Let's assume for a second that anyone reading this article owns a copy of Crysis or has at least played the game. Then you should all know how potentially good the game is and how impressive its visuals can be with the proper hardware. Then again, since its release last November it's been a minority of players that have been able to play the game from beginning to end in all its visual glory.

Most gamers using high-end rigs have been forced to use a combination of medium and high quality settings, which until this game arrived was quite uncommon. Going by forum postings and sound offs around the community, there is a large group of PC gamers that immediately planned on upgrades just because Crysis' graphics could well deserve the extra cost - not to mention newer GeForce and Radeon models brought high-end performance to the mainstream price range.

And while we agree the game looks incredible, the hardware requirements to play it are not only extreme, but somewhat unavailable at this point in time. Even those fat cats amongst us running SLI GeForce 8800 Ultras cannot escape the jittery gameplay that Crysis can become. In fact, what has happened is that SLI and Crossfire configurations can actually be slower than using a single graphics card.

Just last week Crytek released a highly awaited first patch for Crysis which weighed in at 139MB and carried a number of rather large promises. While it was claimed that SLI/Crossfire performance would improve with this patch as well as the overall rendering performance for all graphics cards in DX9 and DX10, they never stated by how much, so they did dodge a bullet there. Although most of you will have finished the single-player campaign by now, there is a large number of gamers enjoying Crysis multiplayer action.

So for these gamers the thought of improved rendering performance is very appealing, I am sure. Furthermore those that have dished out the big bucks for Crossfire and SLI configurations would be mighty keen by now to test them out in Crysis. So now without keeping you in suspense any longer let’s see what this 1.1 patch has brought to the table...

Test System Specs

Hardware

- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3.00GHz) LGA775

- x2 Corsair DOMINATOR Twin3X2048-1800C7DF G Module(s)

- ASUS P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38)

- ASUS Striker II Formula (NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI)

- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)

- Seagate 500GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

- GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB)

- GeForce 8800 GT (512MB)

- GeForce 8800 GT (512MB) SLI

- Radeon HD 2900XT (512MB)

- Radeon HD 3870 (512MB)

- Radeon HD 3870 (512MB) Crossfire

Software

- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)

- Intel System Drivers 8.4.0.1016

- nForce 9.46

- Nvidia Forceware 169.28

- ATI Catalyst 7.12