Crysis Warhead performance in-depth

Julio Franco

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,097   +2,048
Staff member
Roughly this time last year Crytek released the highly anticipated first-person shooter Crysis exclusively for the PC. Since then the game has been used as the prime benchmark for high-end graphics cards, with only a handful of them being able to conquer the title, delivering great frame rates using high quality settings.

In the meantime, Crytek has been working hard on a successor of the title called “Crysis Warhead”. This new version of the game updates and refines the gameplay through a parallel story that follows Sergeant Michael "Psycho" Sykes. Crysis Warhead features new fully customizable weapons, vehicles, and enemies, along with new multiplayer content.

Our take on this article will be all about hardware performance considering it is based on an enhanced version of the CryEngine 2. Crytek claims this optimized version allows for enhanced performance. And so today we plan to find out exactly how Crysis Warhead performs using a range of previous and current generation graphics cards.

https://www.techspot.com/article/118-crysis-warhead-performance/

Please leave your feedback here. Thanks!
 
Terrific GPU round-up, as always!

But Far Cry 2 is NOT using the CryEngine 2! it's using the Dunia Engine, which is proprietary to Ubisoft
Far Cry 2 wikipedia link

PS: would have been nice to include Crysis v1.2.1 benchmarks as well just to see if there truly is any performance improvement over Crysis
 
Crysis Warhead only uses 256VRM until you recreate a the autoexec.cfg file (or system.cfg file, the difference is one loads during engine load (system) and the other one afterwards) in the game folder in the main crysis warhead folder, then add this to it after deleting all the information in the autoexec.cfg (open with notepad)...

con_restricted=0
sys_budget_videomem = 512
r_TexturesStreaming=0

You should get a noticeable difference in the fps, the vram can go higher depending on your video card and resolution but only makes a difference at higher resolutions.

Also all the crysis graphics configs work in warhead, so you can make gamer settings look like enthusiast settings with little to no performance loss.
 
rezakon said:
Also all the crysis graphics configs work in warhead, so you can make gamer settings look like enthusiast settings with little to no performance loss.
Click to expand...

You have to ask yourself why the developer doesn't do this?
 
Greetings,

I must say that I got higher fps than quoted here. My system is tweaked out like any nutty "enthusiast" would do.
Vista requires some TLC to get working right and this might impact FPS.
I have an Intel 9650 running at stock 3ghz and a 4870x2 also at stock. FPS never went below 15 at worse. Most of the time i was around 30+
Oh yeah, running Enthusiast at 1920x1200, like a mad man.
And yes my room temp went up, but no problem, thats why windows (the household type) were invented, and its Fall, free air cooling!!

Yours in HD Plasma,
Star*Dagger
 
Captain828 said:
But Far Cry 2 is NOT using the CryEngine 2! it's using the Dunia Engine, which is proprietary to Ubisoft
Click to expand...

We also received a few emails on this, Thank you for the much needed correction!

As stated on the article's conclusion now:

Update: We had wrongfully stated that Far Cry 2 uses the CryEngine 2, when in reality it uses its own custom engine called "Dunia" developed from the ground up for this title. Terrible mistake for a Far Cry fan like myself, but that's the kind of thing that happens when you edit until it's 8am in the morning. Thanks everyone for your emails.
 
heh, no prob... try getting some sleep before big round-ups

I have to admit that I'm really curious to see how Far Cry 2 will pan out
 
[-Steve-] said:
You have to ask yourself why the developer doesn't do this?
Click to expand...
Because the modding community are better at making games run much better then the developers themselves, its not just crysis this happens with but many titles.

Most developers will typically get a game playable and stable but not optimized properly these days, they can do these kinds of things post-release now days that it doesn't matter to them if they ship with these kinds of problems.

Its all money to them in the end, the quicker they can turn a profit the better for them.

Its not really like most gamers care in the pc environment cause we tweak the heck out of our platforms and then the software on it.
 
Crysis Warhead only uses 256VRM until you recreate a the autoexec.cfg file (or system.cfg file, the difference is one loads during engine load (system) and the other one afterwards) in the game folder in the main crysis warhead folder, then add this to it after deleting all the information in the autoexec.cfg (open with notepad)...

con_restricted=0
sys_budget_videomem = 512
r_TexturesStreaming=0
Click to expand...


