Must Tri Harder: Even Nvidia Tri-SLI isn't enough for Crysis

Tech.co.uk - James Morris, 13 Dec 2007:

"What are we to make of a game that is too intensive for even the fastest graphics platforms on the planet? German website PC Games Hardware has managed to get its hands on an early sample of Nvidia's Tri-SLI. And, amazingly, even a trio of Nvidia Geforce 8800 Ultras isn't enough to play Crysis at maximum quality settings at HD resolution. Is Crysis too demanding for any hardware currently available?"

[Charlie2688]

Oh boy I hope "King Eric" wont read this!! this will even further invalidate his post o.O!

In another more positive and more liar-free view of things...What will it take to tame the beast that is Crysis? WHAT!!! O.O!

[sloth4urluv]

everyone makes this game out like its impossible to run.

It runs just fine @1280x1024 4xAA and high settings (DX9 high) at around 30 or 40 something fps.

I only have a single 8800GTS(640MB), 2GB DDR1 ram, and a AMD X2 4400 (2.2ghz)

I know the processor im using is bottlenecking my system, and the game still runs fine.

[JsonHenry]

Dude, I have a system almost identical to yours and I can run the game at similar settings. Actually, I can run the game at that resolution with the hacked config files so that it runs in DX10 mode and it runs just fine.

What are these guys wanting? 300 Frames Per Sec?

[NRG]

They're talking about running the game in "HD" resolution. By computer standards, that's resolutions like 1920x1440 and 2560x1600. Those resolutions will smack up pretty much any computer in any game when 16x FSAA and 16x AF is applied. Not to mention three videos cards is almost useless today, even for Crysis. The third GPU probably isn't being utilized, as it's brand new, and just makes more work for the CPU. Normal SLI could almost yield slightly better fps for now.

[Charlie2688]

@sloth4urluv: I run the game at 1680x1050 with everything at max on DX9 (I can turn some DX10 stuff and don't suffer from such huge performance drop) and get 30-35fps I think I could get and extra fps if I update the new NVIDIA drivers (the beta ones) and I have a Core 2 Duo E6850 3.00GHz the same 8800GTS640MB Supercloacked and 4GB of DDR2 RAM

I was talking about running everything on DX10 on HD res and full settings, cuz hell even the GS Crysis hardware guide they said that they had currently NOTHING that could run the game fine on MAX setting

[gEnKiE]

Makes you wonder what the Crytek team used to even make this game....They had to test the game didnt they?

[Bathyj]

Maybe Crysis should have been made for consoles. At least then they can push their limits but its a stable platform with only one configuration. It might not be as pretty as it is now but at least everyone could run it.

[Jen5en]

Crysis was made for future PC's, and to show off CryEngine 2. Of course, there'll always be those liars who claim that their PC "run Crysis in 2500x1600 with 16 x AA, and everything on very high with 120 fps", but they can't fool anyone.

Perhaps in 1-2 years, some rigs will do that, but for now we'll have to turn the graphics way down in order to have a somewhat steady framerate... and that's not why we bought Crysis in the first place.

[gta_cb]

im not saying PC gaming is wrong, but this is a reason i dont do ALL of my gaming on it. i like consoles as you only have to buy it once then all the games work on it :)

i for one will have to wait for a year or 2 before i can even think of going 3X SLI so i doubt i will be playing this game for a long time as i want to be amazed at the graphics

[Strife Lives]

This game sucks. Go on people.tell me you dont need a 5 thousand dollar pc to run it on max.thats what I always hear people say here. Heres ur answer. How much do you need invested into a pc to run it on max? How bout ? ? ? ? dollars. Meh. I'd rather play Halo 3,COD 4, killzone 2 etc. Gameplay is better than Crysis anyway.it is my opinion,but, I also feel more comfortable on a couch with a 360 controler in my hand with my girlfriend and looking at a HD tv.

