Crysis is seen by many as the poster boy for DirectX 10 and it will make your system cry, quite literally – it’s a monster! It doesn’t come as much of a surprise then, that the graphics are something special – they’re above and beyond anything we’ve ever seen in a PC game.
We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under DirectX 10 mode with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom timedemo recorded from the Laws of Nature level which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game. We found that around 27-33 fps in our custom timedemo was sufficient enough to obtain a playable frame rate through the game. It's a little different to other games in that the low frame rates still appear to be quite smooth.
We set all of the in-game details to High and forced 8x anisotropic filtering in the driver menu as there is currently no support for it in game. We tested at 1,280 x 1,024, using 0x, 2x and 4x anti-aliasing, 1,680 x 1,050 using 0x and 4xAA, 1,920 x 1,200 using 0x and 2xAA and 2,560 x 1,600 with 0xAA and 2xAA. By extensively testing using anti-aliasing in very high resolutions in conjunction to Very High quality, we'll be pushing even the bleeding edge hardware on test to the limit.
Crysis
1,280 x 1,024 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
59.5
34.0
56.7
33.0
52.6
31.0
51.1
28.0
44.9
24.0
44.9
24.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
1,280 x 1,024 4xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
53.1
29.0
49.2
29.0
45.4
27.0
42.4
22.0
38.1
19.0
38.1
19.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
1,680 x 1,050 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
51.4
30.0
46.4
29.0
43.4
26.0
41.3
23.0
36.3
20.0
36.3
20.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
1,680 x 1,050 4xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
44.0
25.0
39.7
24.0
36.9
23.0
34.5
19.0
31.0
17.0
31.0
17.0
0
10
20
30
40
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
1,920 x 1,200 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
47.0
28.0
38.4
23.0
37.0
21.0
36.0
22.0
32.6
19.0
32.6
19.0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
1,920 x 1,200 2xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
44.1
27.0
35.0
21.0
34.0
20.0
32.1
20.0
30.3
18.0
30.3
18.0
0
10
20
30
40
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
2,560 x 1,600 0xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
30.1
17.0
23.1
13.0
22.2
12.0
22.1
12.0
19.6
10.0
19.6
10.0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
Crysis
2,560 x 1,600 2xAA 16xAF, DirectX 10, High Quality
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Atomic
Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Radeon HD 4890 1GB
27.9
15.0
20.9
11.0
20.5
11.0
19.3
10.0
18.2
10.0
18.2
10.0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Frames Per Second
Average
Minimum
As the Asus Radeon HD 4890 is a stock clocked card out of the box, it performs identically to any other reference HD 4890. In Crysis though the GTX 275 has the edge, and is consistently much faster than ATI's HD 4890.