OK, so I started playing crysis 2 for the first time in months yesterday. I have always run the game on high, because I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the game running on high or extreme. It just seemed like really heavey post processing effects, bringing the game down. So the fps loss just wasn't even justifyable.

Well now this 1.9 patch has come along, the game looks a lot better. But it doesn't seem to matter if I'm still running the game with everything on high.

Also, the high res textures up close don't really look that much different either. They look better when everything is further away though. Whatever, I don't get any performance hit from using the high res textures, so it's cool.

I'll be running the game with everything on high, in DX11 mode with my 2500k and 5850. Don't see a reason to get a GTX580 just to run this on any higher graphics settings.

The tessellation is really nice, but that technology still needs work, definitely not perfect yet... It kills performance, and it only looks really good in certain areas. Everything else looks really nice now though, especially the lighting and the water.

Everything on "Ultra" (and tessellation enabled) is quite demanding, even a GTX 460 has trouble with it... I'm sure another GTX 460 in SLI will make it smooth, though.

How is the tessellation even implemented? I saw some rounded steps in DX11 mode, but then I ran the game in DX9 mode and they were rounded as well.

What exactly are they doing, just bump mapping objects on the GPU instead of the CPU?

Bricks and rocks and debris piles look more realistic from tesselation.

Bricks and rocks and debris piles look more realistic from tesselation.

But that boils down to the gamer. Some people don't notice that stuff when they play.

Again, I saw these piles of bricks and stuff. Looked a bit like POM from the first crysis. btw, crysis in dx9 mode could use POM. But then I ran the game in DX9 mode, I could swear they were still mapped out. Maybe I'm remembering wrong.....

Or maybe my Crysis 2 just won't run in DX9 mode anymore, even though it's telling me it is...

POM was a DX10 very High feature in Crysis 1. Tessellation makes objects rounder and more curved, they add a displacement map to give the bricks depth, so it looks like a real wall rather than a flat texture.

POM gives the illusion of depth, where tessellation is real depth.

The tesselation in here needs some desperate wrok. I noticed in scenes were i am walking in between brick walls that are tesselated my FPS will drop to 8 until i leave that area. I have a radeon 6990 superclocked and having FPS drop to 8 is just highly uncalled for. I can run Unigen Heaven 2.5 on the absolute highest settings at 1080p and my FPS never get below 20. And that benchmark uses 10x the tesselation C2 does.

POM was a DX10 very High feature in Crysis 1.

Believe me, you can get POM working in DX9 mode in Crysis 1.

I noticed in scenes were i am walking in between brick walls that are tesselated my FPS will drop to 8 until i leave that area.

I honestly haven't seen any tesselated walls...

Heaven benchmark is different, it's doesn't have an AI to process and such things.

POM was a DX10 very High feature in Crysis 1.

Believe me, you can get POM working in DX9 mode in Crysis 1.

Never said you couldn't, but officially it was a Very High feature using DX10 mode as I remember. Yes I know about the hack to get DX10 details in DX9.

r_usepom=1 in DX9 mode, yeah it works.

in Crysis 1, you can also enable full-scene/object motion-blur (supposedly DX10-only as well) in DX9 mode, but it's not perfect... Korean nano-suit enemies and your arms while driving appear glitchy.

r_usepom=1 in DX9 mode, yeah it works.

in Crysis 1, you can also enable full-scene/object motion-blur (supposedly DX10-only as well) in DX9 mode, but it's not perfect... Korean nano-suit enemies and your arms while driving appear glitchy.

Well r_usepom is coming out as "unknown" in crysis 2.

for me the best settings is all to ultra and shadows to extreme with colorgrading = 0 no dark and very good framerate

GFX -- 2x 285 GTX in SLi

i7 920 @ 3 Ghz

12 GB RAM

r_usepom=1 in DX9 mode, yeah it works.

in Crysis 1, you can also enable full-scene/object motion-blur (supposedly DX10-only as well) in DX9 mode, but it's not perfect... Korean nano-suit enemies and your arms while driving appear glitchy.

Well r_usepom is coming out as "unknown" in crysis 2.

r_usepom is for Crysis 1... I tried it in Crysis 2 as well, and yeah, it's not valid.