[Lotto]

Rofl okay dude this game is game is really the only next gen game out there if you ask me. it has great gfx and awesome gameplay. Its really one of the best fps games I have played in a few years also the editor rocks. I love how you say halo 3 and cod 4 have better gameplay but you haven't even played crysis have you ? also saying killzone 2 has better gameplay is just so damn stupid the game isn't even out. Oh and regarding running crysis you don't need such a high end system you can run it really well on a none sli computer with must stuff on high and 1,280 x 720 and with no AA but does that really matter ? it still looks better then any game out there with those settings.

BTW cod 5 got MUCH better gameplay and gfx then crysis and halo3!!!!

[NRG]

A girl? Sitting and watching you play video games? That's either a lie or that relationship isn't going to last. :p

[killer_trap]

never liked PC gaming. after all I'm afraid of mice!!!!

[Lumbo]

Slowly i begin to believe that the Crysis team did not optimize their engine at all. How can you DARE to release something that won't even run smooth on the most powerful system you can get for money? Smells like sloppy programming if you ask me.

Imho its OK to program for the most advanced tech available, but the moment you develop and fail to run smooth on even that you did something wrong.

[killer_trap]

just wait for the next unreal engine.. it'll blow farcry in efficiency and ease of use.

edit: i guess it will

[NRG]

It wouldn't be stable or very playable on older systems if they hadn't optimized, and it's certainly both. I played it on an AMD 3000 with a 6800GT for crying out loud. In my opinion, the only people who wonder why Crysis is hard to run is the people who have never seen anything more than high-res screenshots. When you see it in motion on your screen, on high settings, there's no questions asked.

[theox2g7]

half life 2 and oblivion, one of pc's most successful games couldn't be maxed out completely on any hardware when they came out, this is no news, groundbreaking pc games with amazing visuals always pushes current gen hardware and brings it to its knees, that's how improvement occurs, if u know ur history well, u know that's the case with most pc games, they start out where nobody can max it out, a few years later when capable hardware comes out, they release patches that even further improve visuals that is what u calling scaling ur game engine forward, Cevart Yerli said this in one of his interviews, that's how pcs have been for years, this is NOT NEWS at all

About the unreal engine, it definitely runs better but then it doesn't bring that much more to the table than advanced polygon count and lighting, it looks really good but is techinically inferior to cryengine 2.0 and dunia engine for far cry 2, it is only obvious that it will run better, even ut3 runs like ass on the physics enabled levels which aren't even as advanced as crysis in terms of physics

[TheMART]

I bet soonish a deal is announced for a new graphic card that'll be perfect for Crysis. Crysis will earn bucks for promoting that great card and the hardware manufacturer will be able to push some sales by that.

The game is locked for that card, because really. Crysis isn't that special. Yes it's demanding, but's insane that it doesn't run on a config like that. THat's why I started hating PC gaming and welcomed console gaming. You always feel you get screwed. Even when you just bought the most expensive rig around.

[Azurite]

I'm agreeing with TheMART!
Could this be the path to the dark side?

Except I do not hate PC gaming but find the pace of which you have to upgrade annoying to say the least.

[TheMART]

Yes you're on the path to the good side for sure.

I found PC upgrading already annoying a few years ago. Next step is that you're going to hate it. Inevitable.

It just is getting insane. And Crysis is a good example for it.

[jorellpogi]

PC upgrades are so expensive. It's like buying a new PC every two years. This is the main reason I've migrated to 360 and PS3 for my gaming needs.

[sak500]

This game be damned if its struggling to run at 30fps on my $2k self built system from last year. Where as COD4, Bio, Halo3 with amazing gfx work fine on $300 console. I'd rather go and buy a ps3 than to buy another $700 card to run this game.

[Ghoul]

totally agree

its the same here i have a one year old 2000 Bucks rig and crysis ONLY runs on low on a steady framerate at 1280*960

[Samer305]

I guess we have to wait until february for the new cards to make there appearance then maybe we can play crysis at that resolution.

