Benchmark Results: Crysis
This is our chance to try out the new SBM game benchmarking suite. Of course, Crysis remains a staple of our tests because it’s still one of the toughest games to run:
At High settings, it surprises us how much of an impact the CPU overclock has made. The graphics card clock speeds haven’t changed much, yet at 1680x1050, the CPU boost resulted in a 13 frames per second (FPS) increase. At 1920x1200, the CPU advantage is reduced to about 5 FPS.
In any case, we can see that this system is very capable of high-detail Crisis play at 1920x1200, even at stock speeds. This is great news. Let’s see if this remains the case when detail levels are cranked to the maximum Very High Detail.
Raising the visual-quality settings from High to Very High has a notable impact on the resulting frame rates as the load is shifted heavily towards the graphics subsystem. At 1680x1050 and above, the CPU overclock does practically nothing. Still, at 40 FPS, even 1920x1200 is on the verge of playable.
When Crysis was released, PCs could not play it smoothly at the maximum Very High detail setting, so this is a positive reflection on our $1,300 system.
Now for our second first-person shooter, Far Cry 2.
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I wonder why this system builder marathon was limited to Micro-ATX cases. Is there a general trend towards these things or what? I'm looking to build a whole new system soon and I can't see any reason to go Micro-ATX.
I don’t think it’s a trend, think of it as more of a challenge. Some people don’t want to have a giant full/mid tower sitting next to them.
Right, I don't mind that at all, so I'll stick to a normal case when assembling my next system. Thanks!
Nice challenge but what's the point when the system dies a couple of months down the line due to shorten life span of all components as a result of high temps. Then you spend another $1300?
I can't remember if it was this or one of the other SBM articles this month, but they mentioned something about these PCs being LAN boxes - if so heat is going to be even more of an issue (much higher ambient temps, cases right next to each other) so this system would be pretty unviable.
I know that my PC runs as much as 10 degress hotter in that environment - if it's in the low 90s on the CPU and at the limit of GPU stability already, another ten degrees will see it constantly throttling, making errors or shutting down.
Assuming that we were building a full ATX system, what would have been the motherboard of choice for this PC?
Can I also remind everyone that these articles are irrelevent on this side of the Atlantic? Intel and nVidia prices in particular are far, FAR lower in the US - such a system would be over 30% more over here! SLI GTX260 for £200 my arse!