Gaming: Call of Duty 4 | Far Cry 2

Gaming: Call of Duty 4

Activision recently released Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the next installment in the popular war game series. Moving away from the World War II setting, Modern Warfare instead centers around a conflict involving Russia and the Middle East. And hey, you even get to die ... and then continue the game in the past.

Call of Duty 4 -- For this benchmark we use disguise ourselves in the Ghillie suit, load up ACT II - All Ghillied up. Not just for the great gameplay, but also the intense and dense graphics utilized are breathtaking. Massive high-quality texturing, shaders and a serious amount of shadows, fog and debris are applied in this level to mask and hide as best as you can.

Image Quality setting:

• 4x Anti Aliasing
• 16x anisotropic filtering
• All settings maxed out

It is ridiculous how well COD4 scales.

Far Cry 2 graphics performance

Remember Jack Carver and things where about to get seriously messed up for you ? Well, tough luck. You are no longer at that deserted tropical island yet hop into a jeep and arrive at the sandy savannah surroundings of Africa. And that's a change .. as much as you'll no longer run into any mutants, aliens, or any superpowers or psychic powers. Also -- you are no longer Jack Carver, you assume the role of one of nine different mercenaries who are embedded in the midst of a brutal civil war which rages in a imaginary African nation.

n Far Cry 2 we selected an image quality setting, applied similar to all cards. Since the graphics engine can deal with a lot, we opt some of the very best image quality available in-game, DirectX 10 mode and then enable 4 levels of anti-aliasing in very high image quality settings mode. A pretty tough configuration for sure. The results is excellent image quality, yet it remains quite playable through out the scope of tested cards and resolutions.

Image Quality Settings:

• 4x Anti Aliasing
• Textures: Very High
• Shadows: Very High
• Overall Quality: Very High
• DirectX 10

Obviously I could not leave out Far Cry 2, currently one of the hottest titles available on this globe. The GTX 280 is faster up-to 1920x1200 after which the two GPUs on the X2 kick in harder.

The high framerate doesn't mean it was a smooth ride though. Contrary, in DX10 mode we see a lot of stutters and freezes with the Radeon series 4000 cards.