Crysis Warhead Hardware Performance Review

Crysis System Testing


When Crytek first announced that gamers would be able to play Crysis Warhead at High settings on a $700 PC, many were skeptical. The original game was renowned for its exceptionally high requirements, which in turn alienated many players, limiting them from the full experience of the game. This in turn began an internet phenomenon with gamer's frequently asking those with the latest hardware "but can it play Crysis?" With Warhead, the developers were adamant about giving all gamers the opportunity to play Crysis in its full glory. As such, a low-cost $700 PC was created around which the game was tested and benchmarked. The system's hardware specs are relatively current, incorporating 45nm Intel technology, a mainstream graphics card and all the other necessary bells and whistles.




Given that such a bold statement had been made, it would be irresponsible of us to not confirm this. For obvious reason, we were unable to mimic the PC in its entirety, however, the critical components were much of the same.

Hardware Canucks Crysis Warhead PC
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EG31M-S2 mATX G31 LGA775 Motherboard
Video Card: eVGA GeForce 9800GT 512MB PCI-E
Ram: OCZ Gold 1GBX2 PC6400 DDR2 Ram

We loaded these components, along with the other parts into the shopping cart of our favorite online Canadian retailer and wound up a pinch over the advertised $699. Keep in mind that the advertised price of the Crysis system was in USD and our prices reflect Canadian dollars. Our tiny overage can be attributed to the choice of an Antec Sontata 3 case which includes a quality Antec 500W PSU rather than entrusting our components to a questionable and nameless 500W model. We also included the Windows Vista operating system, as a specific OS was not recommended. For bargain hunters, further savings can be found by using the HWC Price Comparison feature.

After getting the budget gaming system up and running, we had to put it through its paces to see if the assertions were true.


We were not disappointed; at a popular 4:3 resolution and high settings, it pulled it off. The system didn't just squeak by, but achieved playable frames across all the levels. Now granted, the system failed to make par when run using higher wide-screen resolution; however, a 1280X1024 is still the most popular gaming resolution according to surveys. With a bit of minor tweaking, a player will still be able to achieve sufficient frames with higher resolutions.