Problem running FarCry Demo

[itsalmost420]

I got a computer from dell with the geforce 6800 in it and it hasnt really been working that good. The far cry demo wont run right. In the advanced settings when I select auto detect, it puts everything to low. My P4 3ghz machine with a geforce 6800 GTO shouldnt auto detect everything to low detail. I can turn it all up but some things dont look quite right. Like the water, in all the videos i've seen the water look real, in mine it doesnt have any texture/transparency and looks like crap.
Doom 3 also runs kinda funny. It runs at a general 60fps then often drops out to bouts of only 5fps for a while. I dont think it should do this on my new computer.
I updated most everything so i dont think its the drivers.

Any ideas?

 

[Ironmanstl]

I believe the demo runs at a lower quality level to ensure good frame rates on most machines

When you play the game it will look better

 

[KeithP]

The Far Cry demo has a lot of problems with the 6800 cards. I experienced the same things you are seeing on my 6800 GT. The retail version should run fine (at least it did for me). As far as Doom 3 goes, I also experienced some extreme variation in performance. Most of the time it ran fine but it would occassionally get pretty choppy (2500 Barton at 11x205FSB, 1 GB RAM). I ended up running at 1024x768, no AA which, even in the worst case scenarios, ran pretty well.

FWIW, Half Life 2 seems to run better than either Far Cry or Doom 3.

-KeithP