Crysis Hardware Performance Guide
by Doug Jordan

For the majority of PC gamers, Crysis is like a Victoria’s secret model. That is to say, she looks good on paper, but is unattainable in the real world. Thankfully, we understand and are here to help. Crysis has been known to bring even the most powerful PC’s to their knees, but with some smart hardware upgrades or even a few simple tweaks, you can get the most out of this epic game. Here’s how:

The first thing you should know is that the operating system you choose to run will impact the game’s performance. Windows XP users are in luck, because the game runs noticeably better in XP. The reasons for this aren’t clear, other than that at this stage in its lifestyle, Windows XP is pretty mature. The operating system has been finely tuned, as have the DirectX9 video drivers for Windows XP from companies like Nvidia and ATI.

If you are running Microsoft Vista, you get the added benefit of DirectX10 graphics support , but be prepared for the fact that Vista treats system resources like an all-u-can-eat buffet. It likes to have an extra helping of your ram and other resources. If you want to be able to experience Crysis using “high” graphics settings in Vista, it’s going to take the right hardware, as well as the right version of Vista.

Make no mistake, 64-bit Vista is the way to go, assuming you have a processor that can run it. The reason for choosing 64-bit Vista is that it supports 4-8 gigs of ram, whereas 32-bit Vista is capped at a little over 3 gigs. If you take into account the fact that Vista alone recommends 2 gigs of ram, and add to that Crysis’s Vista system requirements for 1.5 gigs of ram, you will see that ram plays an important role here.

We experienced problems when attempting to run Crysis in Vista 64-bit using all “high” settings with only 2 gigs of ram. The game would encounter various hiccups and pauses when we tried to look through our assault scope or sniper scope, or quickly run from one locale to another. After we installed two more gigs of ram, bringing our system total to 4 gigs, the game ran considerably smoother and most of these hiccups and pauses were eliminated.

Next, we tried tweaking each of the game’s graphics settings. For many people, running the game in all “high” settings is desirable, but probably unrealistic.

Luckily for you, we decided it would be helpful to determine which of the graphics settings make the biggest difference in performance. Our goal is to help you find the settings that will benefit your performance the most, while still giving you the top-notch visual experience avid PC gamers come to expect. We’ve included screenshots to help.

Take a look at the following screenshots, which compare how the game looks running in DirectX10 under very high, high, medium and low settings in 1280x1024 resolution.

Low Resolution (click to enlarge)	Medium Resolution (click to enlarge)
High Resolution (click to enlarge)	Very High Resolution (click to enlarge)

If your system can only run the game in medium settings, no need to worry, because as you can see, the game still looks better than just about everything else on the market. “High” and “very high” settings are jaw dropping, but substantially stressful for your PC. “Very high” settings are mostly unattainable at this time without using multiple, high-end video cards in an SLI (Nvidia) or Crossfire (ATI) supported setup.

We’ve used the following PC running 64-bit Vista to show you how Crysis performs in various graphics settings in DirectX10.

Specifications for our test computer:
Motherboard: Asus X38 “Maximus Formula” Socket 775 Intel motherboard, supporting Crossfire technology.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (“Go” Stepping”) overclocked to 3.2 ghz on air cooling.
Ram: Crucial Ballistix DDR 1066 (PC 8500) Ram, 4x1gb sticks running at 5-5-5-15 timings, 1066 mhz at 2.2v (recommended voltages) .
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon 3870 HD with 512 mb video ram (overclocked to 830 mhz GPU clock/1201 mhz memory clock using Catalyst control panel “ATI Overdrive” feature.)
Operating System: Vista 64-bit Home Premium with DirectX10
Drivers/Patches: Crysis with version 1.1 patch, Catalyst Control Panel Suite 8.1


The chart above shows the average number of frames per second we were able to obtain by running the game in low, medium, high or very high settings in two of the games more notable levels: onslaught and paradise lost.

**Possible Spoilers**

Onslaught involves a massive tank battle in open terrain, whereas Paradise Lost takes place in a sub-zero environment with blowing snow.

**End Spoilers**

We chose to measure performance in these levels because both can push your computer to its limits in different ways. As you can see, frames per second dropped in the snow level. Also note: all of our tests were run in 1280x1024 resolution.

In low settings, our PC was able to push close to 100 frames per second (fps) in both levels. In medium settings, however, we topped out at just under 60 fps in the tank level and under 46 fps in the snow level. In all “high” settings, our fps maxed out at just under 33. And in all “very high” settings, our frame rate maxed out below 23 frames per second.

In the next section, we look at which individual graphics settings make the biggest difference in performance. Our goal is to help you tweak the settings that will benefit your performance the most, while still providing the “maximum” Crysis experience.

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