Crysis

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Crysis is seen by many as the poster boy for DirectX 10 and it will make your system cry, quite literally – it’s a monster! It doesn’t come as much of a surprise then, that the graphics are something special – they’re above and beyond anything we’ve ever seen in a PC game.

We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under both DirectX 9.0 and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom timedemo recorded from the Laws of Nature level which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game. We found that around 27-33 fps in our custom timedemo was sufficient enough to obtain a playable frame rate through the game. It's a little different to other games in that the low frame rates still appear to be quite smooth.

In addition to testing under both DirectX 9.0 and DirectX 10 with all quality details set to High, we feel it's about time hardware should be able to handle the game with the in-game settings tuned to Very High. The game has been out for at least a year now, so it's time for hardware manufacturers to catch up with the software.

We forced 8x anisotropic filtering in the driver menu as there is currently no support for it in game and tested at 1,280 x 1,024, using 0x, 2x and 4x anti-aliasing, 1,680 x 1,050 using 0x and 4x anti-aliasing, 1,920 x 1,200 using 0x and 2xAA and 2,560 x 1,600 with 0xAA. By extensively testing using anti-aliasing in very high resolutions in conjunction with Very High quality in-game settings, we'll be pushing even the bleeding edge hardware on test to the limit.








Even at 1,280 x 1,024 0xAA 16xAF, the HIS Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo doesn't have enough horsepower to drive Crysis at a frame rate above 30 frames per second, but it is marginally playable at around 28 fps on average - 3.6 percent or one frame per second faster than the reference 4870 1GB. Meanwhile, the minimum frame rate at these settings isn't improved over the stock-clocked 4870 1GB and remains pegged at 15 fps.

Compared to the GeForce GTX 260-216, the HIS Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo is approximately 12 percent slower at 1,280 x 1,024 0xAA 16xAF with very high in-game details - that makes quite a difference at the frame rates we're talking about here and it drives the average well above 30 fps. The minimum frame rate is also three frames per second higher on the GTX 260-216 as well, which will make for an all-round smoother gameplay experience.