EVGA’s GTX 550 Ti “free performance” evaluation
CRYSIS
Next we move on to Crysis, a science fiction first person shooter by Crytek. It remains one of the most demanding games for any PC and it is also still one of the most beautiful games released to date. Crysis is based in a fictional near-future where an alien spacecraft is discovered buried on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has you assume the role of USA Delta Force, ‘Nomad’ who is armed with futuristic weapons and equipment.
Crysis uses DirectX10 for graphics rendering. A standalone but related game, Crysis Warhead was released the following year. CryEngine2 is the game engine used to power Crysis and Warhead and it is an extended version of the CryEngine that also powers Far Cry. As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0, and DirectX10’s 4.0, CryEngine2 is also multi-threaded to take advantage of dual core SMP-aware systems and Crytek has developed their own proprietary physics system, called CryPhysics.
It is noted that actually playing this game is a bit slower than the demo implies. All of our settings are set to the in-game maximum’s “very high” including 2xAA for 2560×1600, 1920×1200 and for 1680×1050 and we force 16xAF in the control panels. Here is Crysis’ Island Demo benchmark, first at 1920×1200 resolution:
Now we test at 1680×1050.
Here the GTX 550 Ti is behind the HD 5770 until it is overclocked past EVGA clocks. We will make sure to test further in Warhead, a more well-optimized game.
I am just getting around to it but i must say very nice review apoppins! As always your vast selection of games and benchmarks is top notch. Its so complete. I know you used it a lot, but I wouldve liked to have seen 1680 x 1050 results for every game. You may have only skipped it when the 550ti was doing very well at 1920×1200 and thats fine. But i feel like 1680×1050 is intended for this card and although at times it can obviously do well at higher resolutions, the 1680×1050 should be the starting point in all the test.
Dont get me wrong, your review was great. I just think cards intended for a certain resolution often get reviewed in much higher resolutions which doesnt do them much justice. Your review does do the 550ti justice though, its very full and useful.
Thank-you!
Again, the reason for leaving 1680×1050 out came down to time. Or a lack of it.
I did try to compensate by finding settings that approached playability and I hope we can revisit the GTX 550 Ti in another article. I did some further testing of the GTX 550 Ti in the HD 6670/6570 launch article, in fact.
Galaxy is sponsoring our May contest – the prizes will include a GTX 550 Ti and a GTX 560 Ti.