Crysis 3 Pre-set performance; Radeon HD 7970 3GB and GTX 680 2GB

Before delving into full comparison tests across the range of cards, we wanted to first see the the impact of the different detail settings in isolation. We tested all four detail presets on both a GTX 680 2GB and a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, at both 1,920 x 1,080 and 2,560 x 1,600. We used Nvidia's GeForce 314.07 WHQL Driver and AMD's Catalyst 13.1 WHQL Driver.

1920 x 1080 Detail Performance

The GTX 680 2GB's performance scales very linearly from low right up to very high detail, with a 20 per cent drop in minimum frame rate from low to medium, a 25 per cent drop between medium and high and a 32 per cent drop from high to very high.

The HD 7970 3GB however scales more steeply, with a huge drop of 40 per cent between low and medium, a relatively small drop of just 13 per cent between medium and high, and then a larger drop of 33 percent from high to very high. At medium detail in particular, the minimum frame rate is a long way from the average.

2,560 x 1,600 Detail Performance

At 2,560 x 1,600 the GTX 680 2GB again scales in a reasonably linear way, with a drop of 25 per cent between low and medium detail, 25 percent again between medium and high, and then 29 per cent between high and very high.

The HD 7970 agin sees a steep drop in minimum frame rate between low and medium detail, with a 33 per cent drop between them. Medium to high sees a 25 per cent drop, while high to very high a 31 per cent drop. As a rough estimate, performance with the low preset is 2.5 times that of the game running at its very high preset.