Crysis: Warhead

Up next is our legacy title for 2014, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 5 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA, never mind 2560 and beyond.

Crysis: Warhead - 3840x2160 - Gamer Quality

Crysis: Warhead - 2560x1440 - Enthusiast Quality + 4x MSAA

Crysis: Warhead - 1920x1080 - Enthusiast Quality + 4x MSAA

With the GTX 980 already falling just short of beating the R9 290XU in Crysis: Warhead, this is the only other instance where the GTX 970 isn’t a completely competitive card. Even the EVGA FTW overclock can’t help it catch up to the R9 290, let alone the R9 290XU. Crysis simply calls for more shader power than what the GTX 970 can realistically deliver.

Crysis: Warhead - Min. Frame Rate - 3840x2160 - Gamer Quality

Crysis: Warhead - Min. Frame Rate - 2560x1440 - Enthusiast Quality + 4x MSAA

The story is much the same with minimum framerates. Although GTX 970 doesn’t fare any worse relatively speaking, it also doesn’t get to close the gap.

Crysis 3 Total War: Rome 2
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  • Kalessian - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    Is it really safe to overclock the memory like that when there aren't any heatsinks on them?

    Also, 1st?
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    As long as you're not giving them additional voltage (which you can't do on this card): yes. GDDR5 does not consume all that much power, even if it is relatively more than DDR3. The airflow off of the fans is plenty for stock voltage.
  • Viewgamer - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    Why no Mantle benchmarks for Thief ?
  • winterspan - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    I'm assuming because this is an Nvidia review...
  • eanazag - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    No mantle is likely because it didn't give a great showing last time in the AMD mantle review. If I remember correctly, Thief maybe even had a performance regression with Mantle being used.
  • Ammaross - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link

    Because Mantle only has benefit in CPU-capped performance. When you run benchmarks on an i7 or better, Mantle has no tangible benefit and sometimes has regressions.
  • Viewgamer - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    Or even Mantle benchmarks for BF4 for that matter ?
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link

    Apologies. The Mantle results have to be added manually since our graphing system can't handle multiple results for the same card automatically. I had actually entered in the data but neglected to regenerate the graphs.
  • SeanJ76 - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link

    Sounds like your not using EVGA PrecisonX 4.2.1, you can add as much voltage as you like to the 970 GTX FTW.........idiot.....
  • P39Airacobra - Sunday, November 29, 2015 - link

    Ok first of all EVGA Precision or the type of software has nothing to do with that, Also he has a valid concern about the V-Ram temps and the VRM. Also don't call people idiots! That's my Job! IDIOT!

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