Crysis is a very heavy DirectX 10 game. We updated this game to version 1.2.1 and used the HOC Crysis Benchmarking Utility to help us collecting data. Since we don’t think the default demo based on the island map stresses the video card the way we want, we used the HOC core demo available with the abovementioned utility. We ran this demo under three 16:10 widescreen resolutions, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, and 2560×1600, first with image quality set to “low” and then with image quality set to “high.” Since all video cards achieved a number of frames per second below 10 at 2560×1600 with image details set to “high,” we are not including this test as the results aren’t reliable. We ran each test twice and discarded the first result, as usually the first run achieves a lower score compared to the subsequent runs since the game loses time loading files. The results below are the average number of frames per second (FPS) achieved by each card.
The new Element G is a high-quality steel mid-tower case from Thermaltake, bringing interesting features such color-changing fans. Let’s take a look at this new case.
Zalman has recently released a power supply series based on a resonant switching (RS) design. Let’s see if the 500 W model from this series is a good buy.
Let’s take a look at the revamped Corsair TX850 power supply, dubbed TX850 V2, now featuring a DC-DC design and 80 Plus Bronze certification. Updated with new overload tests.
We added five new thermal compounds to our previous roundup, for a total of 55 different thermal compounds from major brands. We also tried another alternative thermal compound: Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
