Far Cry
This game is the big one, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 all rolled into one and released in mid-2004, ahead of either of those big-name titles. Far Cry uses DirectX 9 shaders, per-pixel lighting and shadowing, and a host of related effects to make one of the best looking games we've ever seen.

I tested Far Cry using its built-in demo record and playback function, but I used FRAPS to get frame rates out of it. I don't know why. Far Cry's demos don't record character interactions, but I did get a good cross section of the game in, starting inside and moving through some tunnels, then going outside through thick vegetation for a stroll on the beach. All of the game's quality options were set to "Very High." Anisotropic filtering was set to the highest level the game would allow, and antialiasing quality was set to medium.

The ATI cards take this one, with the X800 XT PE well ahead of the GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme. The X800 Pro darn near ties with the GeForce 6800 Ultra.

You may have noticed, though, that our scores are way up on the GeForce 6800 Ultra from our initial review. NVIDIA fixed a Z culling bug in its drivers, and performance has leaped as a result. Unfortunately, the GeForce 6800 drivers still need some work to fix a number of image quality issues, including intermittent problems with shadowing on weapons. NVIDIA is also working with CryTek to alleviate some lighting artifacts that folks have noted on the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Apparently, some of the problems are driver based, while others will require a patch from CryTek. NVIDIA's driver team is making its piece of the problem a top priority.

For now, the Radeon X800 cards run this premier game title faster and with better image quality than NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 series. That has to be a little embarrassing given that this is an NVIDIA "The Way it's Meant to be Played" game, but the reality is that the GeForce 6800 series is still a very new product, not yet shipping, with beta drivers, while ATI's Radeon X800s are second-generation silicon shipping today.

Painkiller
Painkiller is another brand-new game with gorgeous graphics, but this one has a decidedly old-school shooter feel. Heaven's got a hitman... and a crate opener, it would seem.

Since the Painkiller demo doesn't have any sort of demo recording, I played through a game sequence in the same way three times for each card and averaged the results recorded by FRAPS. I've gained more confidence in this "manual" method of benchmarking during this process, because results were remarkably consistent between runs.

Chalk up another win in a new game for the Radeon cards. The X800 XT PE leads the pack, with the GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme nearly 20 frames per second behind it. Interestingly enough, though, the Radeon X800 Pro manages a higher minimum frame rate, suggesting better playability on the cheaper Radeon X800 card than on the Extreme.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
In Price of Persia, I played through the game's opening sequence, which is a mixture of canned animations and live gameplay, all rendered in the game engine. As with Painkiller, results were remarkably consistent from one run to the next on the same card.

This one is a mirror image of the Painkiller results, with the GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme pulling far ahead of the Radeons, and the GeForce 6800 GT hitting a higher minimum framerate than the Radeon X800 XT PE.