FarCry Video Settings Question

[h_pavon]

Wassup guys?

I think I'm going to sit this one out and leave it to the true experts... I'm not able to play FarCry with all options maxed out in my system (AMD2700XP, 512mb DDR 333, FX5900 LX 128mb 2.8ns, SB Audigy 2, WD80Gb HD).... by maxed out I mean all video at Very High setting, video display 1024x768 plus AA & AF at their top!.... After previewing the game with all video options maxed out, I want to play smoothly but loosing detail as less as possible!!!

I know by lowering AA & AF I can reach my desired frames per second to play smoothly, but I like what they do and as soon as I lower them I start noticing the saw effect in polygons.

In what order will you start dealing with these settings to reach the desired FPS and play smoothly but sacrificing as less graphic detail?

Thanx in advance!

Here's a list of settings the game offers in case you're not familiar with it:

Video Options
• Renderer: Select Direct3D® 9/ OpenGL.
• Resolution: Choose from a list of all available resolutions.
• Anti Aliasing: Turn full screen anti-aliasing on or off (different quality settings are possible).
• Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma Sliders: Adjust your display device properties (Monitor/ TFT/ TV).
• Full Screen: Check this to play in full screen mode.
• Vertical Synch: Check this to synch display rate to monitor's refresh rate.
• Render Mode: Select one of the supported render styles (Normal, Cold, Paradise, and Cartoon).
Video Options: Advanced
• Auto Detect: Set the video options to match your machine’s individual capabilities.
• Very High: See all eye candy at the cost of performance.
Recommended for top of the range machines only.
• High: Set the video options to match high-spec configurations.
• Medium: Set the video options to match medium-spec configurations.
• Low: Set the lowest video quality for best performance, especially on low-spec machines.
• Texture Quality: Set the texture quality (texture, light maps, bump maps, detail maps) to low,
medium, high or very high.
• Texture Filter Quality: Set the texture filtering quality (bilinear, trilinear, anisotropic) to low,
medium, high or very high.
• Particle Count: Set the number of particles allowed on screen to low, medium, high or very high
(the higher the count, the more realistic the particle effects are).5
• Special Effects Quality: Set the quality of various special effects to low, medium, high or very high
(this must be set to at least medium to enable Render Mode selection in the Video Options menu).
• Environment Quality: Set the quality of the environment (fog, decals, mirrors and reflections, object
detail) to low, medium, high or very high.
• Shadow Quality: Set the quality of dynamic shadows in the game to low, medium, high or very high
(turns on stencil shadow and shadow maps).
• Water Quality: Set the quality of the water to low, medium, high or very high (turns on reflections,
refractions and their update factors).
• Lighting Quality: Set the quality of the lighting (bump-mapping quality, quality of character lighting,
and quality of light maps)
Sound Options
• Sound FX Volume: Adjust the volume of sound effects and voices in the game.
• Music Volume: Adjust the volume of the dynamic background music in the game.
• Speaker Setup: Set up various speaker configurations (Monaureal, Stereo, Headphones,
Quadrophonic, Surround, Dolby® 5. 1).
• Doppler Effect: Same as in table.
• Hardware Mixing: Check this to turn on the mixing of sounds in hardware.
• Enable EAX: Check this to enable EAX™ effects (needs hardware mixing).
• Enable Music: Check this to turn in- game music on or off.
• Music Quality: Set the quality of music played in the game to low, medium, high, or auto detect to
automatically adjust the music quality to your machine speed.
Video Options

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

How about instead of lowering antialiasing, increase resolution? Maybe polygons don't look that jagged at 1600x1200..

 

[Supra]

What version of Forceware drivers are you using with your video card. 53.03's or higher are required for Far Cry and any version higher is better(latest is 56.64). I'd much rather run a higher resolution than even turn on AA or AF.

 

[h_pavon]

Thanx both of you!...... I turned off AA & AF, rised the resolution to 1280X1024 (highest it can go), and it still looks nice. I got much improvement in gameplay but not enough, when the shooting starts the display breaks for tenths of a seconds which get me killed..... not as smooth gameplay as you would like, I am running the game with the latest video (nvidia 56.64) & audio (SB A2 eax4.0) drivers.

Any more suggestions??? what about sound options?, I don't understand some of them so I have the all on (Hardware mixing, doppler effect, music quality is on low)

Once again thanx & keep me posted!

 

[agissi]

recon its your CPU holding you back, as good as it is.

Farcry is a VERY demmanding game and takes use of next gen quailtys.

You may just need to play this game on lower settings.

 

[acidosmosis]

Far Cry looks fine at 1024x768. There is no point in playing at such high resolutions. Your asking for problems if you play at a higher res. than that with your hardware.

The game looks fine at medium settings. I've maxed everything and it didn't look noticeably different at at highest details.

 

[Steg]

My machine will play the demo at 1024*768 with the graphics set all to high. Which is nice.
Your CPU wont really hold you back in games like Far Cry - its mostly down to graphics card power.
To achieve the best game play i find its best to set a resolution you like (say 1024*768) with the LOWEST graphical settings...and just keep turning them up until the game is unplayable - then turn them down a notch. Simple

Steg

 

[WIZz]

Originally posted by Steg
Your CPU wont really hold you back in games like Far Cry - its mostly down to graphics card power.

lol you just keep thinking that m8, every game is CPU relative, the difference in gameplay from his xp2700 to a xp3200 is huge especially with the jump from 333mhz to 400mhz, when i take my cpu from 1.83ghz "333mhz" to 2.35ghz "415mhz"farcry runs HEAPS better. IE: 25% more fps

Originally posted by Steg
My machine will play the demo at 1024*768 with the graphics set all to high.

Running the demo and running the full version are nothing similar, the full version runs almost 50% slower than the demo, i was gettting 35fps "full detail"on demo with stock machine but now i'm only getting 25-35fps "full detail" with huge overclocking and i can get get 45-50fps on the demo, mind you i'm only running a TI4600 atm.

 

[Steg]

lol you just keep thinking that m8, every game is CPU relative, the difference in gameplay from his xp2700 to a xp3200 is huge especially with the jump from 333mhz to 400mhz, when i take my cpu from 1.83ghz "333mhz" to 2.35ghz "415mhz"farcry runs HEAPS better. IE: 25% more fps

How so? Most machine these days are tied down by the graphics card. The AI/Physics calculations pail in comparison to the shader calculations a graphics card has to cope with.
Somewhere there is a benchmark compairing a 1.7Ghz P4 and a 3.4Ghz P4 in a series of games and a Geforce 3 and a Raedon 9800XT. The time difference between the release of the hardware is similar. Overall the CPU made a 20-40% difference while the graphics card made a 200%+ difference. The only difficulty is that i can't find said benchmark......i will post when i can find it.

Running the demo and running the full version are nothing similar

Thats true. Crytech managed to get a whole load more optermisations in the final game. Im getting atleast a 10% performance boost over the demo. I can run the full version with all the setting on high except shadow which is on medium (i get REALLY wierd errors on anything higher) and Water and Environments on Very High - give a steady FPS most of the time.

Steg

EDIT - Typos by the million

 

[WIZz]

hmm 200% is only if you compare with an exteme view from say geforce2 to a new gforce FX5950.
I've found some benchmarks that show how a radeon 9500pro is just over half as fast as a 9800XT, also how a radeon 9700 pro is almost half the speed running in an XP2000 compared with an xp3000.

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030930/radeon_9800-14.html#unreal_tournament_2003

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-22.html