Crysis 3 Alpha (Multi-player testing) CPU and GPU Preliminary Performance - GameGPU

THIS! I was thinking the same thing. Say you turn shadows to high instead of very high and maybe tessellation to high instead of very high and wow...it looks the same when you play but you go from 24fps to 50fps.

This is encouraging. Doesn't sound as bad as the charts make it seem (since they didn't individually turn down anything). I am pretty confident that the game will be quite playable with SLI 670s at 2560x1440 anyway.

As far as this game is concerned, it doesn't impress at all yet runs like crap. Now either it's the alpha code, or they purposefully cripple performance to give the illusion of intense graphics. I'm hoping the former is true.

 

I'm trying not to be cynical, but Crytek's track record speaks for itself. I think the most likely thing that will happen is that they will tune it for low-end crap (consolize it), give hi-rez textures and such but make sure it still runs okay on midrange PCs, then have some almost-worthless-but-resource-intensive settings that kills framerates on all but the highest end PCs. That way they have their cake and eat it, too: console sales, a large PC market, and the gullible gamers will think that the game is a PC-melter like Crysis on the merits, rather than because of some almost-worthless features that kill framerates while not improving image quality.

Remember, Crytek's CEO was crying about how Crysis didn't make more millions than it did, then he consolized Crysis 2 to gain a larger market and more millions. Why do you think he would do anything different than what I outlined above? Why do you think he had a sudden change of heart--unless he did NOT?

But whatever, there are tons of gullible gamers out there and I'm sure Crysis 3 will be seen as another Crysis by them and drive hardware sales.

 

For the die-hard Crysis / AMD CPU fans out there, depending on what the final release numbers look like, you may have to jump ship if you want to play at VHQ. Not sure if the AMD chips will be up to the task.

 

There's a big gap between AMD and Intel performance because they dropped the settings down for the CPU test. Crank them up and the difference won't be as significant. They also don't have Vishera on there. Obviously Intel will give you better performance regardless, but AMD's best performance shouldn't be that bad. A cheaper rig with a 6300 should be sufficient.

This is all still alpha anyways, too soon to make any solid conclusions. Hopefully they'll release a beta later as well.

 

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate hear and acknowledge that I could tell a difference between Very High and High settings with Crysis and Crysis: Warhead. Also, I love AO, ever since Crysis introduced it to the gaming world with SSAO. It made indoor scenes look much more realistic, even with some of the inaccuracies. I think FEAR 2 may be the only game I ever really disliked when it came to the AO, since it made it look and feel much different compared to the first FEAR.

Frivolous settings are something like having the option for 16384 x 16384 resolution shadows over 8192 x 8192, when there is hardly any shadow aliasing at the 8192 x 8192 setting at a given screen resolution like 1080p in the first place.

Wasted fillrate is also an art problem too. Water in most games today is way too glassy compared to the real thing, and would not reflect the surrounding world to the degree games like to make it seem. It was probably done for the wow factor more than anything when it became an "it" thing. For large, highly energized, and very short, spikey-waved bodies of water, I would leave general reflections out entirely, except for lights, especially night and evening scenes. The absorption and dispersal rate of reflected light in real life is way too much to achieve any real reflection. The water has to be fairly placid and calm for that to happen. In many real pictures, any reflection tends to begin happening at a distance quite far from the viewer, where the angle is much more shallow and enough reflected light is actually concentrated enough to be reflected into your eye and hence produce the effect.

 

Mini rant incoming...

Graphics are nice and all, but I must be alone in simply wanting a crysis title that returns to the excellent gameplay roots of crysis 1 / WH. Crysis 2 was a huge disappointment compared to its predecessors, probably one of the biggest letdowns I ever had aside from Dragon Age 2.

If crysis 3 looks like crysis 2 but plays more like the earlier games (with a lot of freedom of movement, and varying tactics) I will be sold. What I don't want is a straight forward "boxed in" shooter like crysis 2.

Let's put it another way. Graphically Dragon Age 2 was pretty darn nice, but in terms of gameplay it was worse than the excellent DA:O in every way. I hope crytek doesn't spend all of their time creating good graphics, and remembers how to make a good game.

 

Watching the videos there are some rather huge differences between the lower settings and the higher settings.