[Ghoul]

That's why crysis failed in my opinion,

i do give mad props to Crytek because this is easily the most advanced realtime engine we have ever seen BUT:
- they advertised the Game via some screens and videos on settings only 1% of the user can archive.
- 90% have to play the Game on settings where it looks FAAAAR from impressive
- 9% play on a rather high setting but still with a horrible inconsistent framerate.

those measures are kinda made up but are very close to the real numbers. I mean a Console game gets Minus Scores for such a BAD framerate, and people and reviewer demand games to run at least at a solid 30 or nowadays a solid 60 fps, and thats where cryiss failed HORRIBLY, no matter how advanced your technology is if you make an entertainment Product you gotta ensure peole can run it.

for me as of now crysis is a benchmark a very fecking awesome one but they totally lost the target to ENTERTAIN the users and deliver what they promised,

I mean as the average joe you buy the game judging by its cover and screens on the backprint, then you fire up the game just to discover it looks TOTALLY different on you rig couse the Graphics promoted are totally out of reach.

[theox2g7]

Depending on your taste, it's a love/hate thing, either u love crysis or u go like meh just because u expected some second coming from the game or something, it is uniquely fun game, Everything has been done before, SO what? Big deal, nothing is new under the sun, if it ain't broke, dont fix it, far cry was an excellent open end pc shooter and crysis improved most of its flaws, it is a truly entertaining game even on the lowest settings, it's just a matter of preference,
Concerning optimization and framerates
Crysis rendering animations are at 45fps so with the advanced motion blur of the cry engine 2, lower framerates are more fluid so 60 fps is not the ideal framerate to play crysis if u want ur animations to move at realistic speeds, it is 45 fps, crysis doesn't need 60 fps, 30 or even 25 fps is very playable in crysis and feels like a much higher framerate, the game loses its sense of realism with extreme framerates, imo if tri sli systems can pull off framerates in the 30s ranges with all bells and whistles turned up on unoptimized and crappy vista which usually runs 20 fps below xp at 1920x1200 resolution rendering that many pixels and ridiculous polygon count with AA included when the game does not even use the sli technology, it means the engine is pretty damn optimized, even the powerful consoles have to sacrifice pixels to pull of AA, it kills performance but most hardcore gamers are used to it that's why they feel the need to apply it even at already ridiculously high resolutions,
Crysis did not fail, Console games get bashed for their framerates because it is one set of hardware and can never be upgraded so u are stuck with that crappy framerate till a better console comes out, new pc hardware comes out all the time, the Geforce 9 series comes in february, so hardware will handle crysis easily by then, pc games are just that way and crysis is anything but a failure, half life 2 couldn't be fully maxed out with all AA when it came out, neither could oblivion or any other highly successful pc games, they are made the push the boundaries of pc hardware, if it doesnt happen that way, game engines wont improve and take huge leaps of improvement, did u know crysis is the first game to have fully tactile volumetric clouds, fully textured parallax occlusion mapping, dynamic depth of field and a cpu based physics engine which negates the need for physics cards? they did a bang up job, now to just to wait till hardware falls in price, couple of years along the line then the average joe can afford to upgrade and play crysis on high settings just like the way most ppl can max out half life 2 today,

[skynidas]

i wonder what are the settings of the computer that is running crysis in the gametrailers video

[theox2g7]

I played around with my settings and made side by side comparison, they have shaders, effects and physics and textures on lowest settings but shadows and particles on medium, everything else on low, they're running on an 8600gt low end card with 2gb ram at 1280x720 resolution with 2xAA, and a Conroe dual core

[f789790]

FSAA kills framerates plus the 3 way SLI drivers are new. Running in normal AA would make the game go up to 60fps easily with 3 cards.

[bootsielon]

Three of the "rumoured" (but surely coming) 8950 GTX, which is a dual core 8900 (which should theoretically be better than the 8800 Ultra).

[GlockNinja]

yeah yeah yeah...we know where its all going....Hexi Core processors and 9900 GTX cards with Quad Core processors with 2 gig memorys...blah blah blah....the trouble is that programers are not mastering their skills on the current systems and evolving into masters...they are merely relying on the hardware to make them look good. Anybody can do that. We want true masters and artists who develope games for todays system, making them look like tommorows technology today, playable today.

