Crysis 3 Benchmark

It's time once again to find out 'Can it run Crysis' but this time it's with Crysis Remastered and from my early look at the game it's a doozy at those higher settings. But, it'll be a minute before I get all of the results out from a custom in-game run. But what if you want to find out if your system runs compared to others using something useful like a built-in benchmarking utility? They've got you covered but you're going to have to do a little digging.

The original Crysis had, and still has it hasn't disappeared, a built-in benchmark utility hidden away in it's /bin files all those years ago. It had two different focused benchmarks, one for CPU and one for GPU that you could launch independently of one another for whatever you were trying to test. This time around you'll have access to launch a dedicated benchmarking GUI that lets you pick settings for overall and raytracing effects, the resolution, and where you want the benchmark to test at.

This will be what you're ultimately greeted within this screen. You can see the options you'll get listed in the interface just to the right of the folder. I left the benchmark executable highlighted and re-highlighted again just to make sure those glancing could find it quickly. One other note on getting the benchmark to run, don't try to do it before you launch the game for the first time otherwise you'll be treated to an error screen telling you it needs to be launched through the Epic Games Store launcher.

Once you're there and you've queued up the settings you want to test then hit 'Start Benchmark' and it'll load up the scene and just loop until you stop it by hitting escape and exiting the window, or fullscreen scene. Once you've exited the benchmark it'll give you a small performance results window and you'll have a quick idea of performance. But for those who like to measure performance with things like OCAT, FrameView, or CapFrameX you'll want to follow a path in the game because the faster your system can run this, the faster it'll run and that just makes getting those types of results a bit less than what you'd want. Anyway, it's about time to find "Can It Run Crysis".

Analysis: With the detail level increased to Very High, added lighting effects and improved graphical shaders were introduced to the benchmark, resulting in an average frames per second reduction of 28% across our range of GPUs. The GeForce GTX 260 and 460 produced playable results at 1920x1200, but both proved impractical at 2560x1600, with average frame rates of just 26.8 and 28.5, respectively. The older 8800 GT, on the other hand, can technically play on Very High at 1680x1050, but its average frame rate of 33 may be too low for comfort.

Neither of these games caused the R9 290X to break into a sweat, so we subjected it to our new Crysis 3 benchmark. With all graphics options set to maximum at a resolution of 1,920x1,080, the R9 290X produced an average frame rate of 32.6fps. The minimum frame rate was 24fps, while the highest was an impressively smooth 48fps. In play, the game looked and felt superb, and we had no complaints during the level we played.

We ran Dirt Showdown at a resolution of 2,560x1,440 with 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra graphics quality, and were more than pleased to see a slippery smooth average frame rate of 95fps. In Crysis 2 with the same settings the R9 290X delivered an equally impressive 59.7fps. Sadly, the R9 290X suffered during our Crysis 3 benchmark at 2,560x1,440 and produced an average frame rate of just 22fps, which is too jerky for comfortable play. You won't need to reduce graphics settings much to get super-demanding games such as Crysis 3 to play smoothly, though, even at this huge resolution.

DOOM 3 was released a couple of months before Techgage launched (March 1, 2005, for the record), and it was a game featured in our GPU testing right from the get-go. For this reason, this latest DOOM feels a bit special, even though it follows DOOM 3 up eleven years later. As we hoped, the game proves to be more than suitable for GPU benchmarking.

Testing: Due to time constraints, an ideal level could not be chosen for benchmarking. Instead, our test location starts us off at the bottom of a short set of stairs early on in the game, where we must climb them, open up a door, and then go to a big room where demons are taken care of and the benchmark is stopped.

We've thrown one of the third-party cards at the new Crysis Remastered GPU benchmark with everything pushed to the limit, including hardware-based ray tracing and the highest resolution our 55-inch Philips Momentum monitor can manage. It's the frankly monstrous Colorful iGame Advanced RTX 3080, and it's a triple-slot, triple PCIe power connection toting card that really weighs down my test rig.

Crysis 3 - it's a game almost synonymous with Digital Foundry itself after eight solid years of testing in our PC benchmark suites. Now it's being remastered and the first version we're looking at is... Nintendo Switch. Join John and Rich for the lowdown on gold master code... but remember that a day zero patch is still to come so this is not quite the final game. 2b1af7f3a8