Crysis Warhead

The long awaited successor of Crysis finally left beta stage a few months ago, it features a tweaked and updated Cry Engine 2 which promises better visuals and lower system requirements.



We used this Crysis Warhead benchmark tool which enables you to play back a gameplay demo; we used the included Frost, Ambush and Avalanche timedemos.



Crysis Warhead does away with the low/medium/high/very high quality settings, instead you now have Minimum/Mainstream/Gamer/Enthusiast. Minimum is low quality of Crysis, Mainstream is Medium Quality, Gamer is High Quality while Enthusiast is the Very High quality setting of Crysis. With this mid-range video cards we stuck to the Mainstream and Gamer quality setting, the Enthusiast setting gave us unplayable frame rates, even at 1600x1200 without AA.

First up Frost timedemo under DX10:



Under DX10 at 1600x1200 the Gamer setting proved unplayable, the Mainstream Quality setting was better. GTX+ overall 13% faster.

Better stick to DX9 though:



Smaller advantage for the Sparkle, Gamer setting remains unplayable. This doesn’t bode well for the claim of “lower system requirements” for Crysis Warhead…



The Ambush level is slightly less heavy for our GPUs, the Sparkle takes a noticeable ~25% lead, although again at Gamer quality setting the min. FPS drop below smooth.



Avalanche is the third and heaviest level, min FPS go lowest here, at Gamer Quality setting you’ll definitely notice this drops. Overall the GTX+ is only ~10% faster here.