Crysis Demo Impressions

27 Oct

Posted by James Hyde as Articles, Featured story, News, PC

Let’s get one thing straight; unless you have a supercomputer at home, you’re not going to be “blown away” by the visuals. There, I said it. Now, if you do happen to own a rather powerful machine, the graphics will certainly impress you unlike any other game. If you can get a decent frame rate to enjoy it, that is.

As many others, I downloaded the demo, installed, and played with the suggested settings. Let’s be honest, the visuals weren’t impressive, neither was the frame rate. This would be okay if my PC wasn’t up to date, but actually, it’s pretty “up to date”, with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 7950 GT, and 2 GB RAM (in Win XP). And I still got a not-so-good frame rate, playable, but not something that’s going to make you enjoy the game to its full potential.

Unimpressed, I went and overclocked my CPU to 3 GHz, and overclocked the graphics card as much as I could. Back into Crysis, I set everything to “Medium”, 2xAA, and a resolution of 16580×1050. The game didn’t look that much better, and the frame rate was around 25, dropping to under 20 during heavy combat in the jungle. Dropping the resolution and increasing the AA (to 4x) didn’t show any noticeable difference in the visuals or frame rate.

Of course, one can’t expect that a game like Crysis would run smoothly on every machine, especially on high settings (meduim settings, in my case). But comparing it to the Unreal Tournament 3 demo, the difference is huge. UT3 ran on high settings and delivered great visuals and great frame rate. So did Call of Duty 4. We’ll have to see what happens when the full versions of those three games are out, only then can one properly compare. But at least we have a pretty good indication that you will need a very powerful PC to run Crysis in its full glory. Check out some screens I took after the jump.

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Tags: Articles, Featured story, News, PC

18 Responses

Anuban

October 27th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
1

You have to keep in mind that the UT3 demo was NOT using the HIGH res/full textures … it uses medium textures only so really to be fair you would have to set all the texture settings to medium and also most of the other settings to really compare this to UT3.

Also if you have Vista it automatically loads with DX10 and if you want to you can then choose the “Very High” choices and if you think it looks amazing in DX9 then you will be blown away by how it looks with “very high” settings. Of course you can’t use AA or your PC will become a slide show.

It is really something that this game demands so much. I can’t see this game selling a huge amount of copies out the gate unless they really do some major optimizing. As it is if you are a Vista user and don’t have at least an 8800 GTX and a quad core processor then you don’t have a chance in hell of running this on a even all high settings. If you want to use the Very High settings you will definitely need an SLI setup of GTX gpus and that is really lousy.

Heck my system is an Opteron 185 dual core OCed to 2.8 Ghz (faster than an FX-60 so it is pretty good for a dual core cpu), 2GB Ram, and a 8800 GTS 320MB Oced to 580/866 (over 1700 effective) and I will say that with things set to medium in Vista using the 163.75 beta drivers I get pretty decent performance. I can up the textures to Very High and it still is pretty cool. But that is all. Now when I launch the DX9 version I can put everything on HIGH and get decent frames but really it is not playable. But the interesting thing is when I turn the setting for Volumetric and Shaders back down to medium then things are pretty smooth. Of course this is without using AA. I refuse to even try AA until the optimized retail version comes out.

I know how much we all want this game but I really don’t think it is ready for prime time … no way. They need to spend at least one more full month on optimizing the game for XP yeah but really they need to get the DX10 stuff working well because that is really their strong selling point over UE3 and games like Gears of War PC (which I am totally stocked about … just have to get my Windows compatible game pad next week when I pick up all my other accessories (new Blue Controller, IM keyboard for the 360 controller, points, XBox Live 12 month subscription, and three games … VF5, Timeshift, and The Simpsons) ) and without that then Epic will win the Shooter wars on the PC.

I think so many people will have problems with this on the PC … and I foresee a ton of patches and gpu driver updates. The solution as always is just to port this game to the 360 … of course it will use the medium textures but still at least a stable fps would most likely occur.

Bottomline: Nice demo but Crytek really has more work to do if they really expect this game to do well. This is one of those instances when releasing a demo that has major performance issues may really hurt the bottom line. They may need to release another demo once they fix the optimization issues.

Now excuse me while I go back to UT3! And while I wait for my copy of Gears PC to come in the mail.
Anuban

October 27th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
2

Oh I see … you didn’t think the visuals were that great … hmmm. Well I can’t say I agree with that … especially using DX10 they really blow away anything I have ever seen. I though Bioshock had really great water but the water in this game on “Very High” is unsurpassed by anything currently available. But again what good is all this amazing visual goodness when you can’t play the game? It just straight up sucks but I am hoping that with so much negative feedback they hold off on the release until early next year. I know it is a blow but I would rather have a really well done game no matter how long it takes.

