![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , October 13, 2008
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
Crysis: Warhead Gameplay Perf and IQ
The follow-up to Crysis has arrived, along with its promise of much-needed improved graphical performance. We'll tell you if it really is better optimized, and just what kind of performance you can get out of the four best video cards you can buy today.
Performance – Highest Playable
For our gameplay performance evaluation, we chose the "From Hell's Heart" scenario, more commonly known as the “Train level.” In this level, the player rides a train through various combat scenarios for several minutes, with a few minutes of on-foot FPS action in the middle. The trip features a great deal of combat, explosions, environment changes, explosions, various vehicles, enemy soldiers, and even some explosions. Just like Crysis, there is an autosave feature which temporarily grinds the rendering engine to a halt, producing sharp, unavoidable downward spikes on every video card we tested. These hitching moments are captured and visible on all of the graphs below.
Graphics Options
The advanced graphics options in [I]Crysis: Warhead[/I] are virtually identical to the options in the original Crysis. The primary difference is that the options have been renamed from Low, Medium, High, and Very High, to Minimum, Mainstream, Gamer, and Enthusiast. This change was likely made to help people quickly find the most appropriate settings for the class of their video cards. We'll see how accurate Crytek's assessment of these settings are. The big wildcard, of course, is the resolution.
In any case, even though values for Warhead's graphics options have new names, they do the same thing. We will describe what we feel are the most critical features for the gameplay experience. For an in-depth analysis and guide to these settings, please see Koroush Ghazi's original Crysis tweak guide. Conveniently enough, the most important features for getting a great gameplay experience out of Warhead are all on the left side of the Advanced Options section.
Texture Quality
First on the list is Texture Quality. Nobody likes blurry textures, especially when viewed up close when hiding for cover behind a wall, or a barrel, or a crate, or whatever else. Setting this option as high as your graphics card will tolerate will give you sharper textures and therefore more realistic looking objects.
Objects Quality
Then there is Objects Quality. Objects Quality determines the complexity of the meshes used for static and dynamic objects, as well as the distance at which less-detailed versions of those meshes are used. Using a higher setting here will create objects on the screen with more detail, and they will retain that detail further into the distance.
Shadow Quality
Shadow Quality can make a huge difference. Not only does it alter the accuracy of the dynamic shadows cast by objects, it also determines the smoothness of those shadows and the depth at which the shadows are no longer processed. With Shadow Quality at Minimum, dynamic shadows are disabled altogether, and the shadows revert to vertex shaders, which produces a very flat and unnatural image. Increasing this setting will give you shadows that more closely match the casting object, and it will give you shadows from objects such as buildings and trees at greater distances.
Physics Quality
The next option, Physics Quality, makes the least difference of our most important settings. That is, until you go lower than the Mainstream. Below mainstream, the physics system is essentially disabled. Buildings and trees can no longer be destroyed and torn apart. They remain as solid as a rock, even if you detonate every brick of plastic explosives you can find on them. Higher settings have a subtle effect, such as generating more shrapnel and particles, but since explosions and firefights are so dynamic and transient, the actual visual difference is quite difficult to spot.
Shaders Quality
The last option we're going to discuss here is the Shaders Quality option. This option is very important, and the difference between the Mainstream and Gamer setting is huge. We'll go into more detail and show you some examples in the image quality section in this article. The Shader Quality option affects almost every surface. It improves lighting, shadows, contrast, and many other things.
Highest Playable Settings at 2560x1600
At 2560x1600, none of these video cards performed the way we would have liked to see. Rather than use these low settings, we would rather just lower the resolution to 1920x1200 and get a far better experience. At 2560x1600, there is little to no difference between the performance on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. In addition, there is also very little difference between the GeForce GTX 260 and the Radeon HD 4870. The Radeon HD 4870 may at first appear to be slightly faster, but the game's settings could not be increased without losing playability, so the slightly faster average framerates still could not provide us with a better gameplay experience than the GeForce GTX 260.
None of these video cards allowed us to use Mainstream or higher Shadow Quality. We had to use the Minimum Shadow Quality setting. That, unfortunately, makes this game look 10 years older. In fact, performance with even just Mainstream Shadow Quality was so poor that literally every other setting had to be severely lowered and some features, like motion blur, disabled even on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and the GeForce GTX 280.
The bottom line here is, if you want to play [I]Crysis: Warhead[/I] at 2560x1600, none of these video cards alone will be sufficient to provide an enjoyable gameplay experience.
Highest Playable Settings at 1920x1200
At 1920x1200, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 offered us the same exact gameplay experience, with the GTX 280 averaging slightly higher framerates at the end of the test. We were able to use the Gamer setting for every available option at 1920x1200, which produces a very enjoyable, high quality experience.
But lower down on the totem pole, there are divisions. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 simply outclassed the Radeon HD 4870 at 1920x1200, allowing us to use the Gamer Water Quality and Gamer Texture Quality settings, whereas the HD 4870 required that we lower those settings to Mainstream. This may be due to the higher local video memory capacity on the GeForce GTX 260. Users with the relatively new Radeon HD 4870s with a 1GB framebuffer may have better luck.
Compared to Crysis, Warhead performs identically on the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 at 1920x1200. On the other hand, it is slightly faster on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280. Or initial encounter with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 was with a factory overclocked video card, and even then we had to lower the Objects Quality setting to Medium. This GeForce GTX 280 is running at reference speeds, and allowed us to use the Gamer (or High) Object Quality setting.
Meanwhile, the GeForce GTX 260 came out of the fray with lower playable settings in Crysis: Warhead than what we experienced with Crysis. So did the ATI Radeon HD 4870. For the GeForce GTX 260, we had to use a lower Physics setting (down to Mainstream/Medium from Gamer/High) in Warhead. But for the Radeon HD 4870 X2, we had to lower Texture Quality, Physics Quality and Water Quality, all from High/Gamer to Mainstream/Medium.
Considering that Crysis: Warhead (and indeed the original Crysis) is a "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" title, we are not exactly surprised to see that performance is better optimized for NVIDIA hardware than for AMD hardware, but that is not always the way things turn out.
Highest Playable Settings at 1680x1050
At 1680x1050, the GeForce GTX 280 took a lead over the Radeon HD 4870 X2, allowing us to increase the textures, physics, and shader settings to Enthusiast while delivering slightly higher framerates than the HD 4870 X2. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 was certainly no slouch. It enabled us to use Enthusiast level textures and physics, and the Gamer setting on everything else.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 gave us a palpably better experience in Crysis: Warhead at 1680x1050 than the ATI Radeon HD 4870. It allowed us to use a higher Object Quality setting and a higher Shadow Quality setting. The Object Quality option set to Gamer reduces the popup effect that the game exhibits when you move throughout the world, and new objects suddenly come into view. With the setting at Mainstream, such as on the ATI Radeon HD 4870, the view distance for some types of objects is a bit shorter than when the setting is at Gamer, such as on the GeForce GTX 260. Of course, we could have lowered the texture and physics options from Enthusiast to Gamer on the Radeon HD 4870, but we would still have been in the same boat. We would only have been trading one set of gameplay advantages for another.