Far Cry 2 Gaming

Ubisoft has developed Far Cry 2 as a sequel to the original, but with a very different approach to game play and story line. Far Cry 2 features a vast world built on Ubisoft's new game engine called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Farci. The setting in Far Cry 2 takes place on a fictional Central African landscape, set to a modern day timeline.

The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2, by Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers realistic semi-destructible environments, special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storms, real-time night-and-day sun light and moon light cycles, dynamic music system, and non-scripted enemy A.I actions.

The Dunia game engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands. Additionally, the engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, the engine used in Crysis.

However, it should be noted that Crysis delivers greater character and object texture detail, as well as more destructible elements within the environment. For example; trees breaking into many smaller pieces and buildings breaking down to their component panels. Far Cry 2 also supports the amBX technology from Philips. With the proper hardware, this adds effects like vibrations, ambient colored lights, and fans that generate wind effects.

There is a benchmark tool in the PC version of Far Cry 2, which offers an excellent array of settings for performance testing. Benchmark Reviews used the maximum settings allowed for our tests, with the resolution set to 1920x1200. The performance settings were all set to 'Very High', DirectX 9 Render Quality was set to 'Ultra High' overall quality, 8x anti-aliasing was applied, and HDR and Bloom were enabled.

Using a low resolution paired to low quality settings, Far Cry 2 becomes much more CPU-dependant on producing fast frame rates. The AMD Phenom II series doesn't bode well for this particular test, as the fall behind by nearly 50% or more. Turning up the quality and effects to their highest settings, but keeping the low resolution (which is common for 17" LCD displays), things become more GPU dependant. Illustrating this point is the relative proximity of each test score, with every single processor scoring within 0.7 FPS of each other.

Before moving on, it's important to ensure you've understood these results. The point this benchmark makes is clear: users who play games with real-world settings will see no difference in performance. If a decent modern video card is used, there will be no difference whatsoever. However, if you're one of the very few people who will own a modern processor and pair it to out-dated graphics, then you can expect your processor to compensate for the difference. From my experience as a professional system builder, the CPU only makes a difference when the video card is underpowered. Seeing these results, it could be suggested the money saved by purchasing an affordable processor could be better spent on a capable graphics card.

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