Benchmarks: Crysis, Crysis Warhead
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter developed by German video game developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. Crysis is the first game of a planned trilogy. It was released on November 2007. The game is based on the CryEngine 2 game engine and is known to be extremely demanding on graphics processors.
Crysis and budget graphics cards have never really gone together. In fact, the same can be said about mid-range graphics cards. However, if you lower the visual quality settings as we have, it is possible to get some decent numbers for smooth gameplay. For example, when using medium quality settings the GeForce 9800 GTX+ rendered 61fps at 1920x1200, followed by the Radeon HD 4850 with 49fps.
The GeForce 9800 GT and Radeon HD 4830 were also quite impressive with frame rates above 40fps. The Radeon HD 4670 averaged 32fps which might get you by in the single-player mode, but it will be no good when getting stuck into some multiplayer action. Going back to 1440x900 gets the Radeon HD 4670 performance up to 46fps, though it is not enough to see playable performance from the Radeon HD 4650, 2600XT, or GeForce 8600 GTS/GT, and 9500 GT.
Crysis Warhead Benchmarks
Crysis Warhead is a standalone expansion to the original Crysis. The game was released last September. This game updates and refines the gameplay of the original game though it's still based on the CryEngine 2 game engine.
The Crysis Warhead results drop even lower. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is limited to 51fps at 1920x1200, while the GeForce 9800 GT competes hand in hand for the second spot with the Radeon HD 4850 across the different tested resolutions.
The GeForce 9600 GT performance was borderline playable with an average of 34fps. Again going back to 1440x900 was not enough to get playable performance out of the Radeon HD 4650 and the other four graphics cards under it.