the new patch. They both lose some performance at the median setting and the 6800 can overtake the X800 at the upper setting, something it didn't do with the 1.1 patch. That the X800 loses so much performance is something I wasn't expecting.

Somewhat impressive results for the 6800, especially using the SM3.0 path.

With no apparent visual problems on any card, with either the SM2.0 or SM3.0 paths (where applicable), the new patch keeps both top-end boards competitive with each other, allowing the 6800 to show off a little with its SM3.0 support.

We await the 1.3 patch to see if the 6800 can keep that performance with the SM3.0 path, while rendering a bucketload more visual goodies.