Help me analyze my Crysis benchmarks

[joecuddles]

These confuse me. I ran these benches earlier today using the benchmark tool on Very High, 64 bit, DX10 and VSync on. I used benchmark_gpu and did 3 runs on each. The results... are weird.

Run #1- DX10 800x600 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 45.955
Run #2- DX10 800x600 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 42.135
Run #3- DX10 1024x768 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 43.955
Run #4- DX10 1024x768 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 40.24
Run #5- DX10 1280x960 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 37.85
Run #6- DX10 1280x960 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 33
Run #7- DX10 1600x1200 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 21.2
Run #8- DX10 1600x1200 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 19.94
Run #9- DX10 2048x1536 AA=No AA, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 18.59
Run #10- DX10 2048x1536 AA=4x, 64 bit test, Quality: VeryHigh ~~ Overall Average FPS: 16.025

The thing that perplexes me is that going from 1280x960 to 1600x1200 results in a 16 FPS drop? What would cause such a thing? I can't really seem to figure it out, because every other jump in resolution results in much less of a decline. I'll also note that I was watching the 1600 runs and noticed that the FPS seemed to be locked at 19-20. It didn't seem to budge whatsoever (either up nor down).

What's so magical about 1600x1200?

 

[Nenu]

Its over 50% more pixels than 1280x960.
The performance drop is in the right ballpark, if a bit high.
Try a different driver and it might make up the difference.