Far Cry
The recent release of the Far Cry 1.3 patch has raised the question of whether SLI lets you use the new OpenEXR HDR rendering modes with high performance. So it'd be rude not to see what SLI buys you in terms of Far Cry performance with and without HDR.Far Cry uses load-balanced SFR as its SLI accelerated mode.
Far Cry 1.3, no HDR
SFR with Far Cry lets you stay up against the CPU limitation, whereas without SLI performance drops off linearly with the increase in resolution. We have to sacrifice multi-sampling to turn on HDR on Far Cry 1.3 but for the increase in apparent image quality, it's something a lot of people want to suffer. Personally, I think it ends up an overbright mess in a lot of cases, but I know a lot of you lust after high HDR performance and think it looks great.
Far Cry 1.3, HDR mode 3
Using HDR cuts away all of SLI's advantage in SFR mode, most likely due to resource sharing issues or possible CPU limitation (depending on the implementation details of the HDR render path).
Far Cry 1.3, HDR mode 7
In the more performance intensive HDR mode, SLI buys us a small win, but it's miniscule. SLI, at least using load-balanced SFR, doesn't help with Far Cry in HDR mode. AFR is a different story, but there's no AFR mode that suits Far Cry without random crashing in the driver. I'll revisit that case at a later date when it's feasible.
