Far Cry Patch 1.2 is out...

[GeneralGrievous]

Maybe Crytek needs to lighten up on the marketing and spend more time testing.

Agreed. They're working really hard on being an NV40 tech demo. I wonder how much they are paid for it.

 

[413xram]

Originally posted by: Shad0hawK

Originally posted by: 413xram

Originally posted by: Shad0hawK

Originally posted by: 413xram
Does ultra high water automatically cause 4xAA??

yes, and it is locked at 4X unless you drop water down to very high

Thank you......wow this game is running incredible then)))))))) Everything MAXED never below 30 frames for lows!

im running 16x12 with everything on very high 4XAF noAA drivers set to high quality(is just "quality" by defualt)

did you remember the game profiles in the display properties?

so far seems to me SM3 kicks Arse!

Good catch Shad0hawk.....I stand corrected! Everything maxed except I have "Quality settings" set to performance. I'm still lovin it though

 

[413xram]

LOL nitromullet...at least you have it going now

 

[413xram]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

Maybe Crytek needs to lighten up on the marketing and spend more time testing.

Agreed. They're working really hard on being an NV40 tech demo. I wonder how much they are paid for it.

Totally agree. They are more interested in selling the engine, leaving us that have already paid for the game out to dry. They probably figured their sales of Far Cry have already hit there peak, especially with Doom3, STALKER, HL2, etc. ready or getting close to release. Marketing taking over engineering....:-(

 

[nitromullet]

Yeah, but then again aside from a few glitches with saved games, I'm actually kinda bummed that I've already finished the game. It looks absolutely fabulous on the GT with SM30 enabled, and plays great with everyhting set to the max settings except for the ultra high water detail. Certainly a much better experience than when I went through it with an FX 5900. I just think that Crytek should have done some quality control for the saved games - they should have noticed this.

 

[nitromullet]

Question for you General...

So, which do you prefer for FC? The XT, or the GT with SM30? Benchmarks don't always tell the whole story... Which one "feels" better?

 

[GeneralGrievous]

The XT by far.

With my XT I was able to run 1600x1200 4x/16x and get a solid 65 fps or so. With the GT in SM2 I got 44 fps at the same setting. I've been playing it at only 2xAF since then. The difference is evident, but it's not really incredible.

Indoor IQ (at the same settings) looks the same on both cards. Shadows look crisper and more realistic on the GT. Outdoor IQ goes to the XT; there's some blurriness in the trees and plants on the GT that's not there on the XT. The water is also a bit off on the GT, both in its rippling effect and the reflections, which don't seem to mirror the landscape well. Not a major deal, but noticeable.

SM3 gives a nice 5-10% boost, so I changed the settings to 4xAF. Reflections have improved, blurriness is still there. There's also some occasional glitch or something where an object won't render at all (it appears transparent). I'll get a screen of it if I can, though I haven't played much of it because I can't load my save file.

 

[Pete]

What's wild is that recompiling the PS3.0 shaders to PS2.b in the 1.2 patch can boost X800 performance (discussion) about as much as the SM3.0 path boosts 6800 performance. Looks like Crytek have been busy during the delay. Some improvements apparently require as-yet unreleased ATi drivers to enable ATi's geometry instancing, tho, thus the "SM3.0 PS3.0 only" graphs.

So shortly ATi will show some performance improvement in Far Cry as well. Now if only they could work the same magic with Doom 3....

 

[BFG10K]

Has it yet been established how ATi will manage to add geometry instancing (a hardware feature) through a simple driver update? Is this even possible?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Pete
What's wild is that recompiling the PS3.0 shaders to PS2.b in the 1.2 patch can boost X800 performance (discussion) about as much as the SM3.0 path boosts 6800 performance. Looks like Crytek have been busy during the delay. Some improvements apparently require as-yet unreleased ATi drivers to enable ATi's geometry instancing, tho, thus the "SM3.0 PS3.0 only" graphs.

So shortly ATi will show some performance improvement in Far Cry as well. Now if only they could work the same magic with Doom 3....

I wonder if that could be one of the added features in ATI's Cat 8.05 driver set. (The one mentioned in the HardOCP Doom3 benchmark article.) Current Cats are only version 8.03.

So.. anyone manage to dig up a leaked 8.05 set yet?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

Maybe Crytek needs to lighten up on the marketing and spend more time testing.

Agreed. They're working really hard on being an NV40 tech demo. I wonder how much they are paid for it.

They are probably getting paid a whole lot. But why should that matter?

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

Maybe Crytek needs to lighten up on the marketing and spend more time testing.

Agreed. They're working really hard on being an NV40 tech demo. I wonder how much they are paid for it.

More like New Tech demo. They're supporting the ATI cards tech very well also.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

They are probably getting paid a whole lot. But why should that matter?

It matters because they are giving up other things. You know, like continuing your saved game?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

They are probably getting paid a whole lot. But why should that matter?

It matters because they are giving up other things. You know, like continuing your saved game?

