GeForce GTX 680 3-way SLI review

DX11: Crysis 2 - High Res Textures

Crysis 2 then. With the recent DirectX 11 patch and that High Resolution Texture pack (download) we all know one thing, Crysis has become the best looking game to date. DirectX 11 hardware tessellation is the headline feature, but the Ultra Upgrade also introduces soft shadows with variable penumbra, improved water rendering, and particle motion blur and shadowing. Having been originally omitted from CryEngine 3, Parallax Occlusion Mapping has been reintroduced, as has full-resolution High Dynamic Range motion blur, making the game’s use of camera panning more detailed and defined. To improve performance further, hardware-based Occlusion Culling has been implemented, resulting in performance improvements from objects and scenery out of view not being rendered.

The test run applied is stringent, harsh and really only suited for high-end DX 11 class graphics cards of 2011 and 2012.

Crysis 2; we apply everything. Image quality settings:

• DirectX 11
• High Resolution Texture Pack
• Ultra Quality settings
• 4x AA
• Level: Times Square (2 minute custom time demo)

For Crysis 2 I do not have the 7950 Crossfire results available, we had issues at the time running the benchmark. I did track down the 7970 CFX x2 results though, so that will be a good indicator to compare with 2-way SLI a little.

Crysis 2 is highly GPU dependant, and that makes it scale really good. At that generic and most used 1920x1200 monitor resolution however, not so much:

And here's a comparative chart, though 2560x1600 scales like a beast, the results at 1920x1200 are... meh. Now you'd think that would be CPU limitation but:

There, the platform difference does give it a tiny bit of a boost, albeit very little.