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The AMD HD6850 1120/960 Shader Debate – comparisons

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Our settings: 1920×1200 (60Hz), D3D10, Fixed Time Step(No), Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(4x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Optimal), Vegetation(High), Shading(High), Terrain(High), Geometry(High), Post FX(High), Texture(High), Shadow(High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

Far Cry 2 shows performance differences of around 4 frames per second at our choosen settings, which translates to a 6.7 percent increase when adding the extra 160 unified shaders to the hardware.

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16 comments

  1. Fascinating stuff Zardon. thanks for the info, I feel more educated now 😉

  2. Excellent, the 960 performance is great, but I can see how the 1120 shaders can enhance the results, thats for sure.

  3. I ordered a 6870 on Friday, good reading thanks 🙂

  4. If a few of these get leaked outside review sites they would be worth some money in the future, as a product never released 🙂

  5. Very interesting, and ive never seen a ‘shader’ based review before. they really do make a difference, depending on the engine.

  6. fascinating read, thank you.

  7. 3dmark gets a nice boost of a 1000 points or so, nice.

  8. Heh, shame they didnt start selling these !

  9. This is a lesson in shader power and how important it is. would have been awesome if they had sold these in stores for the same price 🙂 a quick OC and its 6870 goodness at less money.

  10. Great to get facts rather than speculation. testing is really useful.

  11. Can AMD hardlock cards from being overclocked? I thought they could. they should have sold t he 6850 at the same price with 1120 shaders, but hardlocked it so it couldnt be overclocked.

  12. Only downside with that Garry is that people would be able to hack the bioses to get the clock speeds up. then they basically could get a 6870 for 140 quid rather than 200. but i like the idea. a locked 775 core 6850 with shader power of 6870 which would be clocked at 900mhz and able to be overclocked. i think they would sell more, but it might stop sales of 6870 long term.

  13. The Tessmark result is strange. How can you get a 36.8% performance increase with 16.7% more shaders? Must be something else at play.

  14. Absolutely – no idea, but ive asked the program author to comment.

  15. Amazes me at times how many sites do little research, I saw one other writer saying kitguru had run tests with a 1120 shader HD6850 in previous reviews. Yet here we are looking at this article and the 960 shader results in this match the sapphire and XFX reviews published last week for the 960 cards. the 1120 cards are clearly much better performers. Thanks for the info, very good read.

    I think the news here on kitguru, while controversial and funny at times tends to damage the amazing quality of the reviews.

  16. Thanks, my HD6850 arrived and my results are much the same as the 960 core version in this article. Bit of a bummer they didn’t let a few 1120 shader versions out into the wild as the differences are quiet noticeable.