ATI Radeon HD 4890 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275

Sequels are common, and three of our six games used here prove it. But what’s different with Far Cry 2, though, is that while the other sequels here don’t throw you for a loop when you first load it up and generally give you what you’d expect to see, this game does the absolute opposite. We knew for months that Far Cry 2 wasn’t going to be a direct continuation of the original, but for the most part, this game could have gone by any other name and no one would even make a connection. Luckily for Ubisoft, though, the game can still be great fun.

Like the original, this game is a first-person shooter that offers open-ended gameplay, similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You’ll be able to roam the huge map (50km^2) of a central African state which will mostly be traversed by vehicle, as walking even 2% in any direction gets very tedious after a while. This game is a perfect GPU benchmark simply because the graphics are better than the average, with huge draw distances, realistic nature and even a slew of animals to pass by (and kill if you are evil enough).

Our run through takes place in the Shwasana region, and consists of leaving a small hut and walking towards four people prepared to kill me for no apparent reason (except that this is a game). After the opponents are eliminated, a walk along the dirt road continues for another twenty seconds until we reach a small hut with supplies.

We’re running into a recurring theme here, but ATI’s HD 4890 comes closer to the GTX 275 in this title than the other games we’ve tested so far, and actually passes it in our 2560×1600 test. Neither card has the oomph required to deliver fully enjoyable gameplay at that top resolution though, so let’s get rid of AA and see how things stand.

With anti-aliasing turned off, things improve a great deal for both cards. Whereas with AA, things were a bit sluggish, removing it bursts new life into the game. Once again, ATI’s card managed to creep up past NVIDIA’s in this test.