Crysis Warhead Hardware Performance Review

DirectX Review


DirectX10 has slowly begun to make headway in the gaming realm, as gamers are finally noticing improvements by using the new API. The apprehension over Vista has been the major cause of the slow adoption along with game developers lagging behind on the uptake. The original Crysis was heralded for its DirectX10 support, and the gamers who used it were treated to improved visuals and immersion. However, Crysis Warhead has arguably taken a step back in terms of quality, offering almost no visual improvements when using the supposedly advanced technology. Is this apparent lack of change a limitation of the game's engine, negligence on behalf of the developers, or does DirectX10 just not offer the quality boost that we once thought?

Our charts show a rather large hit when running the game in DX10 mode. As seen in the ram benchmarks, the overall system performance benefits by using less resources. One would expect that with the decreased FPS there would be an increase in visual quality…right?


The apparent lack of change between the two versions had us double and triple checking results and screenshots to make sure that DirectX10 was in fact enabled. A loss of frames and very little visual gain really isn't much encouragement to adopt the new standard.