The Big GPU Shootout: Part I, Upgrade Now or Wait?
Crysis
Now we move on to Crysis; the most demanding game released to date for any PC. Crysis is a sci-fi first person shooter by German video game developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. Crysis is the first game of a planned trilogy. It was released in November, 2007 worldwide. Crysis is based in a fictional future where an ancient alien spacecraft was discovered buried on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has you assume the role of USA Delta Force, Jake Dunn, referred to as Nomad in the game. He is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, including a “Nano Suit” which enables the player to perform extraordinary feats. In Crysis, Nomad battles both extraterrestrial and North Korean enemies, in four different locations: a tropical island jungle, inside an ice jungle which is the same same now frozen jungle, inside the alien ship which includes a zero-gravity area and a US Aircraft carrier. Crysis uses DirectX10 for graphics rendering, and includes the same editor that was used by Crytek to create it.
A standalone but related game, Crysis Warhead was released on September 17, 2008. It is notable for providing a similar graphical exprience to Crysis, but with less graphical demands on the PC. We will eventually add it to our benchmarking. CryEngine2 is the game engine used to power Crysis and Warhead. It is an extended version of the CryEngine that powers FarCry. That same original CryEngine became the basis for the Dunia Engine that powers Ubisoft’s FarCry2, a less damanding game engine.
As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0 and DirectX10’s 4.0, CryEngine2 is multi-threaded to take advantage of SMP aware systems. Crysis also comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions and Crytek has developed their own proprietary physics system, called CryPhysics. There is are three built in demos that are very reliable in comparing video card performance. However, it is noted that actually playing the game is a bit slower than the demo implies.
GPU Demo, Island
CRYSIS GPU
Now Crysis CPU1 benchmarks at first 16×10 and then 19×12
Finally, we see much the same results as the last two demos. Crysis is barely playable with these drivers at 16×10; CPU2 Demo shows the same and we can hope later drivers address Crysis performance.
At 19×12 it only gets worse for our older GPUs.
We decided to give our GPUs the full workout with all three Crysis benchmarks, this time. They all show about the same range of performance, so in future we will stick with the Island demo, GPU1, for all our future GPU benchmarking. Again CF-X3 refused to run reliably with our Crysis built in demo. Also the 8800GTX and 2900xt struggle with Crysis at Very High settings; they are largely unplayable at the setting we chose. And we have not even attempted to apply AA or AF!
You are wrong DX 10 games are not lagging
thank you highwon
Sure they are lagging
Check out part two of my Shootout .. even top cards have issues playing some of the latest games at 19×12 resolution – fully maxed out