Sapphire HD5850 Toxic 1GB Video Card Review

Crysis Warhead, like the original, Crysis, is based in a future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of (Former SAS) Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns.

In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft’s new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering.

Surprisingly the Toxic edition card manages to keep the game perfectly playable at all times and this is helped in part by the latest Catalyst drivers which really have helped to smooth out the overall game performance. The reference card struggles with one section of gameplay we tested while the enhanced clocks of the Toxic card helped to push the figures around 5fps higher.

We were impressed with the HD5850 Toxic card running Crysis Warhead – the results are perfectly playable throughout and its only if we wanted to play on a 30 inch screen at 2560×1600 we would need to contemplate Crossfire solutions or a higher cost single card.

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