FarCry 2 DX9 vs. DX10 Performance @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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FarCry 2 DX9 vs. DX10 Performance - FarCry 2 is the first game we have evaluated that shows DX10 in Windows Vista to provide greater performance than DX9. Finally, DX10 makes a performance difference, and finally it is for the positive. We examine that A2A along with AA performance and multi-core CPU testing.

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All we can leave you with is this, FarCry 2 supports DX10, and in Windows Vista with the latest DX10 video cards from AMD and NVIDIA you will receive higher framerates using DX10 mode. FarCry 2 is the first game to impress us with its DirectX 10 performance, actually providing up to a 20% performance advantage with antialiasing enabled.
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Great article. Never really thought DX10 would make such a difference. Wish you had tested the 280GTX vs a 4870X2!
 
First off, this was not done to compare cards, but rather rendering modes on specific generation of GPU.

Secondly, I wish we could test every card ever made every time we write an article. In your request above you are asking us to literally double the cost of testing to research the article not to mention doubling the time it takes to get to you the reader. Doubling our research cost and cutting our page hits in half with less content does not allow us to continue to do this.

If we were a site that just ran a 30 second timedemo we could easily give you what you want in terms of coverage, but we see the research and opinions behind it highly devalued if we did it that way.
 
Nice article - Kyle you mention DX10 pushing the cards harder. Do you believe that may cause some people to re-evaluate their GPU OCs, in the event that the GPUs weren't pushed as hard in DX9?

I don't normally do GPU OCing typically, but I wonder if the usual tools (e.g. ATi Tool or beta OCCT) are taking this into account?
 
Mav451 said:
Nice article - Kyle you mention DX10 pushing the cards harder. Do you believe that may cause some people to re-evaluate their GPU OCs, in the event that the GPUs weren't pushed as hard in DX9?

I don't normally do GPU OCing typically, but I wonder if the usual tools (e.g. ATi Tool or beta OCCT) are taking this into account?
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I THINK that most of our guys here that OC their GPUs most likely already sufficiently test under grueling enough circumstances that it should not be an issue.
 
It's good to finally see a real game showing the benefits of DX10. As a Direct3D developer I was already aware of how Microsoft redesigned the whole driver model in order to improve GPU throughput and reduce CPU load, but because there wasn't a whole lot of evidence backing up Microsoft's claims, it was hard to determine what went wrong... Did Microsoft make a mess of the redesign, did nVidia and ATi not design their drivers properly to take advantage... was the hardware just not advanced enough... were the 3d engines perhaps not designed properly?

I suppose it was a bit of everything, but now that DX10 has matured and developers know how to take advantage of it, we finally see what Microsoft had been telling us all along: more performance and less CPU usage.
To be fair, BioShock already showed a glimpse of it earlier.
 
great comparison article.

it's nice to see some substantiated evidence of DX10 actually improving a games performance.
 
One thing I still wonder though: How does DX9 on XP compare to DX9 on Vista these days?
It could well be that XP has lower CPU usage and perhaps higher framerates than Vista, considering how DX9 is implemented on Vista.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
Great article. Never really thought DX10 would make such a difference. Wish you had tested the 280GTX vs a 4870X2!
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I didn't want the multi-GPU nature of the X2 to interfere in any way with performance due to CrossFire efficiencies issues. I wanted a pure DX9 vs. DX10 test that only a single-GPU could provide with accuracy. I used the fastest single-GPU cards from both camps.
 
one thing i don't understand why dx10.1 support is important is far cry a dx 10.1 title ?
 
I have been running the game in dx10 and it is very smooth with my now last years equipment.
Too bad dx10 cant make the game more fun!
but it sure is purty!
 
Great we are finally starting to see the benefits of DX10 with DX11 right around the corner. Good article as always.
 
bpmurrGT said:
Great we are finally starting to see the benefits of DX10 with DX11 right around the corner. Good article as always.
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There is always something around the corner, but, I think, IMO, that things coded for DX10 (like this) and all the experience gained on DX10 will only aid DX11 performance as well since they are based on the same unified architecture. Meaning everything that has been learned in DX10 will help make DX11 not be a failure out of the gate.
 
eric66 said:
one thing i don't understand why dx10.1 support is important is far cry a dx 10.1 title ?
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It is important because FarCry 2 is able to utilize that feature set to improve AA performance. This is supported in DX 10.1 on AMD cards, or by specific coding to NVAPI on NV GPUs.
 
bpmurrGT said:
Great we are finally starting to see the benefits of DX10 with DX11 right around the corner. Good article as always.
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Thing is, DX10 was brand new. DX11 builds on the foundation that DX10 has laid. So that means we'll be getting these benefits from DX11 right away, thanks to the pioneering that DX10 has done (much like how DX7 was basically the first Direct3D aimed at the 'GPU', and DX8/DX9 built on that, giving you a smooth transition everytime, without big performance or stability issues).
 
Scali2 said:
One thing I still wonder though: How does DX9 on XP compare to DX9 on Vista these days?
It could well be that XP has lower CPU usage and perhaps higher framerates than Vista, considering how DX9 is implemented on Vista.
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That's definitely a curiosity of mine as well.
 
P4rD0nM3 said:
DX10's a teenager now!
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And by the time "he's" mature... they'll kick him out the house and get a new baby... and just when you almost have "him" trained they'll kick him out the house & put all of their efforts in to the new baby again.

