I have a Radeon x1950 pro and catalyst 7.11 and have been having the same problem as many people with this card: namely the game won’t load past the first screen showing the guy and the girl unless it is on the lowest video settings. Here is how I fixed it:

1. Uninstall and reinstall Far Cry 1.4

2. Launch the game. The game will auto-detect video settings, but leave them alone for now. The game will set everything to the lowest setting, but it should run fine.

3. Start the first mission. Once you can actually play, go into the video options and set
everything to max EXCEPT lighting, which you can set to high BUT NOT very high.

After doing this and I have been playing with no problems and enjoying the great graphics of this classic shooter. Good luck!!

Sorry to bump this but this is exactly what made me want to repatch the game. I have an X1950XT 256MB and if I set lightning quality to very high instead of high or any lower, my game will take ages to load and the graphics will be a mess. At the moment everything is at max except lightning quality, which is at high. Does anyone know if this has been fixed?

It is very important that everyone experiencing this problem make a support ticket to ATI.
I have the very same problem and contacted ATI/AMD tech support, and according to them they had never had this problem reported before.

If people do not report the problems then it can never be resolved.