Largest disparity is in the water-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oLIwa9em-fs#!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H6ihk743pGY

The layered transparency levels in the UHQ setting is extremely impressive, and obviously the physics calculations are on a very different scale. The particle system on the UHQ settings seems to have proper reflection/deflection and energy dispersal, the lower settings seem like they are just typical scripted fare. It is possible that they higher quality physics interactions are running via OpenCL on the GPUs already which is why it has such a severe penalty in performance, although the game is fairly demanding on the CPU side too so it may just be a traditional physics setup.

Another interesting thing to note is the different levels of water and how the movement of them changes based on the depth of the particles in the water. You can see this toward the end of the UHQ video with the leaves in differing depth of water. Density based shader with physical interaction, or layered distortion, couldn't really tell based on how brief the clip was but extremely impressive.

Too bad we don't have a bit more variety of decent videos to view on very high end setups, what I've seen in these videos is very impressive indeed.

Sorry for the side tangent, will let everyone get back to cheerleading and herp derp texture talk.

 

+1 I totally agree

 

wow at whoever decided to do benchmarks on a buggy alpha code of the game.....just wow. *facepalm*

dude, what are you talking about? first of all, SLI/CF is NOT working in the alpha, this has been confirmed by Crytek devs on their closed alpha forum (not view-able to the public unless you show proof that you're in the alpha *NDA agreement*).

41 fps is exactly what i would expect to see a 690 getting considering that only one of the gpu's is being utilized in the alpha.

furthermore, there is serious performance issues within the alpha and performance varies wildly at the moment. one game i'm averaging 45 fps, the next game it drops down to sub 30 inexplicably even though no settings have been changed, however, as soon as the next game is loaded, i'm right back up to 45 fps, again, without explanation .

my hd 7970 GE is averaging a solid 40-45 fps at very high settings @ 1920x1200 and that is the average a 7970 gets when the alpha isn't "bugging out". i've even downsampled from 2560x1600 to 1200p and again, when the alpha isn't bugging out, i get a solid 30 fps.

crytek devs have mentioned that they are aware of performance issues, (which appears to be related to an issue with their shadders) but have stated that there are no plans for performance updates as the primary goal of this alpha is to get player feedback, test server stability, and fine tune gameplay.

the performance people are getting in this aplha is NOT fully indicative of what the final game performance will be like. this is why i find this benchmark to be utterly misleading and even ignorant.

of course you can. crysis/warhead were built exclusively for PC at the time, no console shenanigans to deal with back then, and as a result, no limitations or compromises needed to be made either. fast forward into the future a bit, consoles are dominating the market, and crytek has expanded into that market, obviously, the PC platform is no longer their only focus, or perhaps, even their main focus anymore, sadly.

i fired up my modded crysis 1 today after a long time, and after playing the crysis 3 alpha extensively this past week, i am no longer wow'd as much by crysis 1 as i used to be, even heavily modded, it simply does not look as impressive as c3 does to me. crysis 1 vanilla looks utterly dated by comparison. and it truly looks like a last gen game compared to crysis 2 with maldo 4.0 textures.

i think people need to have more realistic expectations.

 

Sli is working fine with Crysis 3. Read op.

And Crysis 3 alpha is exactly like Crysis 2. It isn't like Crysis 1 at all. I don't know why people are still hoping for Crysis 1 like gameplay, the alpha is out and it is exactly a Crysis 2.

 

Well I think most people will agree that the actual gameplay is better in crysis 2, but the level design is far worse.

The streamlining of the suit abilities in Crysis 2 was a much needed improvement.

 

It's nice to see they're starting to take the PC market seriously again.

By PhsyX...REALLY?!

A massively GPU bound game and you want to throw physics calculations at the GPU?!

This will probably leaving the CPU mostly idle, what a pointless waste of resources.

 

What a amazing informational thread. I think Crysis 3 along with Far Cry 3 will be the best graphics we have ever seen on PC.

I don't wan't to take anything away from EPIC, but UE4 games are still far away year and half or 2 years if their lucky.

IMO since 1998 Unreal Engine has been dominant, until Crysis Engine came out, Then BF3 and MW3 or Black Ops 2. I wonder if COD is still using the same old engine from years ago.

