HD3870, HD3850 review - Is RV670 the new mid-class DX 10?

Written by Димитър Динчев a.k.a. Veseliq

Tuesday, 05 February 2008

 

Page 5 - Crysis

There is hardly a thing that had not been said about this game, but let's summarize. This is a long awaited Crytek releace, sort of a heir of FarCry, which 3 years ago was dazzling with its graphics, making gamers with the top-notch video cards (GeForce 5900 / Radeon 9800 at that time) murmur about being unable to play at highest settings like they were used to. Their high-end systems just being unable to cope with the heavy engine.

In other words - Crysis was one of the MOST expected game of 2007. Ingame you assume the role of future Spec-ops soldier, equipped with the so called “Crysis Suit” - a suit giving you special skills and powers. Henceforth we'll be talking about graphics and scenery so real as if pulled out of a Hollywood blockbuster. The vast and incredibly detailed levels require a large amount of memory, so if you fancy enjoying some of the more special DX10 effects and higher resolution, high class video card, processor an lots of RAM are a must. And they ere... almost enough.

On the Internet you can easily find a tool named "Crysis Benchmark", but we had problems with it, resolutions to which we couldn't find - only bunch of people that had them too under Vista x64... So we had to use the integrated Benchmark tool, wasting much more time. We tested in DX10, 64bit mode, to get all we could from the system.

Not surprising, the game can't be played at these settings. The HD3850 model with 256MB have no chance with that amount of textures. Use of Medium/High settings is much wiser and leads to more pleasant game at a high frame rate , without losing too much of the game detailedness.