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.

According to the tests, the Gainward HD4850 performed well in the "Performance" and "Mainstream" levels, in all the available resolutions up to 1920x1200. Setting the quality settings higher would still allow you to play but only at resolutions of 1280x 1024 or lower.

Enabling DirectX10 has an impact on the performance. Again the Mainstream level is very easy to handle even at 1920x1200, offering over 46fps on average. Higher quality settings result to significantly lower rendering performances and you need to either add a second HD4850 (CrossFire) or buy something more powerful.