Game Performance Tests

Crysis Warhead DX10

As in last year's game, expect to encounter dense jungle environments, barren ice fields, Korean soldiers and plenty of flying aliens. There's no denying that this is more of the same, except here it's a more tightly woven experience with a little less freedom to explore.
With a top-end PC (although Warhead has supposedly benefited from an improved game engine, you'll still need a fairly beefy system) rest assured, developer Crytek has enhanced more than just the graphics engine.

Vehicles are more fun to drive, firefights are more intense and focused, and aliens do more than just float around you. More emphasis on the open-ended environments would have been welcome, but a more exciting (though shorter) campaign, a new multiplayer mode, and a whole bunch of new maps make Crysis Warhead an excellent expansion to one of last year's best shooters.

Crysis Warhead has good looks. As mentioned before, the game looks better than Crysis, and it runs better too. Our test machine that struggled a bit to run the original at high settings ran Warhead smoothly with the same settings. Yet as much as you may have heard about Crysis' technical prowess, you'll still be impressed when you feast your eyes on the swaying vegetation, surging water, and expressive animations. Outstanding graphics. Couldn't say more here.

Crysis , we are enabling DX10 and 2xAA, a very common gaming mode. We should be able to see some small performance differences with the selected memory kits. Testing games with different types of memory is however always a challenge.

• Level Ambush
• Codepath DX10
• Anti-Aliasing 2x MSAA
• In game Quality mode Gamer

This is the harsh reality of Core i7 and it's muscular memory controller. Memory bandwidth is not really an issue, Only if you look at 1024x768 you'll be able to measure performance. The most extreme we notice is that memory at 1333 MHz delivered 5-6 FPS on average less than a high-end 2000/2133 MHz kit.

Now for those that say .. hey man .. what about a GPU bottleneck .. guys we used a GeForce GTX 295 here. But let's try out another game.

Far Cry 2

Throw your memory back to the year 2004 and the release of the innovative Far Cry on PC. Developer Crytek managed to fashion one of the most convincing and striking locales in all of gaming, and satisfied gamers with the freedom to pass through the landscape and tackle enemies in almost any way they saw fit. You surely remember Jack Carver and that things were about to get seriously messed up for you? Well, tough luck. You are no longer at that deserted tropical island but hop into a jeep and arrive at the sandy savannah surroundings of Africa. And that's a change... as much as you'll no longer run into any mutants, aliens, or any superpowers or psychic powers. Also - you are no longer Jack Carver, you assume the role of one of nine different mercenaries who are embedded in the midst of a brutal civil war which rages in an imaginary African nation.
Everything that goes down is involved in a dirty little bush war in central Africa and you'll have to use a rusty AK-47 and whatever bits of scavenged land mine you can duct-tape together. Two factions struggle for supremacy: the United Front for Liberation and Labor and the Alliance for Popular Resistance, and both are known for blood and control.

Far Cry 2 has a built in benchmark which can measure extremely precise, if configured well. We are in high-quality DX10 mode with 2xAA

Now as you can see there's a little more performance for the fastest kits, the G.Skill kit is definitely leading at that frequency. But once we go all the way back to 10x7 we see a 10 FPS difference in-between 1333 and 2133 MHz, which is less than 10% difference. At 12x10 that difference is already halved.

So please understand, it is very hard for me to recommend you to purchase the most expensive memory kits. See, this fairly consistent performance you guys have to thank to Core i7 and the new memory controller. Fact is that anyone buying a high-end PC like this .. will not play it's games below 1600x1200, in our believe.