FarCry 2 SLI Performance Review

FARCRY 2 SLI PERFORMANCE REVIEW

Many sites produced reviews on FarCry 2 as fast as they could. We decided to miss the initial rush of hurried reviews on FarCry 2 and SLI and opt for FarCry 2 on Core I7, specifically the "Big Dog", the Core I7 965 Extreme. Since we've had Core I7 in hand and we've been testing for some time now, we know that it is the future of computing. People will look back at Core I7 and think, "That's when computing really started to mature." By waiting for the NDA to lift on Core I7 and the Intel X58 chipset, we're able to bring you a fresh look at FarCry 2, SLI, CrossFire, the X58 chipset, and Core I7 all rolled into one. You know life is good when you're setting on the hottest platform and playing the hottest game with a couple of the fastest GPU's on the planet just aching to churn out frames so fast it'll make your head spin.

FarCry 2 is one of the most anticipated titles of the year. It's an engaging state-of-the-art First Person Shooter set in an un-named African country. FarCry 2 features a stunning backdrop on which to play out the conflict between you and a nasty fellow aptly named the Jackal. It would be rather boring if it were just you and the Jackal wandering around the game world trying to off each other, so Ubisoft tossed in a couple of warring factions that are called the APR and UFLL. We might add that the APR and UFLL aren't really particular about who they shoot at, so you might want to do unto others before they do it to you.

NVIDIA Developer Support of FarCry 2

The game itself was developed by Ubisoft with close cooperation from Nivdia in an attempt to improve SLI scaling in the game. We spoke with James Wang from Nivida and he enlightened us on the level of cooperation between Ubisoft and Nvidia.

NVIDIA's Level Of Support

• Consultation with NVIDIA software engineers on graphics tuning and performance
• Two weeks on-site consultation
• Three man months of cumulative consultation
• Full access to NVIDIA’s Moscow Global Testing Labs (GTL):
• Performance testing on 9 different game builds
• 42 hardware configurations
• 252.6 hours of testing in total
• On demand driver updates
• Early developer access and seeding for GeForce GTX 200 processors
• Specific driver improvements to optimize for FarCry 2’s memory usage

Not only are we testing SLI performance, but we're testing Crossfire and TriFire performance in FarCry 2 as well. Before we move on we'd also like to add that we heard the cries of our readers, and we're answering those cries. You've been asking for GTX-280 benches to be included in our reviews. On our current platform we're going to bring you GTX-280 results. Not only are we going to bring you GTX-280 results, we're going to bring you GTX-280 SLI results. Then, since we love our readers so much, we're going to go one better and provide Triple GTX-280 SLI results. You'll have to wait a short time for the Triple results though because today we're going to whet your appetite with GTX-280 and dual SLI GTX-280 results in FarCry 2. As soon as we get an X58 triple SLI platform to mount all three of these beasts on, we'll give you more SLI GTX-280's than you ever dreamed possible. Not only that, we're going to be bringing you all that in pinpoint performance reviews on some of the hottest game titles out there.

We'd especially like to thank the great crew over at NVIDIA for providing us the EVGA GTX-280's, Ubisoft for FarCry 2 to use them on. We graciously thank them for all the cooperation and coordination required to bring you some GTX-280 action in FarCry 2.

By the way, we love our faithful readers, but get within three feet of our triple GTX-280's and we'll be forced to taser you into submission and eject you from the lobby.