The best example I can give you all is Half-Life 2. I mean yeah I complained a lot about it taking 6 years but as we all know it was worth the wait. When it came out the game could run on tons of PCs showing that the team put a great deal of work into the optimization of the Source engine. The Crytek team needs to take a page out of that book and get this new IP right the first time. But I just have a feeling that EA is really anxious to get this out the door … especially with Army of Two being delayed until next year. Here’s hoping though.
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October 27th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
3

[...] Crysis Demo Impressions [...]
Anuban

October 27th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
4

Boy they really really need to work on the little things … like the interiors, the barrels, the computers, crates, trucks … they definitely got the jungle and water down perfectly but the rest looks like it is from two years ago or more. And this is with EVERYTHING set to Very High … man I am really not liking this. Gears of War completely blows this away graphically in almost every way. Now I know why Rein said they still think that Gears looks better … with Gears getting hi-res textures and minor improvements the PC version is going to beat this game out for any PC game of the year awards. Heck UT3 may prove to do that as well unless Crytek really has something up their sleeves before the release.
James Hyde

October 28th, 2007 at 2:40 am
5

I didn’t say it didn’t look good, I said it didn’t look good on medium settings, which is how many gamers will play Crysis. Compare Crysis at medium and UT3 at medium (and GoW for that matter) - Crysis doesn’t stand a chance. On the highest settings though, I doubt anything can match it.
Richdog

October 28th, 2007 at 4:53 am
6

Goodness grief you are playing with a 7950GT… Crysis has been designed to scale for another year on the latest hardware and you are complaining about performance on a card that it now largely underpowered ofr modern games, ESPECIALLY at a resolution of 1680*1050? AND using AA? Are you nuts? :p

Fair enough the demo may need optimising, but get yourself an 8800 series card and then play it some more. It’s a next-gen game designed fo next-gen hardware.

And UT3 is a completely different engine, you simply can’t do a direct comparison between the two. Crysis is MUCH more open in terms of it’s envirments and has a completely different set of heavy AI/Physics routines which will hit any rig hard.

Rich.
The Wicker Man

October 28th, 2007 at 8:11 am
7

Next Gen? What’s so damn next gen about it? I love the story,graphics and the land scapes….. but wtf?! This is not next gen, wow the trees break in half, but half life 2 pwned this game on rag doll. You have this

Physics :

Trees
Items, barrels,cans,other crap

But the players don’t move?! I like to see people roll or something in that nature, this game will be madly over hyped.

Like Anu said, UT3/Gears looks so much better. The water/jungle amazing, the graphics amazing. But the gameplay is falling short, it just feels like another shooter to me, where DOOM 3 and Half life 2 actually changed it

Doom 3 brough you darkness, made you think. Some might say different but not only did DOOm 3 change the graphics end it also brought you into the game. Brought in you in the game, the lighting was amazing, the engine was awesome.Atleast the people somewhat moved, crysis they just stick to the ground.

Half life 2, ground breaking graphics, still I feel the game fell short from doom 3. But still,brought you 2 amazing mods and many more like TF2,Natural Selection 2, TS 2 is coming out too. Where DOOM 3 gave you the freak factor/horror, piece together the story and etc with amazing lighting to give you the feeling of being a lone.

Half life 2 completely pwned other games in other areas with physics. The rag doll is what made me love CSS. The graphics was amazing, both DOOm 3 and CSS made my stomach drop. I couldn’t believe it, with crysis it just feels like another game, nothing really new. I feel crytek relied way to much on the graphics end of the game, yeah the suit probably will change gaming for this genre.

But, Just something is missing. I feel with the hype it would own in all areas…

Graphics (check)
Physics (good)
Player physics (blows)
Water (like far cry, amazing)
AI ( I noticed sometimes the guys would aim straight up in the air).

Overall the game is amazing, but It completely didn’t live up to the hype. I was all excited to play the MP, let down. Then this, let me down yet again. I’m hoping the game will be a lot better on the single player.
The Wicker Man

October 28th, 2007 at 8:13 am
8

Richdog,

I so thought the same, but crysis was actually designed for the 7800gt for the dx9 end of graphics. This is what I was told by crytek in the beta, but I’m having problems hitting 40 fps on high on dx10 with 2 8800gtx :-\
roy

October 28th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
9

you people are crazy. i run the game at 800 x 600 with the textures, water, and particles on high. Everything else on medium. i have a amd 3400 64 bit (not dual core) processor. 1.5 gigs ram. evga 7600gt stock. At these setting the game is unbelievable. looks WAY better than ut3 demo (yes i know about the textures being on medium in ut3 demo) graphics = really good, gameplay = amazing; why do you people run at such high res? overall, i am very impressed with this demo. I will buy the game when it comes out.

