Crysis

Publisher: Electronic Arts

We tested the game using the 64-bit executable under and DirectX 10 with the 1.21 patch applied. We used a custom timedemo recorded on the Harbor map which is more representative of gameplay than the built-in benchmark that renders things much faster than you're going to experience in game.

For our testing, we set all the settings to High. Because of how intense the game is, we tested with both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering disabled at resolutions above 1680x1050 for the time being. There is currently no support for anisotropic filtering in the game, but you can still force it from the driver control panel.


We used exactly the same CPU, memory and graphics card but no matter how many BIOS settings we tried the DFI board always lapsed several frames per second behind in Crysis over multiple test runs. Three frames per second isn't that noticeable, but in apples to apples motherboard terms it's quite a lot.

Far Cry 2

Publisher: Ubisoft

Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft, and while it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, this game is built on its own in-house engine and has no association - other than its name - to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now. We used a retail version of the game patched to version 1.02, and used the in-built "Action" gameplay demo set to Ultra-Very High settings under DirectX 10.


Far Cry 2 also drops a couple of frames per second too - moreso in the minimum frame rate, although it's not by as a large margin here.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Publisher: Valve

As one part of our game of the year 2007, Half-Life 2: Episode Two set a new high in narrative and gameplay for the series. Using Valve's widely used, albeit not overly hardware intensive, Source engine that also features as a part of legendary games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, we were keen to feature its performance here too.

The Source engine is the most scalable engine we test. While it still supports only DirectX 9.0, it features effects like dynamic lighting with HDR effects, motion blur, advanced Havok Physics and high model details.

Episode Two took Half-Life out into large open environments for the first time and we test with Gordon running through a large open level that combines forest and houses with explosions and physics.

All in game detail settings are set to their highest levels, with HDR enabled and, for anti-aliasing, MSAA was used and controlled from inside the game.


Again, the DFI lags behind slightly, but by an increasingly smaller margin as we go through the graphics tests.