GeForce GTX 580 3-way SLI review - VGA performance: Crysis WARHEAD (DX10)

Crysis WARHEAD

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 that 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 Warhead then: we up the ante a little more by enabling DX10.

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

Above, single card and SLI scaling are impressive, but 3-way SLI not so much. Yep, that's clearly a CPU limitation once again.

And in the comparative performance chart, we can start to evaluate again. We are seeing very constant performance every time. Again, since three GPUs eat more CPU cycles than two, in a CPU bottlenecked situation that will give an advantage towards 2-way SLI.

There is however that hefty Enthusiast mode setting which no-one dares use, so here you go. 2xAA - DX10 Enthusiast quality setting enabled. Enthusiast mode is the absolute best image quality setting that can be enabled in Crysis, originally designed for future hardware and to date, spanking even the graphics cards released this year.

But only after 1920x1200 things start to show with 3-way SLI.