$1000 PC OC Performance: Crysis, Prey
Crysis responds well to the increased CPU speed, and is playable at a full 1920x1200 resolution at mid-level settings. While the overclocking gains are noteworthy, even more impressive is that the current system was fully playable at stock speeds, while the March build couldn’t handle the game even when overclocked.
At higher visual settings, Crysis is barely playable at 1024x768 even with the $1,000 build fully overclocked, while the former build’s gameplay looks like a slide show.
Prey appears CPU bound at default settings, but is still extremely playable.
Turning up the details in Prey reveals that our current build had been CPU bound at stock speeds, opening up to graphics card limitations once the CPU performance deficit is diminished. Note that Prey benchmark results are typically inconsistent enough that differences of less than three frames per second should be ignored.