Crysis performance

[toblix]

Okay, so I've got a C2D E6600 2,4Ghz CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 8800GTX card, and even in 1024x768 it's not playable with all the settings set to very high. I knew this game was a system hog, but Jesus. I'm upgrading to the latest 169.04 drivers now to see if there's any difference.

[Noyb]

Laptop stats: 2.00 ghz dual core, 2 gb ram, GeForce 8600 M GT

On 1024x768 the demo was playable on medium settings, although the lips were horribly out-of-sync during the opening cutscene, and it lagged like crazy when trying to render the jet exhaust. Everything else was pretty smooth.

As for the game itself, I can't help thinking that most of the "unique" abilities (sans the chokehold and the physics melee attack) were already done well in Deus Ex. Destroyable trees is admittedly a pretty cool feature, but I just feel like this game is far too soulless for me to want to pick up now, especially in this packed holiday season.

[Thrik]

Yeah, this game is definitely designed to be ahead of its time.

There's actually an 'Ultra High' that can be accessed through some console fiddling, which brings it almost exactly in line with those earlier E3 previews (that many thought were pre-rendered). Needless to say, this is a mode you don't want to be enabling until your computer hails from 2010.

I'm on similar specifications to you, and I also have to tone down my graphics in some very key areas to get good performance. With that said, if I go down to 1024x768 instead of my native 1920x1200 I can get it pretty playable on 'Very High'; I'm not sure if it's the 169.04 drivers I use that make that possible.

Anyway, here's my way to get 1920x1200 looking great but also running at 25+ fps:

1. Download the .zip file I've attached

2. Go to C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis SP Demo\Game\Config\CVarGroups

3. Make a backup of everything in that folder

4. Overwrite everything in that folder with the contents of my .zip

5. Play Crysis in DirectX 9 mode; if you're on XP this will always be the case, if on Vista you need to go to 'Games' in the start menu and right click the Crysis launcher

6. Change all in-game settings to 'High' (the highest available in DirectX 9) except Post Processing and Shadows, which want to be on 'Medium'

Unfortunately DirectX 10 still seems to have quite a bit of overhead in comparison to DirectX 9, which means that using the same settings in both will invariably result in worse performance on DirectX 10. I think this is because to really take advantage of DirectX 10 the game needs to be totally focused on making the most of that API; however, this comes at the cost of no DirectX 9 compatibility (which obviously isn't acceptable at the moment).

Weirdly though, there's not really anything in Crysis that needs DirectX 10 to work; the configuration settings are simply hidden from you when you play in DirectX 9. My modified config files trick the game by copying all the DirectX 10 settings into 'High' mode. So when you play with 'High', you've actually go the 'Very High' configuration running, but without the DirectX 10 shader overhead. The only exception to this is 'Objects', which I left at their normal 'High' level as they do degrade performance quite a lot with very little visible difference.

This always gives me 20+ fps in 1920x1200, so it should definitely be very playable on 1024x768.

Note that if you find very little difference in frame rate between a low and a high resolution, that's a sign your processor is bottlenecking your graphics card. Your processor should overclock to around 3GHz on air cooling, FYI.

crysis_config.zip

[toblix]

Yeah, I'll probably increase the frequency a bit, and see if that helps. I'm passively cooling the CPU, though, so I can't just set it to The Max. Anyway, installing the 139.04 or whatever the latest version was again didn't help much. However, renaming crysis.exe to something else helped, and also got rid of some nasty graphics bugs I noticed earlier. So now I'm playing on 1280x960 with everything on very high and post processing on high, and things seem to go smoothly.

However, the game itself hasn't really captured me yet. Maybe soulless is the word, I dunno. Even though everything's really polished and the island is vast and open somehow I keep wishing it was more like HL2 or something. Hopefully I'll become more engrossed as I progress.

[Thrik]

I personally think the game is ace. The storyline seems like it could be pretty cool having played through the whole demo, but more importantly I just love the feel of going around the island and taking on the (sub-)objectives at your leisure.

It seems more balanced than Far Cry was, in that you're actually confined to a loose path but the path happens to be a million miles wide. So getting through different parts of the island can be as action-filled as you make it, and if you want to just take guys out for the sake of it you can have a great time doing so.

I kind of imagine myself in a Solid Snake type position though, and try to use stealth as much as possible. The sandbox nature of the game encourages coming up with your own rules, and my rules are to totally avoid detection and take everyone out cleanly.

Of course I've just gone mental and blown everything the hell up too, and it can get really exciting when you've got the context-sensitive soundtrack blasting away and reinforcements swamping you with gunfire.

I suppose it's a game that requires more from the player than most, just like Far Cry was. It doesn't hold your hand, but instead gives you objectives that're miles away and expects you to choose how to approach it yourself; if you don't like messing guys up just for the sake of messing guys up it could be a very brief game. Probably the opposite of HL2 in that respect, which led you on a very tight course and forced you to interact with each adversary.

I'm hoping the final game has more sub-objectives like the demo where you're told there's an outpost somewhere with some intelligence or whatever, and just getting in and out of there can be half an hour of gameplay. If you try to do it stealthily anyway, which is fairly mandatory when playing on the hardest difficulty. :~ The reward is just some backstory, but it's at least an incentive.

[Roderick]

[sphaloman]

I only tried the demo and my computer runs this game like crap =/, only able to play it on low.

[LOPcagney]

Laptop stats: 2.00 ghz dual core, 2 gb ram, GeForce 8600 M GT

On 1024x768 the demo was playable on medium settings, although the lips were horribly out-of-sync during the opening cutscene, and it lagged like crazy when trying to render the jet exhaust. Everything else was pretty smooth.

As for the game itself, I can't help thinking that most of the "unique" abilities (sans the chokehold and the physics melee attack) were already done well in Deus Ex. Destroyable trees is admittedly a pretty cool feature, but I just feel like this game is far too soulless for me to want to pick up now, especially in this packed holiday season.

Yeah. I believe there was an interview once where the designer said something to the effect of "we tried to eliminate artistic style from the game completely". The effect is a beautiful game that looks not quite so beautiful (unplayable) at low settings. I was so excited for this! It's a shame I won't be able to play it.