Far Cry 2 Hardware Performance Review

Driver Updates and You


Well as luck would have it, on day that this review was intended to be released, nVidia makes public, a new driver that was heralded for its Far Cry 2 performance boosts over the beta. It is not often we hear of such major improvements from a WHQL driver and a beta which is only a month younger, but forums around the net have been abuzz with the news.

While it would be completely unfeasible to retest all of the video cards, we did decide to investigate further and pulled out the trusty GTX 280 to test the new WHQL 180.48's. In the past week AMD/ATI also released a driver, 8.11, which didn't receive quite the reception of nVidia's, but we didn't want to leave them out of the party, so the HD4870 was resurrected to do the job.



The latest from nVidia does a very impressive job, improving performance over 10% in most cases; however, ATI's Catalyst 8.11 appear to just be the 8.10's with the hotfix embedded. As a result it is highly recommended for gamers with nVidia based products targeted in the new driver to upgrade to the 180.48 series in order to improve performance in Far Cry 2.