[theox2g7]

the game is very well optimized if u ask me, how many console games actually run any games with AA high than 4x, it is therefore not a fair comparison to say a tri sli rig can't run crysis at 1920x1200 with 16xAA but a console can run 600p with 2xAA, hence the console is more optimized, it's like comparing apples to oranges, AA hurts frames and it's a fact, take it out and the game runs like butter on any high end system out there,
the game isn't even using sli technologies yet so for current sli setups to notice performance gains shows how effective the engine is, vista is where the blame is at, microsoft couldnt reach the launch window for service pack 1 which does a great deal for video drivers concerning sli optimization, memory management and multicore optimization, it's the operating system not the engine, cry engine 2.0 is very optimized and scales very well, nvidia drivers are even still struggling in beta stages with billions of glitches,
Just so you know, Crysis can play in XP with resolutions as high as 2560x1600 with no AA and all high settings with very playable framerates on a single video card(GTX), it runs very well in xp, and the with the dx10 hacks, it runs even better with settings cranked up to hacked very high, that even proves more that it is the Operating System Vista and not the game engine, I get 20 more fps in xp than vista at the same high settings and resolution, my upgrade rig cost me $900 and it doubles up as my media center on my hdtv and crysis works perfectly with 360 controller, force feedback and all
Besides if u r pc gamer, u know that's how it is, the people at crytek said themselves that no current hardware can play crysis with every setting turned up to the possible max and that is very understandable cos i dont know how many ppl would think about using a crazy resolution like 1920x1200 with 8xAA with a game as detailed as crysis at the moment? Most people game at lower resolution with lower antialiasing, the point of the tri sli was to turn everything to the max and still get playable framerate, AA is a framerate killer especially when polygon count increases cos if u notice benchmarks, the game becomes very playable with fps as high as 50 and 60 without AA and single digit fps with AA turned on, most console games don't even have AA or sometimes sacrifice pixels to get more AA for playable framerates, that just goes to tell u how AA is an fps killer,
Also, from one of the interviews, the game was optimized to run at 45fps so anything beyond that would look unrealistic and sped up because of the detailed motion blur, in other words 30 fps in crysis would feels as fluid as 45 fps in cod4

Edit: Who disagreed? Give your reasons

@ below
the pc games can also look great and play great if u turn settings down , so i don't get ur point, the game runs really good and looks alright when u turn settings to medium, the average gaming machine 3-4 years can play this on medium/low settings which are acceptable visuals for those specs, the complaint here is not about how the game scales back but how it can't run at maximum potential and my point is maximum potential isn't necessary in this game for it to look good, u can play around with the settings and have visuals that compete with console games and still get playable framerates on a decent pc, and yes they could have done a better job optimizing it but it was an ok job becos the engine scales back pretty good for older machines, that's my point

[GlockNinja]

I dont' care if its apples and oranges....and I can careless if its 1200 X 1600 or 300 X 600. The consoles systems look great and play great with much less hardware. The PC game developers better figure out a way to make the PC do the same.....or ELSE. I will go back to console gaming and use my PC as a door stop.

[GlockNinja]

The art of smoke and mirrors is lost to today's programers. They are lazy and clueless. Anybody can write a program that needs a super computer to run. But it takes a real genius to write a program that does more with less. Instead of PC Game critics raving about these games they need to be more critical about what they praise. The praise only encourages the developers to concentrate on better graphics and effects rather than better games period. And they do so at the cost of the consumers who are forced to upgrade unnecessarily. A great programer can program a game that would look better and play better for a Pentium 1 computer, than most games that were written for the Pentium 4 systems of today. Just like cars. We can build cars to run 75 miles / 150 km on 1 gallon of gas or 1 liter of petro but the auto and gas industry would lost money if they did wouldn't they? Just like the PC industry would lose money if programers made great games for past and current systems instead of making games that forced us to go and upgrade or by a new computer every year. I've seen better looking games on my old Sony PS2 than most garbage PC games they put out these days. Its not the computer...its the programers....kill them all!!!! and train new ones. LOL

[Tyrael]

Wow, um...well said. I was going to argue in favor of the developers for pushing the limits but I suppose you bring up a valid point.