I just want to play at high quality, NOT ultra high quality cuz my VC can't handle that. Same with BF3 if I take to Ultra,, its unplayable. One notch lower is good, but Im dissapointed with theh avg 37fps.

Also if your playing at such a high resolution of 25xx, res then you dont even need to bother with AA . If you turn on AA your performance will be jolted hehe. gl

 

Actually, in multiple interviews they've said some of the maps in Crysis 3 are larger than anything in Crysis 1. There are some smaller levels in Crysis 3 apparently, but they've routinely mentioned how the game is setup for more distance hunting.

 

I am not talking of level size or level design. I am talking about gameplay and combat. It is fully consolized. Not like the original Crysis which we all love.

 

Sometimes AA is still necessary. It depends non the engine. I would never leave AA off in skyrim but in BF3 I can live without it.

 

I always thought general consensus about Crysis 2 is that it was the level design that crippled the experience? I've always been a C1 fanboy. I've made maps, mods, and spent countless hours playing MP. I actually liked the changes to the suit controls in C2, but also agreed that the levels felt more restricted horizontally. I liked the vertical additions though.

From what I've read and seen in interviews, Crysis 3 will start out in Crysis2 style maps. More confined, etc. but you quickly move away from downtown and into more wide open areas. At this point, Crytek has routinely mentioned that map size and gameplay turns into more predator style jungle hunting (hence the crossbow). Huge wide open maps that lean more towards cloaking/hunting play style than close quarters fighting like in C2.

Cevat (ceo) even said they're intentionally waiting until near release to show any of the maps that hint at major differences from Crysis 2.

 

not according to dozens of people in the private closed alpha forum.

----------------

------------------

------------------

just a few comments i found. there is literally DOZENS of reports about SLI not working. it's the same story for crossfire users as well.

all one needs to do is observe how incredibly inconsistent and varied FPS numbers currently are to know that performance in the alpha is totally borked at the moment.

these benchmarks are fail.

 

Crysis 2 was garbage.

I'm on the fence with regard to the suit control redesign. While combining some suit functions made sense, it was obviously a work around for limited controler input (buttons) on consoles. I liked individually selecting the various suit function in Crysis 1, the mouse wheel push button worked very well.

I hope the level design heads back to Crysis 1 territory, but i honestly don't have high hopes for seeing anything as large as Assault, Onslaught, Contact, etc...

They need to release Crysis 1.5 where you play as prophet and head back to the island (like he does at the end of the first game). Enough with the NYC setting. All the buildings do is create corridors that box the player in.

I've actually got semi-high hopes for Far Cry 3's gameplay and open world... but i doubt it's graphics are going to be anything special.

 

curious to know why you think that? from the gameplay footage shown, it looks to be at least visually appealing.

i agree with you about crysis 2 though.

 

I didn't mean to say FC3 looks bad... i think its going to look fine, just not ground breaking.

The polygon count on the environment and in particular the wildlife looks pretty low.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEZfi1QfdIE

From a gameplay standpoint i am much more excited about Far Cry 3 than i am Crysis 3... but even in alpha, i think Crysis 3's graphics are far superior.

 

Here are some screenshots of the alpha on my machine. SLI is not working. No idea how there are benches of it working on the 690, but neither the most recent WHQL or beta drivers from nvidia have functioning SLI in the alpha.

Like I said, the game does not look that great. Heavy use of some sort of film grain effect. It doesn't look bad either though of course. 20FPS using a single card on my system @ my resolution on the maximum very high settings. There is no function AA or AA selection, but the image does not appear aliased. It is blurry though, so I'm assuming they are using post-AA behind the scenes.

The physics effects are well done for the water and cloth. In some shots you may see some banners. Those ebb and flow and look better than the cloth does using nvidia's physx in BL2. So Crytek again did a good job with their own designed physics engine like they did in Crysis/Warhead.

 

You just broke the NDA

 

It's Crysis 3 multiplayer. If he does get kicked from the beta it's not like it's some huge loss.

 

As a first post, what a waste. I doubt he cares.

Can't say the game's impressive. Looks the same as Crysis 2 really. Hopefully the beta brings on more, although if the game is running that poorly that's a shame.