Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2 And S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat
As we know, 3D Vision Surround represents a doubling of the workload seen in Surround (2D). That’s fairly apparent in Far Cry 2, where we see a near-2:1 correlation between the two configurations at 4800x900 and 5760x1080—both playable in 3D mode. The only concession here is that you need to run in DirectX 9 to satisfy Nvidia’s recommended settings.
Of course, AMD’s Eyefinity technology is incapable of stereoscopic game play, so our only point of comparison is a pair of 2GB Eyefinity 6 cards in CrossFire running in 2D at those same settings. They’re a bit slower than Nvidia’s Surround mode—a result that we’d expect given the GTX 480’s superior performance.
Normally, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a graphics beast, taking the most powerful GPUs to their knees. However, when you enable static lighting, sidestepping the DirectX 11 and 10.1 code path, the GPU demand drops drastically. Remember that we’ll never exceed 60 frames per second with 3D Vision Surround turned on. So, the fact that Surround (2D) is more than three times faster suggests there’s a lot of overhead here, since we’re also not hitting that 60 FPS performance ceiling. Nevertheless, having played the game at 5760x1080, it’s fair to say that it’s both playable and attractive at that higher resolution, despite having to disable much of its eye candy.
