Crysis

[polonyc2]

I love the 'grab the enemy by the throat' and toss him through a wall---against a rock---into the ocean---over a cliff aspect of the game...I never get tired of it

[Pentium4]

Thanks for the great pics polonyc2, am still waiting for my pre-order to arrive....from Mongolia, hand delivered by a half blind Yak herder Anyway can you please tell me what Crytek have done about the activation, and whether you have to jump through any hoops, or deposit a pee-pee dna sample to prove that you actually bought it before it installs

[polonyc2]

Originally Posted by Pentium4

Anyway can you please tell me what Crytek have done about the activation, and whether you have to jump through any hoops, or deposit a pee-pee dna sample to prove that you actually bought it before it installs

no issues at all with activation...in fact I don't even remember being asked to activate (so if I can't remember then it must not have been a big deal at all)...setting the game up to run at decent settings is the biggest issue for most people but looking at your system specs you should be able to run the game fine

[polonyc2]

here is an excellent Crysis tweak guide, which explains in detail all the different graphical settings available in the game and tells you which ones you can disable/enable and what effect they will have on your game...also comes with detailed screenshots of all the different Advanced settings...a must read for those who are struggling with the graphics options along with those looking to squeeze out more performance

bit-tech.net | Crysis - Graphics Presets

***pages 4-8 of that article deals with the Advanced Graphics aspects

[SpeedDMN]

Polonyc2, Have you seen any performance improvements over the demo? I am leery of getting the game if I am going to have the same problems I had with the demo. TQ gave some nice suggestions on possible solutions, but I haven't gotten around to trying them yet. I have been busy playing COD4 on my desktop (runs flawlessly @ 16x12 with everything maxed) Kinda a pain to have to tinker with it especially if I have to change stuff back for other games and music..

[polonyc2]

Originally Posted by SpeedDMN

Polonyc2, Have you seen any performance improvements over the demo?

nope...none at all...I think the demo is exactly the same as the final version...for performance improvements I think you need to wait for 1) patches---the first of which is scheduled to be released within 2 weeks and/or 2) updated drivers from Nvidia/ATI

[SpeedDMN]

Yeah kinda what I figured. I may wait until the new rig to play that one. I also may lose patience and get it anyway. Maybe if I can tweak the demo to work reasonably I will get the retail version.

edit: I was just looking at close our specs are assuming you are still using the rig in your sig. We have the same main board, same CPU cooler, about the same memory, and same sound card. You may have an advantage with the dual core over my faster single, but I would think the SLi video I am running would make up for it. Just seems if it runs decent for you it should for me..Who knows..I forget, are you running Vista? Sorry I probably should remember that..

[iMogal]

According to the IRC chat posted over at inCrysis.com, Crysis is orginally designed as a trilogy, so two more are coming.
Fudzilla

[johnrr6]

Settings I finally went with:

1024 x 768

AA = 2x (huge difference in the graphics quality if you shut this one off---but it's at least a 10 FPS hit on performance.....

Sound= Medium
Post Processing= Medium
Particle Effects= Medium
These three did not seem to affect anything to my eye except give me a bump in FPS----I couldn't tell a difference with sound....

Everything else on High

I'm getting 27 - 33 FPS with even intense action which to me is MUCH more playable....

Without the headaches.....

And the overall visuals are superb----much more in line with Poly's screen shots

I tried a lot to find some good settings for me at 1280 x 1050-----but just couldn't seem to get FPS upwards of 23-25 without limiting the visual experience a TON.

In the end---I gave up on a tad wider screen with a little more depth for a totally smooth experience.

And NO headaches......

I may mess with overclocking the Graphics card a bit to see if I could get around 30 FPS at 1280 x 1024

I think newer Vista drivers will help this situation a LOT----my guess is that they can "tune" the Vista drivers for an 8800 GTX some...

Even a 10% boost in FPS could make some of the higher Res settings much more playable

[polonyc2]

Originally Posted by SpeedDMN

Yeah kinda what I figured. I may wait until the new rig to play that one. I also may lose patience and get it anyway. Maybe if I can tweak the demo to work reasonably I will get the retail version.

edit: I was just looking at close our specs are assuming you are still using the rig in your sig. We have the same main board, same CPU cooler, about the same memory, and same sound card. You may have an advantage with the dual core over my faster single, but I would think the SLi video I am running would make up for it. Just seems if it runs decent for you it should for me..Who knows..I forget, are you running Vista? Sorry I probably should remember that..

yeah I'm still using the rig in my sig with XP...I thought before the game came out that I would be able to play the game on 'High' with no real issues and that has indeed been the case...as far as the video card, I remember in an earlier interview where the lead game designer of Crysis said that he was using an X1900XT to play the game during the development process and that card should be fine to run the game at 'High' settings...looks like he was right