Dumb analogy... but PC graphics almost move too fast as by the time the drivers are really good & tweaked... and the game manufacturers have figured out how to program/patch for the latest hardware / API..... then they move to the next greatest thing.

At least that what it seems like to me.

Though DX10 and greater are moving to a more CPU like structure which should lend itself to be more flexible for upgrades to the next API.
 
Well, this will be painful to hear for the "zomg Vista is so slow and DX10 is worthless" crowd.

Good article though, nice to see DX10 finally living up to it's promises. Or more over, programmers finally figuring out how to program to it.
 
I see dx10 to be similar to video game consoles. You start off with a new API that is different from what you have used in the past, so you have to figure out how to design for it and for the first year or two the games don't go as far past the last generation as you would have expected. Then after the developers get use the the new API and start learning new ways to improve their code the start of really shine.

Same here, when it was new game developers were not really sure how to get the most out of it. graphics card drivers were still not fully optimized for it.... Now that it has been out for awhile people are starting to get everything figured out and get use to working with it to the point where they can start to optimize stuff for DX10.

Like people said since 10.1 and 11 are just enhancements to 10, we should continue to see improvements and not see a drop like we did with 10 first came out.
 
I have a gtx280 and have found that DX10 is unplayable in FC2. I get about 50fps in dx10 and 45fps in dx9. However, while in dx10 mode I get a large amount of input lag making the game difficult to play. Even with 5fps less, it feels so much faster in dx9 mode because of the input lag I get in dx10 mode.
 
DX10 has micro stutter. DX9 still feels smoother. DX10 = continuous fail

EDIT - I agree with poster above, I've got a GTX 260. Something about DX10, DX9 is still smoother even if it's not faster.
 
.Tret said:
I have a gtx280 and have found that DX10 is unplayable in FC2. I get about 50fps in dx10 and 45fps in dx9. However, while in dx10 mode I get a large amount of input lag making the game difficult to play. Even with 5fps less, it feels so much faster in dx9 mode because of the input lag I get in dx10 mode.
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Can anyone else confirm this? I already have enough input lag with my 2405 as it is, I don't need driver-level input lag on top of that.
 
Mav451 said:
Can anyone else confirm this? I already have enough input lag with my 2405 as it is, I don't need driver-level input lag on top of that.
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I just did, read above. I dunno if its input lag though or just micro stutter. I feel its micro stutter in the drivers.
 
I think this is one of those 'it depends' situations, based on your graphics card, cpu, and settings. I've done some benchmarking of this game but not a ton, I should try again to see if DX10 is faster here also.
 
GTX280 here, only input lag I get is due to stupid mouse acceleration and it's the same in DX9 and DX10.
 
dnottis said:
DX10 has micro stutter. DX9 still feels smoother. DX10 = continuous fail

EDIT - I agree with poster above, I've got a GTX 260. Something about DX10, DX9 is still smoother even if it's not faster.
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Situations like you describe are the biggest reason we moved to realworld testing almost 5 years ago. That said, we did not see your description of gameplay to be true. Should you have any proof to back up your statements, we would love to see it with a full system detail. More often than not, we find issues to be client specific.
 
Well it is good to see something like this to show what DX10 has been promising for years now. I'm not too much impressed it has taken this long and not at this time too much convinced this is the big turn around. This comparison while looking good on paper doesn't affect me much. I'm still running a 19" monitor at 1280x1024 with a 280 on XP (dual core cpu @ 3.2 gig). I am feeling more left out as Hardocp's reviews have forgotten about the users in this category which I still wager is most of the gamers still. Dunno, when I'm sitting 2 feet in front of my monitor playing games, I just don't need anything bigger than what I have. So for me this test really doesn't mean anything as this game runs smooth for me at max settings already. I don't use or need fps counters to tell me what I already know about how well a game runs for me. In my case this still is not a good enough reason to switch to Vista (which I still don't like) just to get DX10 to give me what I already have. I knew there might be some point I might have to do this, but a couple of years have past since Vista/DX10 and I still don't have to do it (yet).
 
Bigbacon said:
5 to 7 extra frames = shine??
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Yes. if we're talking at a low barable stage already of like 20fps, going to 15 would be a huge difference. But I do understand your point, that it shouldn't make that much of a different once it has passed a certain range.
 
Good read,

But I have to go with some of the other posts. I played the entire game in DX9. DX10 was faster, but introduced mouse lag which I could not get rid of by changing options.
 
I'm happy to see DX10 working well in titles however, this game as a whole just feels half-ass.
 
it's so much faster than Vista
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Faster how? And I'm serious. Currently, there is nothing I do in Vista that gives me any lag whatsoever. So exactly what is faster?

500MB ram idle on desktop... vs Vista's 1.2GB
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Ok... so it doesn't have superfetch and that's a good thing?
 
So after only 2 years, there's finally one game that's better with Vista's DX10. Doesn't DX11 come out next year with Windows 7?
 
Is there someone who thinks that maybe the game engine is under optimized for DX9?
 
For anyone having trouble running FC2 in Vista with stuttering, right click on the FC2 shortcut on your desktop, go to properties, then compatibility, then check the "Disable desktop composition" box. This disables Vista Aero while in FC2. This helped me alot.
 
WoW did this thread get off track... Nice to see a game run faster in DX10. About time!
 
Deletion of all the off-topic shit in this thread would be nice.

Anyway, did you guys notice decreased RAM usage in DX10 like was noticed in Crysis?
 
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