Crysis, ok. Prey, no.
 
I am making this post for one reason. Stop using Prey as a benchmark for PC gaming.
 
Prey is not by any means useful to benchmark and is not even used as a competitively played game for the PC in any league as far as I'm aware. I understand that Crysis is seen as the 'holy grail' of high end PC graphics, but Prey is anything but. May I suggest if you were to take 2 games and only 2 games as a benchmark use Call of Duty 4 and Crysis. For the sake of supplementation go with Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2, and World in Conflict in that order; as UT3/TF2 are played competitively so naturally graphics cards are catered toward that market. From what I can tell WiC is just a great benchmark as is Half-Life2: Lost Coast, but are older and not as popular.
 
If for no other reason I base my facts, take into consideration Xfire. If you go onto their site and lookup the most played games you will see World of Warcraft and COD4 in the top 2. WoW, is older and not hard to max graphics so is naturally not a good benchmark, COD4 however is new and demanding, while Prey is never to be seen on that list.
 
So please, please TH, stop benchmarking Prey as a primary Game.

Ive never played it but looking at the vga charts prey appears to be a relatively demanding game that allows good comparisons between modern cutting edge cards and older cards like the 6600GT etc. Its usefull for owners of older cards to look at newer cards and compare when choosing upgrades.

if you are referring to the gpu charts, 1 they havent been updated in some time, 2 they are based on standards from when the earlier cards on the list came out, as dtq said its for comparisons between newer and older cards,  
if they wanted to put those newer games on, they would have to make a new standard and retest all the older cards and even omit some that might not even be able to play them

Prey was a semi demanding game visually that was pretty standard for the generation of cards it was used to test.  It doesn't matter much what game is used.  It matters more that it is a current game, and that all the cards are tested on it.  The point is to see how each different card handles the same game.

does openGL mean anything to the OP.

 
Probably not, and until something more linear and demanding (ie perfect for benchmarking) comes out, it's going to be hard to replace. Quakewars isn't up to it IMO.

The problem here isn't if Prey is demanding on a card because its relatively new and does have some of those needed features (where Crysis picks up the high-end slack).
 
No, the problem is that Prey is hardly a widely used game, and as we all know performance varies from game to game. So when you make an article that only uses 2 games Crysis/Prey, what kind of use does that have compared to using Crysis/COD4 as a benchmark?  
 
For simplicity sake, I know what I get in COD4, and an vast amount of others do as well. But Prey? I don't think anywhere near the same amount of people know what kind of frames they're getting, so articles that don't include COD4 are (in my eyes) missing a large basis for benchmarking.
 
My point being COD4 does everything Prey does but is far better as a benchmark because it's so widely used.
 

 
If I'm not mistaken, I believe COD4 is capable of running the low end cards while being a demanding game for high-end users as you've stated was the reason for using Prey.

See StrangerStranger, you were right, even when overtly pointed out, still doesn't quite sink in.  

 
but isnt the point that the benches you are reading were started b4 cod4 was released...and they would have to re-bench all of the old cards in order to include it...which would be a waste of time, as prey, though not a widely used game, is demanding enough to give buyers a rough idea of performance on various cards...so why change it

 
 I was going to point it out earlier but figured (correctly it would seem) that it would be a head banging on wall kind of experiance.    
   Mactronix

 
I'm just referring to the articles I'm reading on the front page and what they use on the setup/card the article is about.
 
I think the topic title was misleading so I tried to clarify it.

We should stop using Crysis. The game sucks, so I'm not buying my video card to play it! What is the point? Upcoming games will graphicaly challenge our latest video cards? I think not!
STOP THE CRYSIS BENCHMARK FAD!
BOYCOT CRYSIS BENCHMARKS!