A new version of the famous Crysis game was recently released. While there shouldn't be any major improvements over the original Crysis engine, "Crysis Warhead" could stress our XFX 260GTX card under both DirectX9 and DirectX10 rendering modes. In all cases we didn't enable anti-aliasing since it would give a major blow in the performance.

By plotting the above table at a graph, we can notice the differences in the various quality modes and resolutions. It is obvious that at 1280x1024, we can play up to the Gamer level without major loss at speed. In order to play at higher resolutions, you should lower the quality for acceptable frame rates (>30 fps).

Enabling DirectX10 has a major impact in the performance. As we can see, the 1920x1200 resolution under the Mainstream settings is playable. Switching to Gamer settings would offer 40% less performance. The Enthusiast detail level needs extra power to keep FPS in an acceptable level.