An Overview Of Test Platforms And Tested Game Scenes

Low-End PC 1

• Athlon 64 3200+ up to 3800+ (tested with an Athlon X64 3800+ (Venice core) with clock speeds ranging from 2.0 GHz up to 2.6 GHz)
• 1 GB DDR RAM
• Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3
• GeForce 8400 GS, GeForce 7800 GS (AGP), GeForce 8600 GT, Radeon HD 3650 (AGP)

We wanted to see if a system with merely average components would work for this game. That’s what led to the specifications for this particular PC. We underclocked and overclocked the CPU to simulate the full range of processors listed above. Our test system also let us use both PCI Express (PCIe) and AGP graphics cards, and gave us an opportunity to make some interesting comparisons.

Low-End PC 2

• Athlon 64 X2 3800+ up to 5000+ (tested with an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ from 2.0 GHz up to 2.6 GHz)
• 1 GB DDR RAM
• Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 3
• GeForce 8400 GS, GeForce 7800 GS (AGP), GeForce 8600 GT, Radeon HD 3650 (AGP), GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB

This PC barely offered the minimum system requirements for the game. Later, we overclocked this PC to 2.6 GHz and dropped in a GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB, so that we could also meet the vendor’s minimum-system requirements. The test results will reveal whether or not this actually did the trick.

Gaming PC 1

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 with two cores turned off (tested as a dual-core from 1.8 GHz up to 3.0 GHz)
• Asus P5K (P45 chipset)
• 4 GB A-Data Vitesta DDR2-800 RAM, CL4 Timings
• Windows Vista Ultimate x86 with Service Pack 1
• GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB, overclocked to 780 MHz GPU clock and 1,100 MHz memory clock

This configuration represents a wide spectrum of common gaming PCs, which are usually equipped with a fast dual-core CPU and a graphics card with performance like that of a GeForce 9800 GTX+ or a Radeon HD 4850. To keep the four-core CPU from influencing the test results, we turned two cores off.

Gaming PC 2

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 from 3.0 GHz up to 3.6 GHz
• Asus P5K (P45 chipset)
• 8 GB A-Data Vitesta DDR2-800, CL4 Timings
• Windows Vista Ultimate x86 with Service Pack 1
• GeForce GTX 285



Gaming PC 3 

• AMD Phenom II X4 from 3.0 GHz up to 3.6 GHz
• Asus M3N-HD/HDMI SLI
• 4 GB G.Skill F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ DDR2 RAM
• Windows Vista Ultimate x86 with Service Pack 1
• 2 x GeForce GTX 260 in SLI and GeForce GTX 285 (also used in single-card configurations)

Patch

The game was patched to make it current. This led to a noticeable increase in frame rates in some test situations. The patches had only a negligible impact on lower-end hardware configurations. Nevertheless, you should definitely install this patch if you’re going to play Cryostasis. We tested both the Russian- and English-language versions (with the latter installed in German as well).

Selection of Game Scenes

We used three typical scenes from the game as the basis for our test, as well as various selected animated sequences. To gauge game-play metrics without actually touching the systems, we wrote a keyboard macro, so that all user interactions during all of the tests would be as identical as possible. For each configuration, we took measurements for three test runs using Fraps 2.9.8, and accumulated individual values across those sets of readings.

From a visual perspective, the real crux of the game lies in the balance between physics effects and the level of the graphics-processing load related to 3D rendering. Naturally, there are lots of scenes in this game where the hardware is barely stressed, but, of course, there are also other scenes in which even a high-end system is brought to its knees. We chose our three sample scenes deemed most representative of game play, and used them in all our tests along with a set of animation sequences.