Far Cry - Pier
We're using the 1.3 version of Far Cry, which includes support for shader models 2.0b and 3.0, and geometry instancing. To maximize each card's potential, I tested the GeForce 6600 series cards with shader model 3.0 and the X700s with 2.0b. Geometry instancing is already a part of the shader model 3.0 code path, but it needs to be enabled using a command line variable with the shader model 2.0 and 2.0b paths.

We used "Very high" for all in-game quality settings, with the exception of water, which was set to "Ultra high." In other words, everything was maxed out.

The Pier level in Far Cry is an outdoor area with dense vegetation, and it makes good use of geometry instancing to populate the jungle with foliage.

The GeForce 6600 GT cards continue to lead the field, posting the highest frame rates in our Far Cry Pier demo. However, the Radeon X700 Pro cards aren't too far behind, especially when we turn up antialiasing and aniso.

In the battle of the vanilla cards, the GeForce 6600 is solidly behind the Radeon X700, especially with 4X antialiasing and 8X aniso. Given in-game frame rates, I wouldn't consider 4X/8X playable on either card at the resolutions we tested.