Crysis Warhead Choppy Gameplay...Why?

[A320]

When it comes to games I mostly stick to my xbox360 and have never really played a modern game on my PC. But recently I decided with all this money I keep spending on hardware I should see what it's potential really is.

I decided to try 'Crysis Warhead' out. I have a separate 80GB SATA HD that I use exclusively for MS Flight Simulator so I decided to install Crysis on there. I am running Win7x64 the rest of my specs are below.

In the game's setup, I have:

Resolution - 1440x900
AA - 8x
Fullscreen - ON
VSYNC - ON

and for the rest of the detail I clicked 'find optimal settings' and it put everything to MAX on it's own.

I am finding the gameplay very inconsistent, choppy, and interrupted.

Is this normal???

As I said I am not much of a PC gamer and am not really sure how this game specifically measures up for hardware intensity but I am kind of shocked considering the type of hardware I am running.

Below is a screenshot during gameplay and other relevant info.

What do you guys & gals think?

PS - Cool&Quiet is always switched off during CPU intense use like this.

 

[AstaLaVista]

Crysis Warhead was not as intense as Crysis was but it can be quiet the hog. There are some tweaks you can do to make it much better and I think you can find them even here. If not Google is your friend.

I usually let the game dictate what the best or optimal settings are and I go from there.

It appears you are using the latest drivers for your video card but, what about your sound & monitor? do they also have the latest drivers? Outdated audio drivers can run a mock as well... personal opinion of course but I do Off-Line Gaming quiet a lot.

This is all I can think off at the moment, I am sure others will chime in soon enough... hang it there... we'll get you shooting w/o hiccups yet

 

[A320]

Thanks for the quick reply. As for my drivers, everything in my computer is pretty much up to date, thanks to 'Driver Genius'.

 

[stormy13]

Turn AA down or off, and try lowering a few of the settings (shadows is a big FPS killer). Might even want to try rolling the video driver back to something from the 185xx series, haven't really seen a whole lot of positive about the 190 series.

 

[A320]

for rolling back my video drivers, do I need to do anything special to be thorough or is it a simple, uninstall, then install.

 

[TGSoldier]

If you try to run the game at default clocks on your video card, how does it perform?

 

[A320]

If you try to run the game at default clocks on your video card, how does it perform?

Ya I thought of that and gave it a try earlier, it was pretty much the same. Thought maybe my card was chocking or something so I scaled it back to default but no changes really.

 

[TGSoldier]

Have you tried any other games?

Have you ran 3DMARK on your card? Maybe your card is faulty?

In the BIOS do you have PCI-E frequency set to 100?

Is your card running at x16?

You can use GPU-Z to verify the speed it is running at...

http://www.filehippo.com/download_gpuz/

 

[A320]

Have you tried any other games?

Have you ran 3DMARK on your card? Maybe your card is faulty?

In the BIOS do you have PCI-E frequency set to 100?

Is your card running at x16?

You can use GPU-Z to verify the speed it is running at...

Download GPU-Z 0.3.4 - FileHippo.com

F.E.A.R. 2 is another one I just tried out and it seems to run flawlessly on MAX settings.

PCI-E is 100

How does this look?

 

[TGSoldier]

Have you tried re-installing crysis warhead?

 

[A320]

Have you tried re-installing crysis warhead?

Just curious, how would that help?

 

[chev65]

8X AA forget it with a single card. 2XAA is the best play versus quality setting, at 1480 you should have an easy time of it.

I play 1680 max settings, 8XAA is playable but not nearly as good as 2XAA which is best game play for me.

 

[A320]

8X AA forget it with a single card. 2XAA is the best play versus quality setting, at 1480 you should have an easy time of it.

I play 1680 max settings, 8XAA is playable but not nearly as good as 2XAA which is best game play for me.

I'll give those settings a go and report back but my card is actually 2 of them sandwiched into one (GX2). Are you sure it can't handle it?

 

[chev65]

8X AA forget it with a single card. 2XAA is the best play versus quality setting, at 1480 you should have an easy time of it.

I play 1680 max settings, 8XAA is playable but not nearly as good as 2XAA which is best game play for me.

I'll give those settings a go and report back but my card is actually 2 of them sandwiched into one (GX2). Are you sure it can't handle it?

I know just what the GX2 is, single card dual GPU like the GTX295 but not as strong. Anything past 2XAA isn't going to work very well with that card, even the GTX295 doesn't play very well past 2XAA.

There is very little difference visually past 2XAA anyway. Max settings really makes the game look good but the AA settings mostly just kill performance in Crysis.

 

[TGSoldier]

i can pump 8xaa max settings easily...

 

[A320]

8X AA forget it with a single card. 2XAA is the best play versus quality setting, at 1480 you should have an easy time of it.

I play 1680 max settings, 8XAA is playable but not nearly as good as 2XAA which is best game play for me.

I'll give those settings a go and report back but my card is actually 2 of them sandwiched into one (GX2). Are you sure it can't handle it?

I know just what the GX2 is, single card dual GPU like the GTX295 but not as strong. Anything past 2XAA isn't going to work very well with that card, even the GTX295 doesn't play very well past 2XAA.

There is very little difference visually past 2XAA anyway. Max settings really makes the game look good but the AA settings mostly just kill performance in Crysis.

As suggested, I brought it down to 2XAA, res to 1360 and brought the details from enthusiast down to gamer and the game seems to run pretty much seamless and smooth now.

I guess it's just too much for the card to handle.

 

[AstaLaVista]

Thanks for the quick reply. As for my drivers, everything in my computer is pretty much up to date, thanks to 'Driver Genius'.

Hmmmm, I don't even trust Microsoft to update my Video & Audio drivers. To install your video drivers correctly, you must uninstall the current ones first, reboot and then install the new ones... I am sure Driver Genius is not doing that, or if it is, not with Elevated Admin Rights.

+1 on going 8x AA, way overkill, FPS killer and your eyes won't notice the difference.

 

[Everlong]

I posted a few tweaks I found over on the Vista forums for Crysis/Crysis Warhead that might help. It improved performance for me quite a bit for me on my dual 8800GTS 512s.

Crysis 64bit - Page 5 - Vista Forums

The first part explains how to enable SSAO in game, and the end part could improve performance.

 

[A320]

Thanks for the quick reply. As for my drivers, everything in my computer is pretty much up to date, thanks to 'Driver Genius'.

Hmmmm, I don't even trust Microsoft to update my Video & Audio drivers. To install your video drivers correctly, you must uninstall the current ones first, reboot and then install the new ones... I am sure Driver Genius is not doing that, or if it is, not with Elevated Admin Rights.

I should've clarified that I do NOT use Driver Genius to update video drivers. Only tough to find ones like controllers, and chipsets etc.