I agree that the save game issue is probably very annoying. But I would actually (if I owned the game) uninstall the game and reinstall from scratch, and then add the appropriate 1.2 patch and DX9.0c. Forget the saved games. Just start over. If people dont want to play the game over again, then maybe the game really isn't worth its salt to keep someone's interest in seeing any discernable differences between 1.1 and 1.2. I personally would want to start from the beginning just to see things that I may have missed using ver 1.1. Just my thoughts. Like I said, I don't own the game, just played the demo and wasn't impressed enough to make me buy it at full price. I may pick it up used down the road a ways when I pick up my 6800GT PCI-X version. By that time, Crytek may have 1.3 out.

 

[spaceman]

better hold off on that patch...........

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

They are probably getting paid a whole lot. But why should that matter?

It matters because they are giving up other things. You know, like continuing your saved game?

I agree that the save game issue is probably very annoying. But I would actually (if I owned the game) uninstall the game and reinstall from scratch, and then add the appropriate 1.2 patch and DX9.0c. Forget the saved games. Just start over. If people dont want to play the game over again, then maybe the game really isn't worth its salt to keep someone's interest in seeing any discernable differences between 1.1 and 1.2. I personally would want to start from the beginning just to see things that I may have missed using ver 1.1. Just my thoughts. Like I said, I don't own the game, just played the demo and wasn't impressed enough to make me buy it at full price. I may pick it up used down the road a ways when I pick up my 6800GT PCI-X version. By that time, Crytek may have 1.3 out.

I dont think you mean PCI-X. You mean PCI-E. PCI-X has been around forever and is used on high end server boards. It is a 64bit 66-133mhz slot. Whereas PCI-E(xpress) has just came out.

-Kevin

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Has it yet been established how ATi will manage to add geometry instancing (a hardware feature) through a simple driver update? Is this even possible?

Apparently they have the capability for something similar to the 6800, but it isn't exposed in D3D yet (like centroid sampling). Should be interesting.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ncircle
better hold off on that patch...........

Very Cool. Looks like Crytek is hearing and listening too all of the complaints about 1.2. Hopefully they will re-release it with some fixes.

To Gamingphreek:

Yes, I meant PCI-Express. TY.

 

[Marsumane]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Has it yet been established how ATi will manage to add geometry instancing (a hardware feature) through a simple driver update? Is this even possible?

I doubt this is true. The marketing team would have been all over that if they knew they had an equal feature to Nvida's cards.

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: Pete

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Has it yet been established how ATi will manage to add geometry instancing (a hardware feature) through a simple driver update? Is this even possible?

Apparently they have the capability for something similar to the 6800, but it isn't exposed in D3D yet (like centroid sampling). Should be interesting.

At least... ATI will definately advantage from a solution like this.

 

[BFG10K]

Apparently they have the capability for something similar to the 6800, but it isn't exposed in D3D yet (like centroid sampling). Should be interesting.

Have you noticed ATi seems to have a bizarre fixation with hiding hardware features and only exposing them when they think they need them?

As for their geometry instancing, what API will expose it? SM 2.x doesn't have the instructions for it, does it?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Pete

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Has it yet been established how ATi will manage to add geometry instancing (a hardware feature) through a simple driver update? Is this even possible?

Apparently they have the capability for something similar to the 6800, but it isn't exposed in D3D yet (like centroid sampling). Should be interesting.

Meh. Reminds me of 3Dfx's "geometry assist".

We don't have a check box feature?! Let's emulate it in the drivers and say we have it!

 

[Pete]

Check boxen. There's further discussion of the new patch's 2.b features in that thread, and how ATi's instancing is exposed.

I don't know if they hid centroid sampling, it was just that DX hadn't exposed it yet, IIRC. It seems to be the same with this, or perhaps ATi's instancing implementation doesn't meet all of the current DX9's qualifications?

Edit: Hmmm, more info (with some bonus gossip).

Lets have a look at the patch that "never quite was". To get the full benefits of the patch you would have required an X800\X600 or X300 class graphics card, DirectX9.0b, FarCry 1.2 and Catalyst build 8.041 or above. If you have these you?ll get the full feature set: SM 2.0b and Geometry Instancing

The 2nd option is to have a R3xx or above graphics card (9500,9600,9700,9800) DirectX 9.0b, FarCry 1.2 and Catalyst 8.041. With this setup Geometry Instancing support is possible.

Thats right people, the NV40/SM3.0 isnt the only card/Shader Model that can provide instancing, any of ATI?s DX9 hardware supports this feature, in the words of some ATI employees (off the record) "even using DirectX9.0b"

...

We can give you rough indications of percentage increases - on the research map with Far Cry v1.2 \r_sm2bpath 1 and HLSL compiler profile 2.0b we saw increases of 13% at 1024x768, 21% at 1280x1024 and 25% at 1600x1200. Nothing to be sniffed at.

Sassy!

 

[Bar81]

It seems that ATI isn't behind in features after all...

 

[Pete]

Well, not as far behind as we thought, maybe. If ATi can match geometry instancing, one of the GF6's key features, and can show performance gains on par with SM3.0 with "just" SM2.b, then that shifts the decision back to just performance + IQ + drivers, rather than performance + IQ + drivers + the ever-nebulous (and tantalizing) "potential."

If Valve is indeed releasing a CS:Source beta in August--and considering Far Cry v1.2 and Doom 3--we may just have a much better picture of how the 6800 and X800 will compare in DX9-heavy games in just two to four weeks.