Crysis: Demo vs Full Version Performance
November 16, 2007 09:19
Quad-Core Utilization and Overclocking the Video
Since I was working with a quad-core machine I wanted to make sure that the game was utilizing all four cores. I did some performance monitor captures while running the CPU benchmark to see if each core was getting some action.
EDIT: When I originally published this article and looked at the graph of the processor performance capture my first impression was that Crysis was utilizing all four cores - which is true. Crysis is passing instructions to all four cores but not maximizing their ability to handle instructions concurrently. All four cores look busy in the graph but the reality of it is that they are basically operating as a single-core and taking turns. In it's current state Crysis does not take full advantage of multi-core processing. Thanks go out to the readers who pointed this out.
Processor performance capture during Crysis CPU Benchmark.
In a last ditch effort to wring out some more performance from my hardware I decided to try overclocking my video card a little. I did some testing with 3DMark06 and settled on a core clock speed of 621 MHz (up from 576 MHz), a shader clock speed of 1458 MHz (up from 1350 MHz) and a memory clock speed of 1000 MHz (up from 900 MHz). With those settings I was topping out at about 12,070 on 3DMark and increasing beyond those settings was causing the score to drop. Overclocking the video card resulted in a very slight increase in performance at my balance settings on 1280 x 1024 but, in my opinion, not enough to risk destabilizing the system or shortening the life of the component.
Overclocking the video card resulted in a slight increase but nothing you'd notice while playing.
So our fears were legitimate but I think we all knew it was going to be this way. The retail version of Crysis performs almost exactly the same as the single-player demo. It's good to know that you can install the demo and see how it runs before purchasing the final game. After all the tweaking and balancing hopefully you'll get to a point - much like I did - where you say, "ENOUGH! I want to PLAY!" and you can start enjoying the game. Sometimes we get so engrossed in performance that we forget to just play the game and I think that will be especially true with Crysis. My advice is to get your settings to a point where you're happy and then leave them alone until you beat the game.
Like with the demo all these tests were done on a single system for the sake of speed but we're in the process right now of putting Crysis through the full battery of tests on as many different hardware configurations as we can scrounge together. We're also still working on building the ultimate Crysis PC with your input so look for that as well as our complete review of Crysis in the near future.
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