FarCry Barely Runs at Dead Minimum Quality (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro)

[Kamex]

All my other games are having porportionatly the same problems. When I got this new card, I was expecting something a good deal faster than this, especially since one of my friends can run that FarCry game at medium quality with a video card worse than mine. Another can run the game at full quality in a 1280 x 1024 resolution with complete smoothness, and he has this exact card. For some reason, I am stuck with such low quality that I can barely play the game, and it still studders and hiccups. It's gotten me killed so much that I'm about ready to give up at this point.

What on earth could be the problem? I reformatted my computer, reinstalled FarCry, and upgraded my drivers to the newest version. The problem became worse...

I can only do AGP 4x, but it shouldn't make it THIS slow. My friends, who know a lot more about this stuff, told my brother that my old GeForce 4 MX 420 card will make FarCry playable at minimum quality. It's too late to ask for it back now, but I was under the impression that my new card would perform a lot better than a GeForce 4...:sad:

Anyone have any ideas on what I can do?

[viperman224]

ATI cards are awfull! I would never buy another one in my life. I have a game called HALO by microsoft. I am sure you gamers out there have heard of it. The copy I have is only a trial version. I have an ATI readeon (SP?) in our "mediabox" computer, in my dad's computer and my sister's computer. I have played HALO on the "mediabox" and my sister's computer. The ATI graphics suck. I had an older NVida GeForce Prophet3D II in my desktop which had less memory (only 32megs). The ATI cards all have 64 megs and are suposed to be extremly good cards as my dad had researched them. Granted my sisters computer and the "mediabox" computer are not exactly alike.

Mediabox:

Processor: PII 450mhz, 512 cache, etc.
RAM:192 megs of PC100
Video: ATI Radeon 7000
Hard drive: 20 gig western digital
OS: windows 2000 pro

Sister's computer:
Processor: PIII 500mhz, 512 cache, wtc.
RAM: 512 megs PC100
Hard drive: 40 gig
OS: windows 2000 pro

The graphics are awfull. I know the game is a trial version, and the machine might be a little slow to run them but I had a

PIII 450mhz
512megs of ram
40 and 60 gig hard drives
windows xp pro

Now, I cannot play Halo on my computer because I bought a micro ATX motherboard and it does not AGP and only has 4mb of on board video. This is fine as I do not use the machine much and have since got hold of a PIII 800mhz which would play halo nicley. I need a new motherboard with AGP. I guess my point here is I like NVida cards best. I am not sure if the ATI readeon 7000 cards that I have are not capible of playing games because they were bought to do work. The machine we have (minus my own) were put together to do things like word processing, etc. Also it could possibly be my OS running windows 2000 with the ATI cards. Sorry for making this so long but this is why I would stick with NVida GeForce cards rather then ATI cards.

[Coconut Monkey]

Radeon 7000 does not run Halo very well

I shall start with Viperman's post.

Halo Minimum System Requirements -
- Multimedia personal computer with a 733 MHz or higher processor.
- Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows Me, Windows 2000 Service Pack 1, or Windows XP.
- 128 Megabytes (MB) of RAM.
- 1.3 GB of available hard disk space.
- 8× CD-ROM drive.
- 32 MB 3D hardware-transform-and-lighting-capable video display.

As always, minimum system requirements should be taken with a grain of salt. This game can chug on my 2.8Ghz P4, 1Gb of RAM, and a 9800 Pro, at 1024x768 max detail.

As a result Viperman, I'm not surprised you experienced such poor performance, considering that people with systems many times faster experience frame rate problems (of course, opinions vary on "playable framerates").

Also, I would not judge a video card chipset manufacturer based on a fairly recently released game (for PC at least) and a video card chipset they released over two years ago. Since the Radeon 7000 came about, ATI have released the 7500, 8500, 9700, 9800 and just recently the X800 (only taking into account the max performance cards - many chipsets for smaller budgets have also been released). 2 years is a very long time in terms of computer technology, and so I'm sorry to say your card is very outdated for the latest and greatest. Still perfectly fine for general office use though!

The performance of ATI's more recent cards are for another topic (probably already covered - try a search).

Back to Kamex's original question, I'd like to know more system specifications. CPU, RAM, and anything else you can provide. Also, try turning Anti-Aliasing (AA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF) to "Application Preference" in the ATI control panel (Control Panel->Display->Settings->Advanced->3D(?)->Direct3D). These features, while improving image quality, can severely degrade performance. Also ensure the Anisotropic filtering setting within Far Cry itself is set to "1".

As a side note, Far Cry runs satisfactorily (it can get chuggy) on my system (described above) at 1024x768, max details, no AA or AF.

[Catweazle]

Yes, HALO is a dog of a thing on PC, having performance problems on even highly specc'd systems. It's also a game that runs better on nVidia cards than on ATi cards, unlike most other games.

With reference to the Far Cry question, I'd also like to hear your system specifications, Kamex, and suspect you may have AA or AF enabled in your display properties.

Welcome to these Forums, by the way, Kamex and Coconut Monkey.

[TempesT]

ATI Cards are the best cards out there. I have had 2 Nvidia Geforce cards go out and one of my friends has also had an Nvidia Card go out. Dont go saying ATI Cards are awful! Alot more people prefer an ATI card over an Nvidia.(or more people i know prefer ATI) Just ask around. Im not saying Nvidia cards are bad ive just had very bad luck with them and other people i know have also had bad luck with them.I would also like to hear your system Specs i will bet money its not the card thats causeing your problem.

[Catweazle]

Actually, a lot more people prefer nVidia cards than than there are people who prefer ATi cards, and a lot more people prefer onboard Intel graphics than both of those others put together - that's just the way things are, and the way people buy computers, and you sound like you're basing your judgement on a circle of enthusiast gamers that you're involved with.

But for games performance, ATi Radeon cards (at least the high-end ones,) are better performers speed wise than nVidia high-end cards. Only the nVidia FX5950 Ultra is a truly competitive card with the best available from ATi, although the 5900XT is a 'killer' in the mid-range over the 9600XT