I'm sure the dual core helps over a single core but the game is still way more GPU dependant then CPU dependant

sure I wish I was getting 60 fps but the game is very playable for me at fairly high end settings so I'm happy---for now...at least until I build my next gaming rig with DX 10.1

you should play with the demo to see if you can get it working decently before buying the game...otherwise wait till your next upgrade...like I said in an earlier post, Crysis is meant to be played at a minimum of 'High' graphical settings to experience the 'real' beauty of the game ...anything less and I wouldn't even bother buying the game

playing it with all or most settings on 'Low' or 'Medium' takes away a lot of the experience...graphics aren't the only thing that matters in a game but Crysis might be the exception to the rule

edit: it says in your sig that you are using the Abit SLI board...I'm using the Asus A8N32 SLI board

[johnrr6]

The consumate guide for tweaking Crysis for performance:

TweakGuides.com - Crysis Tweak Guide

Has everything but the kitchen sink.....

Claims playing in DX9 mode offers large performance boost with very neglible, virtually unnoticeable, hits to visual quality....

Also, at the end he proposes an easy and quick method of getting "Very High" settings on the cheap with not a lot of performance hit.....

But then again---he claims that 20 FPS is "certainly playable" in Crysis which for me is just not true.....

I have an 8800 GTX and an overclocked Quad Core and 4 gigs of RAM....

The game stresses the heck out of it----and Vista and DX10 seem to slow it further......

So I'm going to give the DX9 thing a try----will let you know.....

Just through some general tweaking----I've got the game running smooth as a baby's bottom---approx 30 FPS----In almost ALL high settings....

But my resolution is a low 1024 x 768

I'd love to get the same visual experience and smooth gameplay at at least 1280 x 1024.....

[TQ]

Hey, John...like I said earlier: XP, 1680x1050, all settings on high - no AA - and the demo ran great and looked fabulous.

[johnrr6]

Originally Posted by TQ

Hey, John...like I said earlier: XP, 1680x1050, all settings on high - no AA - and the demo ran great and looked fabulous.

Yeah----seems Vista and DX10 are kinda slooooow

What's really killing me though is AA.....

At least to me-----the graphical quality difference to this game with no AA are huge.....

And even at just 2X AA-----Crysis looks sooooo much better----at least to me----realizing everyone has different "tastes" when it comes to graphical quality

Trouble is----just going to 2X AA automatically drops your frames by 10 -12

I will never go SLI----so I'm stuck with making do with what I thought was a pretty darn "high end" setup

So it goes.....another casulty of the "bleeding edge" of technology

[SpeedDMN]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

yeah I'm still using the rig in my sig with XP...I thought before the game came out that I would be able to play the game on 'High' with no real issues and that has indeed been the case...as far as the video card, I remember in an earlier interview where the lead game designer of Crysis said that he was using an X1900XT to play the game during the development process and that card should be fine to run the game at 'High' settings...looks like he was right

I'm sure the dual core helps over a single core but the game is still way more GPU dependant then CPU dependant

sure I wish I was getting 60 fps but the game is very playable for me at fairly high end settings so I'm happy---for now...at least until I build my next gaming rig with DX 10.1

you should play with the demo to see if you can get it working decently before buying the game...otherwise wait till your next upgrade...like I said in an earlier post, Crysis is meant to be played at a minimum of 'High' graphical settings to experience the 'real' beauty of the game ...anything less and I wouldn't even bother buying the game

playing it with all or most settings on 'Low' or 'Medium' takes away a lot of the experience...graphics aren't the only thing that matters in a game but Crysis might be the exception to the rule

edit: it says in your sig that you are using the Abit SLI board...I'm using the Asus A8N32 SLI board

Funny how the game seems to play better with an ATI card when there is a "Nvidia, the way it's meant to be played" ad when you first load the game. I need to make a new sig. I don't even know what I did with the original template to edit it, but I am now running a ASUS A8N32 SLi Deluxe. I know what you mean though about high or nothing, which is why I spent an exorbitant amount of money building this rig about 2 years ago now. It irritates me that it will no longer play some of the latest games maxed when it was state of the art at the time. Some still do like COD4. That was some awesome coding IMHO. I'm pretty sure a lot of my problem with Crysis is some sort of sound conflict. I may play with it a bit today and see what happens. I was wanting to wait to upgrade until the 9800GTX came out, but that seems dead in the water. I am even skeptical about the upgrade program since it has a 3 month deadline. I would have to hear about some sort of official release date before I took that gamble. With my luck the card would come out at 3 months + 3 days or something.

[polonyc2]

ATI has released the Catalyst 7.11 graphics driver. The driver contains a range of fixes, however note that ATI recommends Crysis players continue to use the ATI Hotfix drivers instead of these

ATI Hotfix Crysis drivers

AMD Customer Care