[GlockNinja]

What you have to understand is that programers are not helping the industry by "pushing" the envelope, they are hurting it by causing people to rely on hardware instead of software. In other words, we are going to rely on braun instead of brains. That is not what technology is about. If we do not master todays technology and squeeze everybit of use out of everything today, we will be nothing more than a wasteful society. Imagine being able to download a world's worth of data into one small space ship. Do you think we can do that if we keep relying on more space and hardware instead of less space and hardware?

I am not easily impressed with "great graphics" or eye candy on a new system anymore. Anybody with a IBook or a graphics program can generate eye candy. Get that to run on an old computer and I'll be really impressed. Thats true skill and artwork.

[RUF1]

This is why I'm a console guy when it comes to gaming. So long as it either says "Xbox 360" or has the "PS" logo, I know the game will run without me having to screw around with settings. I just got a new PC this summer with a 2.0 GHz Duo (4 MB cache), 2 GB RAM, and a 256 MB Nvidia 8600M GT, and I'd be lucky to be able to play this game with most settings set to "medium." Who needs that crap? Gimmee a console any day. I like my PC, but I think Age of Empires is about all the gaming that this baby is going to do. Believe me, I already tried Flight Simulator X, and the thing just "chuggs" along...barely.

[sak500]

Hell no..My Core Duo 2.4 o/c 3.4ghz, 2gb dual channel , 512x 2 MB SLI 7950GX2 card cannot run it medium quality with 4xAA. Your 8600 is no way better than the sli card i have.

[Garrison]

The fact is that I have a crap gaming PC compared to todays standards and this game still looks and plays really good. My current set has only a single-core athlon 3000+ and an old x800xl. I play this game mostly everything on low settings with some on high and a resolution of 1680 x 1050 and I'm more than pleased.
Guys, seriously.... This game runs smooth and plays great on almost every PC out there. The fact is that some PC Hardcore are always annoyed if they can't play every freaking game out there AT MAX SETTINGS WITH EVERY FREAKING OPTION UP THE MAX!!! It's so stupid really. This game looks incredible on regular dx9 on medium settings.
It's a good game everyone is missing out on because they are basically intimidated by it. You guys need to remember that this a game wich medium settings or even low settings will look as incredible as any of todays games.

[Rice]

lol, i can run this game on the lowest settings on my laptop... i feel so good.

[GlockNinja]

I understand that most PC gamers have to "compromise" but they really don't have to if the programers would just take the time to make games that can be run on max with 80 percent of the PC's out there instead of only 20 percent. It used to be that console gamers were the ones that compromised with graphics and size of games because of the console's limitations. I remember in the old days people bought consoles to play simple video games because they couldn't afford Computers. I remember when Computers were far more capable of playing more advanced games than ny console machines. But these days, the console games seem far more advanced and the PCs are the less powerful machine. If Crysis was advertised as a game for only those with powerful systems....ok....but guess what? Crysis is being advertised on TV and all of your Walmart asiles as if its for the masses. As if the game could be played long as you have a PC. That to me is false advertising.

I bought a new PC and it has Two SLI 8600 GT 512meg graphics cards, a 6700 Duo Core 2 processor at 2.6ghz, 2gigs of 800 ram, and it runs Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter 2 choppy at near max setting. So I can imagine what it would do with a newer game like Crysis. Thats a shame. If you spend over a thousand bucks, you should be able to play any game out there no problems.

[RUF1]

See, that's another thing: I like the XPS models, Alienware, and Voodoo PC's, but who the heck can afford to buy a $5-grand rig for gaming that needs to be chucked out and replaced within a year for the next hottest game? Forget it.

[RUF1]

I'll give the demo a shot on medium, but again, what I was saying about a console: It runs at its maximum nearly each and every time, because the game is meant to use that console's resources to the maximum. Most of us want to see what the game looks like at maximum settings; we don't want to play it at half its capacity.

[Garrison]

"I'll give the demo a shot on medium, but again, what I was saying about a console: It runs at its maximum nearly each and every time, because the game is meant to use that console's resources to the maximum. Most of us want to see what the game looks like at maximum settings; we don't want to play it at half its capacity."

Playing crysis on medium will look better than a hell of a lotta x360 and ps3 games, sides... is somehow "knowing" something is maxed out make it more fun? lol