It’s amazing how far games have evolved, not just in terms of graphics, but also in terms of the physics simulation, artificial intelligence, storyline, as well as gamer’s immersibility and varied gameplay mechanics. When it comes to judging games, the best we can do is shortlist a few, and let personal preferences crown the best. With so many games within so many genres, it is equally valid for one person to say Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series as the best games ever, and another to say the title goes to The Sims series.
However, as far as graphics is concerned, there can be only one clear winner: Crysis Warhead. Released in 2008 using the same game engine as the original Crysis, it is still to date the best-looking game. Having said that, it is still nowhere near real-life looking. While the movie industry has already achieved seamless artificial world simulation, as shown by James Cameron’s Avatar, the gaming industry still has a long way to go.
I believe the limitation is due to the hardware capabilities of the consumers – our home computers are simply not powerful enough, yet. Movies like Avatar, though much of the world is simulated, are preproduced. The production company took care of all the processing power needed to render the amazingly life-like world. We just play back the movie, frame by frame, where every single frame is fixed, that the movie become nothing more than just a series of still pictures being displayed one after another, at a rate of about 25 pictures per second. This is nothing for our average computer. Whereas in games, it’s an entirely different story. Because the very nature of gaming is to allow the gamer control of the character, there’s no way to preproduce all the still pictures. Every time you move your mouse and changes the view, your computer will have to process and render what to display – including all the physics, the lightings, the shadows, the details, the colours, the shapes, the highlights, the brightness and contrasts – on the fly, in at most one twentieth of a second’s time to maintain a playable frame rate. This requires tremendous amount of processing power, so little wonder then that geek next door spent so much on his PC.
And little wonder then that when somebody has a computer powerful enough to play a game as demanding and beautiful as Crysis Warhead at the highest possible settings, he’ll be tempted to put it up on his blog 
. Well, that’s not the only reason I’m putting up these two videos up here, but also to show you where we are right now in terms of gaming graphics.
Note that the videos may take a while to load, depending on your connection speed. I had to increase the video quality a bit to show how beautiful the graphics are, but even then it’s far from doing justice to how it really looks. The original videos are 1.09GB and 2.66GB for a mere 2m 36s and 5m 12s respectively.
Notice: The second video contains swear words. Don’t let your little brother and sister watch it.
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anonymous says:
February 12, 2010 at 12:03 am (GMT +0800)
Assalamualaikum,
I have a question to ask. What do you think about the combination of an 18.5′ wide screen LCD monitor (max res at 1360 x 768) with an ATI HD5750/5770? At this resolution, roughly, the card should be able to pawn (40-60 fps), particularly, Crysis set at ‘enthusiast’ with max res and AAs right? say I’m using a c2d e7500 2.93ghz and a 2gig ddr2 800, windows-7.
And what about the new 5000 series on handling games with physX technology? like batman arkham asylum, mirror’s edge or probably crysis itself, any thoughts or stories you would like to share? I’m still an ATI hd4800-series user and PhysX wouldn’t work with this card, the games are going to lag. That’s why I’m considering of getting the 5700 series.
Might buy you a coffee later, or one day later, haha.
Syahir Hakim says:
February 12, 2010 at 12:30 am (GMT +0800)
Waalaikumussalam,
Well, to begin with, Crysis is one power-hungry game. I am using HD5870 with 4GB of dual-channel DDR3 RAM and a quad-core Phenom II X4 955 (3.20GHz), and running Crysis Warhead with everything set to Enthusiast with 8x anti-aliasing at 1360 x 768, the game averages around 30 – 40 fps, especially when there’s more intense action on screen with lots of objects. I’m not sure about HD5770, but it should probably average out at 20 – 30 fps, which is still playable, actually.
But you can easily check this out. Crysis is such a popular game for benchmarking that any review on HD5770 is almost guaranteed to have it tested with Crysis. One such example is at Tom’s Hardware.
Also, take note that I run the game at full 8x antialiasing, using Supersampling AA mode (which requires a lot more processing power than Multisampling AA). Antialiasing in any game is a power-hog. It’s the first feature you should turn off to gain a significant amount of frame rate.
That being said, the HD5770 is a fairly powerful card for its price. You should be able to max out most games at 1360 x 768 and still play at comfortable frame rate.
Performance-wise, HD5770 is roughly similar to HD4870. It’s main advantage over the older HD4870 is that it supports DirectX 11 and ATi EyeFinity, a support for multi-monitor setup.
PhysX is a proprietary technology. It is owned by nVidia and thus will only work with nVidia cards, as obviously nVidia bought PhysX so that it can be their selling point over ATi. However, as PhysX’s main purpose is so that the computer can use the graphic card’s processing power to compute physics processing, in absence of PhysX the role is taken back by the CPU. So, in my opinion, as long as you have a powerful enough processor, lacking PhysX won’t be a problem. Most of the time physics processing is not the reason why game lags anyway. It’s usually the graphics rendering that cause lags.
Will be waiting for that coffee
Marksman says:
March 1, 2010 at 6:55 pm (GMT +0800)
dude I’m using an ATI HD4850 right now and I’m planning to upgrade for better frame rates and for future games. The HD5800 is beyond my budget since I’m also going to get a CFX certified motherboard, a phenom 965 and I’m still considering whether I should go for DDR3 or stick to DDR2 when buying a new mobo.
So should I get a single 5700 (spend about $170), or another 4850 (spend only $110!) and CFX? I did some research that 2 4850 outperforms 5770 (and cheaper) and equal or less than that of a single GTX 280, but I’m gonna have to get a new PSU in that case/ or mod my idle 300w and get it to work. My current 550w should be enough to juiced up the whole components but just for safety, you know what I mean. I don’t think I’m going to use multiple monitor setups anytime sooner and I am still using XP but later might change to w7.
What is your opinion regarding 4850 CFX on handling future games, reasonably within one/and a half years from now, Crysis 2 perhaps? Or if you’re in my situation, which would you choose best, economic performance-wise.
I’m aware that CFX got some issues and the performance does not doubles.
Future specs includes:
Phenom II X4 965 BE (3.4 GHz) / 4GB DDR2 1066 / Samsung 943 SNX 18.5″ (1360 x 768)
Syahir Hakim says:
March 1, 2010 at 7:33 pm (GMT +0800)
First of all, there are several issues with using a CrossFire setup. One is you need lots more power, and second is all that extra juice and extra card means your PC will probably gets hotter. The fact that you need to get a new PSU to do a CF setup just throw the price advantage of the CF over a single 5770 out of the window.
My suggestion would be to get a single 5770 card. This will make your setup more future-proof, as 1) you can just buy another 5770 in the future to add more juice and 2) 5770 supports DirectX 11. If you opt for Crossfire now using 4850 (which is not the latest gen of gfx anymore), you’ll have to replace both cards if you want to upgrade in the future.
However, if you manage to mod your 300W PSU, then having CF setup with two 4850 is the more economical choice, albeit much less future-proof.
As for performance, two 4850s on CF and a single 5770 doesn’t differ much, so both of them have roughly equal support for future games, though as I’ve mentioned, 5770 has the advantage of DirectX 11 support. I would say that you’ll be able to play most games at full settings a year from now with any of the two models at 1360×768 res. Crysis is an exception, as most other games is unlikely to adopt the graphical prowess that Crysis has (COD Modern Warfare series are cases in point).
But seeing that you’re gonna have a fairly high-end pc, if I were you I would rather keep the upgrade options open and opt for the single 5770.
But then again, it’s your decision.