Crysis Benchmark Results

Crysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) framework, but can also run using DirectX 9, on Vista, Windows XP and the new Windows 7. As we'll see, there are significant frame rate reductions when running Crysis in DX10. It's not an operating system issue, DX9 works fine in WIN7, but DX10 knocks the frame rates in half.

Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading.

Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, which is similar to World in Conflict. This short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged.

Low-resolution testing allows the graphics processor to plateau its maximum output performance, and shifts demand onto the other system components. At the lower resolutions Crysis will reflect the GPU's top-end speed in the composite score, indicating full-throttle performance with little load. This makes for a less GPU-dependant test environment, but it is sometimes helpful in creating a baseline for measuring maximum output performance. At the 1280x1024 resolution used by 17" and 19" monitors, the CPU and memory have too much influence on the results to be used in a video card test. At the widescreen resolutions of 1680x1050 and 1900x1200, the performance differences between video cards under test are mostly down to the cards.

In my two prior reviews of the Radeon HD5770, I voiced my concerns about the DirectX 10 benchmarks for Crysis. They just seem unnaturally low, for the increase in visual quality that you get by moving up from DirectX 9. In DX10 only the highest performing boards get close to an average frame rate of 30FPS. It seems like we've gone back in time, back to when only two or three very expensive video cards could run Crysis with all the eye candy turned on. I guess we'll have to wait until CryEngine3 comes out, and is optimized for the current generation of graphics APIs.

Putting two 5770s in CrossfireX starts to get this game moving, and here we get to see three cards performing together as they should. The scaling isn't quite as impressive without anti-aliasing turned on; at 1900x1200, 2x nets you a 61% increase, and 3x gets you a 132% increase over a single card.

Add in some anti-aliasing, 4X to be exact, and the scaling improves a bit. This makes sense, as more of the processing load is transferred from the CPU to the GPU. Even so, Crysis is one of those games that really stress the CPU, and I was able to observe additional gains by bumping my CPU clock up a notch or two. I couldn't leave it there and get the full stability that is required for a series of benchmark runs, but I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity about whether more CPU power would improve the results; and they did. At 1900x1200, two cards give a 63% advantage over the lone card, and three brings it all the way up to 148%. Note to NVIDIA: a three card HD5770 setup is basically double the performance of a GTX285. Two-way and three-way CrossFireXTM worked without a hitch in this benchmark.

In our next section, Benchmark Reviews tests with Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark. Read on to see how a blended high-demand GPU test with low video frame buffer demand will impact our test products.

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