Lasereth

First off, FarCry is simply an incredibly taxing game. It's new. The Radeon 9800 Pro is a year old. You're using a videocard that's a year old on a game that's very new. It's simply not gonna run with extremely high settings. Still, the Radeon 9800 Pro is still considered the Super Elite of the videocard market. If you have a Radeon 9800 Pro or GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, you have NOTHING to worry about concerning PC games for at least two years.

Secondly, when you bought it, it was second-generation already simply because the 9800 XT is out. I wouldn't call it second or third generation if ya think about it though: the XT is only about 5-10% better at most. Plus, at $200, it's a fucking steal. Remember that the X800 XT and 6800 Ultra are gonna be five hundred fucking dollars! That's an incredible amount of money. I can buy a Radeon 9800 Pro, Athlon XP and the best motherboard and 1 GB of RAM for $500. These new videocards have superceded the current generation, but you're sure as hell gonna pay for it.

This happens every year guys! A new videocard that costs $500 comes out, and everyone automatically assumes that all of their equipment is obsolete. You simply have to remember that an Athlon XP 2000+ or P4 2 GHz with a 9800/Pro or 5900/Ultra will be good for at least two years from now. Yes, two years. It won't run the new games at the best, but it will run them, and that's all that computing equipment is designed to do. That's why ATI, NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD all have different levels of equipment: some people want their games to run the best, and some people simply want to play the games reasonably.

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert