Crysis: Warhead

Up next is our legacy title for 2013/2014, 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

At 1440p AMD and NVIDIA are within 10% of each other. However if we crank up the resolution to 2160p, the GTX 780 Ti SLI starts falling well behind the 295X2. Though this performance advantage doesn't translate to improved minimums; even at 2160p NVIDIA and AMD are close together on minimum framerates.

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

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

Crysis 3 Total War: Rome 2
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  • Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    Single cable is beyond spec for the connector. We've been hearing connectors actually melting. "Crappy" isn't really relevant here; this is the *only* card on the market that causes these kinds of problems.
  • Anders CT - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    500 watt power consumption is insane. It should come with an on-board dieselgenerator.
  • Blitzninjasensei - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link

    The thought of this made my day. Thanks for the joke, needed it.
  • therfman - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    This is all very nice, but unless case space is at a premium, I fail to see the advantage of this card over two 290X cards with good coolers. The PowerColor PCS+ version of the 290X runs at 1050 MHz, is much quieter than the reference boards (40-42 dBA under load at 75cm), and is available for under $600. Is having a single-slot solution worth $300 extra? Not unless you really want have everything in a small form factor case.
  • Peeping Tom - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    Is that a giveaway I hear coming? ;-)
  • silverblue - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    Please, don't... I don't think I could stand to see a card of this calibre being offered only to those in the States... :|
  • JBVertexx - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    Is there any way to tell the temperatures of each of the two GPUs? Where does the temperature reading for the testing come from - is it an average of the 2, the hotter, or the cooler one?

    Reason I'm asking is I was skeptical a 120mm rad could effectively cool two of these GPUs. Given they are connected in series, one is bound to be measurably hotter than the other.

    Otherwise, this looks to be a winner. I was considering upgrading my uATX rig so I could do SLI. But with this card, I could keep the compact form factor.
  • JBVertexx - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    After some additional research on the web, it looks like the difference in temps between the 2 GPUs is only about 2 degrees under load, so pleasantly surprised with how well the 120mm radiator handles the cooling.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    The temperature readings come from MSI Afterburner, which is capable of reading the temperatures via AMD's driver API. And unless otherwise noted, the temperature is always the hottest temperature.
  • srsbsns - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link

    The point of this driver was improvements the the HD7000 series and their rebrands... Anandtech missed this by benching an already optimized 290x dual card?

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