Crysis 3 Performance, Benchmarked On 16 Graphics Cards

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Crysis 3 boasts amazing graphics quality, and is based on an engine that takes the strongest PCs to their knees. Is it playable on low-end hardware? Can we run this one at its highest detail levels on today's graphics cards? Our benchmarks tell the story.

High-Detail Benchmarks

We're skipping over the Medium detail preset and going straight to High. In addition, we're enabling the Lens Flares option and setting Motion Blur to Low, with 8x AF and 2x SMAA added to the mix for texture filtering and anti-aliasing.

At 1680x1050 with these detail settings, the Radeon HD 7770 is too slow for playable performance, and the GeForce GTX 650 Ti barely averages more than 30 FPS. The rest of the cards manage the load much better, achieving at least 30 FPS minimums and averages in excess of 40 FPS.

For one reason or another, the Radeon HD 7950 with Boost is able to achieve a higher minimum frame rate than the rest of the cards.

A look at the frame rates over time shows how those average and minimum frame rates came to be. It's nice to see that the GeForce GTX 650 Ti remains above 30 FPS for the majority of this demanding benchmark.

Frame time variance is acceptable across the board. It's interesting to note that the GeForce GTX 670 incurs a higher average variance than most of the other cards.

Surprisingly, the higher resolution doesn't affect our results all that much. The GeForce GTX 650 Ti gets pushed slightly below 30 FPS, but the rest of the cards remain playable.

We've already seen the mysterious bottleneck that pulls performance down at the end of our run to 33 FPS or so, so we don't really learn anything new from the frame rate over time chart.

The frame time variance remains below 20 ms at this setting.

Don Woligroski
139 Comments Comment from the forums
  • will1220
    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?????????
    Reply
  • stickmansam
    Still feel that the game is unduly harsh for what it displays

    Also hope AMD comes out with better drivers soon
    Reply
  • johnsonjohnson
    Right on time. I kinda suspect the i3-3220 performance from Techspot was unusual..
    Reply
  • rawrrr151
    I thought i3 3220 was IB, not SB?
    Reply
  • hero1
    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!
    Reply
  • DryCreamer
    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/395367-33-crysis-benchmark-560ti

    Dry
    Reply
  • Immoral Medic
    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...
    Reply
  • aussiejunior
    Wheres the gtx 680?
    Reply
  • xpeh
    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.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    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.
    Reply