ps- gears of war graphics = ut3 demo graphics. including sniper rifle. dont worry, gears was god and ut3 demo is great.
roy

October 28th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
10

ps- SLI can slow down your rig if the game doesnt support it
roy

October 28th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
11

sorry, never said my FPS- with the setting i mentioned above, 25 average with fraps running.
The Wicker Man

October 29th, 2007 at 6:09 am
12

Roy, all new games support sli now. Just like how must of them are supporting the 360 controller. It’s like automatic for cars now, before it was for the rich, only few people had it. Now, it’s just part of the car. Same with gaming, the technology was to new for most developers, now most motherboards offer sli, shit even 4x sli now. lets hope!
Anuban

October 29th, 2007 at 7:50 am
13

Well I just played through the demo twice to make sure about DX9 vs DX10 and it is clear that DX9 rules and that unless you have a quad cpu/8800 GTX in SLI then you really are not going to be able to see it in DX10 like it is intended to look.

When I played through the game in DX9 mode I was able to turn all the settings up to HIGH and have a really good playthrough … the game looked fantastic and the fps stayed nice and smooth (until that last cut scene which I know something is wrong with that and they will fix it). I was playing in 1680×1050 and like I said it did look really nice … however it still doesn’t impress me like Gears did for whatever reason.

Now using DX10 I cannot keep everything on high and get good fps … it becomes a slide show … and that sucks because the Crytek devs were promising that the DX10 performance would actually be a bit better than DX9. Now the new Nvidia beta drivers do help out alot and that is why I was able to run the game with DX10 with all the settings on medium and get playable frames but still they lagged behind DX9 … some places it was really bad.

So in summary play the game in DX9 if you have a pretty high end system but it is not an Ultra system. You will still love the graphics and have a really good time because for the most part the frames are nice.

Now my PC is nothing special: Opteron 185/8800 GTS 320/2GB RAM - My cpu is was OCed to 2.73Ghz and my GTS to 580/866. I am going to upgrade to a Q6600 but I am waiting for some real benchmarks on Gears, UT3, CoD4, and Crysis (WiC should be used as well).
Leon

October 31st, 2007 at 5:45 am
14

I downloaded and played the demo with my 2Ghz core 2 duo, 2 GB, Nvidia 8500GT and i turned up all the details n stuff but had to play in 800X600 resolution to get smooth frame rates it still looks good and plays well but in high resolutions it becomes choppy…..atleast i can run it so i guess its not all that bad…..
XX3

November 5th, 2007 at 9:56 am
15

I hope that you are all aware that one cannot just simply compare the performance of computers like that. It depends on what software is running in the background etc. It is also definitly true that even if two computers have the same amount of RAM they are not necessarily of the same speed because there are different kinds of RAM.

You should also consider that it is only logical that the game’s performance is different under DirectX 10. Microsoft has made changes to the rendering pipeline, for example, which allow developers to deliver stunning visual which are quite fast to render considering their complexity but which of course still need a lot of processing power.

I think that crytek’s work on the cry engine 2 is stunning. Considering the quality of the visuals, the game is really fast and it is amazing that the physics are as bug free as they are.

I have never seen anything like it before in real time…
Ben Calvert

November 10th, 2007 at 8:26 am
16

Your computers must be really messed up.
I have a E4400, 2GB RAM and a X1950 Pro.
Ran the game at all medium, with post processing, texture detail on high, water detail on low. Ran it at a resolution of 1280×1024, looks absolutely stunning.
Blows every other game out of the water even on these settings. Only problem is when i try to add even 2AA, the game becomes unplayable, however, im sure the retail version will be far better optimized.
The Wicker Man

November 10th, 2007 at 8:46 am
17

Ben, what OS you running?

On dx9 on xp I can max the game out.

On dx10 with vista, I needed 4 gbs on ram just to play it on high.
Sam

November 15th, 2007 at 7:50 am
18

Having played the demo and not having anything close to what this game needs, I can tell you I think the the plays alot like Far Cry With all the special powers.
I defaulted everything to low and 800×600 res and got 30 FPS Most of the time.
Being I am running single core Pentium 4 2.8 ghz with only an X1950 pro 512 mb
I realized you can’t destroy building unless MED SETTINGS ARE ON PHYSICS Settings. but a pretty good game. What this game needs for sure is a machine no less than 4 cores with 8800 GTX to enjoy everything the way it was meant. Bt who the @$#$ can afford that???