Crysis 3 Melts Your Machine, But Low Settings Are Still Beautiful
Crysis 3 gives us more eye candy and a similar combat experience as its predecessor. The highest settings are absolutely brutal on high-end hardware. But there's good news: this game's lowest detail setting looks far better than many other games' highest quality levels, and even a sub-$110 Radeon HD 7750 or GeForce GTX 650 is playable at 1920x1080.
If you want more taxing graphics quality, you'll need at least a Radeon HD 7850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti to play at that same 1920x1080 resolution. And for access to the very highest detail setting, be ready to shell out for a Radeon HD 7950 with Boost or a GeForce GTX 660 Ti.
Gaming across three screens is increasingly popular, and enthusiasts with three 1920x1080 displays may want to drop to the Medium detail preset in order to encourage playable frame rates. Even then, you'll want at least a GeForce GTX 680 or Radeon HD 7970. Two GeForce GTX 660 Tis in SLI or Radeon HD 7950s in CrossFire are an even better bet.
Most surprising to us is Crysis 3's processor requirements. Our benchmark sequence revealed a huge bottleneck that required a Core i5 or i7 just to maintain a 30 FPS minimum frame rate. Although AMD's FX-8350 achieved an average frame rate equivalent to the Core i5-3550, its minimum dips to 21 FPS, causing us to back off from awarding a full recommendation. If a performance-enhancing patch is rolled out, as it was with Skyrim, we'll certainly reconsider.
Crytek went back to its roots with a PC-oriented first-person shoot that pushes the boundaries of graphics quality on today's highest-end hardware. It may not redefine the genre in any way, but it's certainly worth playing through.
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Why would you include the top of the line amd, middle of the line intel (ivy bridge i5) and not the top of the line ivy bridge i7 3770k?????????
Still feel that the game is unduly harsh for what it displays
Also hope AMD comes out with better drivers soon
Right on time. I kinda suspect the i3-3220 performance from Techspot was unusual..
I thought i3 3220 was IB, not SB?
Time to make an i7 rig and pass my current system to wife because Crysis demands. Nice review and the 13.2 driver from AMD has really improved frame variance for their cards. Keep it up red team so green team can do the same. The better the drivers the better our gaming experience. After all, we pay pretty penny looking for better experience. Cheers!
I have a hand ful of benchmarks I ran when I upgraded to from the i3 3220 to the i7 3770K and I DEFINITELY noticed a jump in the minimum frame rates:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] mark-560ti
Dry
I completed this game in 4.5 hours. I gotta say, having great graphics does NOT make a good game. It's sad when all you have to attract customers is "Best Graphics in a Game Yet". BUYBUYBUY. Don't even get me started on the absolutely terrible multiplayer...
Wheres the gtx 680?
The only thing this game has going for it are the graphics. I beat the game in under 6 hours. The story was simply tossed in the gutter. They should have stuck with fighting the Koreans instead of introducing Aliens.
toms, your method of monitoring frame times must be screwed up, the cards vary wildly and at some point the lowly gtx 650ti was showing an unbelievably good score, even better than the gtx 670. There is something wrong with your testing method. I have also noticed the same thing in previous benchmarks where you measured frame time, not consistent results. Please look into this.
The only thing this game has going for it are the graphics. I beat the game in under 6 hours. The story was simply tossed in the gutter. They should have stuck with fighting the Koreans instead of introducing Aliens.
While its no where near to Crysis 1, I don't understand the hate for C2/C3's campaign. I thought it was amazing, good fun, while crysis was just too serious. I loved jumping around in c2, sliding through hallways, spamming my shotgun.
I do think that C2 and C3 shouldn't be C2 and C3, if you know what I mean, like it should be called something different, not in the same Crysis franchise.
Wonder if theres tessellation under the ocean in this one to.
toms, your method of monitoring frame times must be screwed up, the cards vary wildly and at some point the lowly gtx 650ti was showing an unbelievably good score, even better than the gtx 670. There is something wrong with your testing method. I have also noticed the same thing in previous benchmarks where you measured frame time, not consistent results. Please look into this.
The method is fine, but the graphics load has a lot to do with the results. It's not cut and dry.
Were writing an article around it this month, it should explain a lot.
Wheres the gtx 680?
In the high detail and triple-monitor benchmarks
Cool article but every time I see an "ultra-mega-(insert specific game here)-gpu-performance-showdown" type article I can't help but feel that they are always lacking in comparison to older cards. It'd be nice if there were at least a few last gen cards tossed in for reference. Not everyone decided to upgrade from their HD 6970s or GTX 580s.
there was something more into fx8350's 'higher' performance after all. proof that average fps don't tell the full story.
i hope crytek can fix this with an update.
i can totally see this game becoming a benchmark staple very soon.
The first graphics benching AA with GTX670???? Whats up with that?
How can the minimum FPS be 30FPS but the average is 24 FPS?
And its a little odd that the min FPS is so close across the the board... Explain?
I wanted to see if the hd 7870 or a 2gb 7850 would be able to support 5760x1080 on low settings.
Just like Crysis 1 and 2, I still don't care. I play TF2, Skyrim, and any other game that isn't brand new because I refuse to pay $60 for a game that I can't return to the store and I don't have time to play all the titles out there I want to anyway. Anyone who has to jump on the latest and greatest bandwagon doesn't understand what "good gameplay" is.