Crysis Investigation
Important Notice
This article was originally written in August 2008. Thanks to apoppin for Vista testing and commentary.
Introduction
Crysis is undoubtedly one of the most demanding games on the market and one could certainly argue that no configuration currently exists that can run it well, not even the fastest quad GPU configurations. In this article we will examine the game’s various image quality settings and evaluate them both in terms of performance and image quality impact. We will test XP and Vista, and also test both ATi Radeon 4870 and nVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra GPUs.
Note that while basic image quality and performance comparisons will invariably happen between OSes and/or GPU vendors, the intention of this article is not to make such a comparison. The primary intention of this article is only to evaluate performance and image quality relative to the game itself, and to provide two different sets of comparisons by using two different platforms and OSes.
Windows XP/GeForce System
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (reference 3 GHz clock).
- Intel G33 chipset.
- 4 GB (4 x 1 GB) DDR2-800 RAM.
- nVidia 8800 Ultra (768 MB, reference clocks).
- Forceware 175.19.
- Windows XP SP3 (32 bit)
Windows Vista/Radeon System
- Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 (3.25 GHz).
- Intel P35 chipset.
- 4 GB (4 x 1 GB) DDR2-800 RAM.
- ATi Radeon 4870 (512 MB)
- Catalyst 8.8.
- Windows Vista SP1 (32 bit)
Common Settings
- All tests run at 1600×1200 with 16xAF forced through the driver control panel.
- AA and other game settings changed through game menus only.
- Vsync is forced off in the driver and game.
