Crysis v1.21 Very High Quality
Even with very high image quality settings, the power of the overclocked quad-core CPU is nicely transferred into 3D performance. The GeForce 9800 GX2 without anti-aliasing cannot be slowed down, but with activated anti-aliasing, the frame rate starts dropping significantly at 1680x1050 because of the 2 x512 MB graphics memory. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512 also shows obvious memory problems at a resolution of 1920x1200 with AA turned on.
With the AMD cards, you can also see a difference between 512 MB and 1 GB of graphics memory. The Radeon HD 4870 in CrossFire shows 6 fps lower performance at 1920x1200 with anti-aliasing than the better-equipped Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has 2 x 1 GB. The Radeon HD 4850 reaches its limit at 1920x1200 with anti-aliasing and overclocking the quad-core CPU (QX@3.67) provides no improvement.
Driver Comparison: Catalyst 8.9 Versus Catalyst 8.10 w/ Radeon HD 4870 X2
In the very high quality setting mode, the results are also within measurement error limits. This is somewhat unusual; Crysis usually shows more variation when using new drivers given that it’s a very graphics-heavy game.
| Crysis Very High in fps | 12800xAA | 16800xAA | 19200xAA | 12804xAA | 16804xAA | 19204xAA | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HD 4870 X2 8.10 QX@3.67 | 29.4 | 26.3 | 25.7 | 27.4 | 24.4 | 23.8 | 157.0 |
| HD 4870 X2 8.9 QX@3.67 | 29.4 | 26.6 | 26.2 | 27.2 | 24.5 | 23.8 | 157.7 |
| Performance difference in percent | 0.0 | -1.1 | -1.9 | 0.7 | -0.4 | 0.0 | -0.4 |