ATI Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 Review - Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 (and the whole Cry/Crysis series) has long been considered a system killer. If not a killer, then at least a good strong test. As always, we run our test at max settings with 4xAA. The benchmark tool within Far Cry 2 offers settings for High, Very High and Ultra. We chose Ultra with 4xAA. Like we saw with our previous tests of the GTX275, the additional VRAM provides a smoother gameplay experience. While the overall average fps changes very little, there are far more "stops" and "stutters" in the gameplay with a 2GB framebuffer.

As quality and AA increases, the need for a larger framebuffer increases (there is more data to hold in the VRAM). The Far Cry 2 benchmark tool is unique in that it offers a realtime graph of the fps count, and allows us to see the reduction in these stutters (as evidences by the reduction in momentary dips in fps). With the increased framebuffer the game is having to swap textures and other graphic information from the HDD to the video memory on fewer occasions, offering a smoother experience.

Hitting 60fps

In Far Cry 2, 60fps can be attained with 0xAA on Very High quality settings.