Does this work on crysis too? I just saw what i missed out on with my 9600gt in those screen shots O.o.


Does anyone know if it will be for any console? My friend said it would be on xbox but i highly doubt that.
 
hellokitty[hk] said:
Does anyone know if it will be for any console? My friend said it would be on xbox but i highly doubt that.
Click to expand...

No, not Warhead. Crytek have said that Warhead will be their last PC exclusive game depending on how well the sales go. They have stated that they want to make multi-platform games in the future, but what game and what platforms hasn't been said. Crysis was originally said to be a Trilogy and so Far we have only had the first part of the trilogy so maybe the second and third installments will be multi-platform.

Anyway, does anybody know if there are any (significant) differences in performance when running 32bit vs 64bit OS's?
 
I really don't think there is much of a difference between 32 bit and 64 bit. Aside from memory capacity. Also, i heard something about crysis wars on steam, however, i might be confusing myself with halo wars...
I kinda think that crysis will be unable to run on xbox, and even playstation3.

Crytek said that "Crysis Wars" was a standalone multiplayer game with many new enhancements to the original multiplayer of Crysis
Click to expand...
 
hellokitty[hk] said:
Does this work on crysis too? I just saw what i missed out on with my 9600gt in those screen shots O.o.


Does anyone know if it will be for any console? My friend said it would be on xbox but i highly doubt that.
Click to expand...
Yeah it works on crysis as well.

All the modified configs work in both.
 
Crysis Warhead only uses 256VRM until you recreate a the autoexec.cfg file (or system.cfg file, the difference is one loads during engine load (system) and the other one afterwards) in the game folder in the main crysis warhead folder, then add this to it after deleting all the information in the autoexec.cfg (open with notepad)...

con_restricted=0
sys_budget_videomem = 512
r_TexturesStreaming=0
Click to expand...

alright, were is the file? i can't find it O.o.
 
rezakon said:
con_restricted=0
sys_budget_videomem = 512
r_TexturesStreaming=0

You should get a noticeable difference in the fps, the vram can go higher depending on your video card and resolution but only makes a difference at higher resolutions.

.
Click to expand...

When you say the vram can go higher, should I change the above line to be 1024 for the 4870x2?

Also, can you explain exactly what these settings do?

Thanks

Yours in Tweaking Plasma,
Star*Dagger
 
Star*Dagger said:
When you say the vram can go higher, should I change the above line to be 1024 for the 4870x2?

Also, can you explain exactly what these settings do?

Thanks

Yours in Tweaking Plasma,
Star*Dagger
Click to expand...
First Line Unrestricts the Limit.
Second Line Is the Vram Limit, The Amount of Vram the Game is Allowed to Use.
Third Line Disables Constant Streaming (its buggy).

And yes if you use crossfire or sli you can set the things higher, but only if your using resolutions above 1400x900, otherwise keep it at 512 cause you will get limit to no difference in the fps, above that max it.

I run 1600x1024 with two 4870 in crossfire, I've gotten a very nice increase using this little trick, the streaming disable trick helps a heck of a lot.
 
Thanks man.

I run at 1920x1200 on a 26" Samsung.

Now i am wondering whether or not 2048 is not the right setting for my card, ill experiment

S*D
 
Well, I tried the autoexec.cfg tweak - it just made the game run much worse, dropping the fps by around 75% (at that spot):

 
my FPS droped to 1 :/. I found out i had to kill some of the many applications that eat my tiny little 2048mbs of ram. Then, i noticed no real increase, not at high and 800 x 600 resolution. Havn't tried any higher resolution. And i need to get warhead installed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

N
Crysis Remastered Trilogy is coming to PC and consoles this fall
Replies
5
Views
1K
bravesgood
B
Daniel Sims
Intel confirms plans to release Battlemage GPUs in 2024
Replies
12
Views
447
yRaz
yRaz
Daniel Sims
AMD latest beta driver dramatically improves Alan Wake 2 ray tracing performance
Replies
5
Views
248
Mr Majestyk
M

Latest posts

Back