Benchmark Results: Crysis (DirectX 10)

Crysis is perhaps the closest thing to a synthetic in our real-world suite. After all, it’s two and a half years old. Nevertheless, it’s still one of the most demanding titles we can bring to bear against a modern graphics subsystem. Optimized for DirectX 10, older cards like ATI’s Radeon HD 4870 X2 are still capable of putting up a fight in Crysis.

It should come as no shock that the Radeon HD 5970 clinches a first-place finish in all three resolutions. All three of the Radeon HD 5000-series boards we’re testing demonstrate modest performance hits with anti-aliasing applied, with the exception of the dual-GPU 5970 at 2560x1600, which falls off rapidly.

Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 480 starts off strong, roughly matching the performance of the company’s GeForce GTX 295, but is slowly passed by the previous-gen flagship. Throughout testing, the GTX 480 does maintain better anti-aliased performance, though. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 470 is generally outperformed by the Radeon HD 5850, winning only at 2560x1600 with AA applied (though it’s an unplayable configuration, anyway)

Overall, the Radeons show the strongest in Crysis.