Building a Crysis PC, Part 2
The official single player demo for Crysis had been out a week now, and it's given us a better idea of what kind of hardware we'll need to make this PC game shine (for more on the demo and its performance, check out Wednesday's Crysis demo story). We've been taking recommendations and suggestions for our Crysis PC on the THG forums and via e-mail for a few weeks now, and the feedback has been tremendously helpful.
Some readers have suggested sticking with Windows XP to get better frame rate performance. However, in order to fully realize the game's potential with DirectX 10 technology, we've decided to go with Vista - for better and for worse. Yes, upgrading to Vista will have its frustrations as well as a higher price tag. But we'll put our faith in the game's developer and publisher on this one; if Crytek and EA say Crysis is built for Vista and DirectX 10, then it's time to put it to the test. Also, most readers and forum members that provided feedback suggested going with an Intel platform and Nvidia GPUs, though some did offer up an Intel-ATI configuration. As a result, we composed most of our potential build designs with Intel and Nvidia hardware.
Now we come to another issue: Crytek and EA have also indicated that Crysis will run much better on 64-bit version of Windows Vista (so much for having manageable system requirements that date back 1-2 years). The regular 32-bit version of Vista and its compatible hardware cannot access a full 4 GB of RAM (it's generally limited to around 2.7 GB to 3.5 GB of RAM). As a result, getting 4 GB of RAM for 32-bit Vista is pointless. If you want 64-bit Vista, then you'll need 4 GB of RAM. Similarly, if you want more memory to run Crysis better and feel like 4 GB is the way to go, then you'll need 64-bit Vista to get the most bang for your buck. So that unfortunate fact leaves us leaning toward 64-bit Vista. We'll have to shell out a little extra for that 4 GB of memory, but that will also give us an idea of the possible performance that comes with a 64-bit OS and double the memory.
Here are two potential builds that we've scouted so far. The first is priced at a little under $2,000 while the second comes in at a little more than $3,000 (both include mouse, keyboards, monitor and speakers). The higher end system features Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit version), an Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz platform with SLI-enabled Nividia 8800 Ultra 768 MB GPUs from MSI, two Raptor X WD1500ADFD 150 GB hard drives from Western Digital, 4 GB of RAM courtesy of Mushkin Extreme Performance XP2 8500, an EVGA nForce 680i motherboard, a 3D Galaxy II liquid cooling system from Gigabyte, a black Silverstone KL02 case, and a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad power supply.
The lower end system features many of the same parts except it uses an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 platform, a 32-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium, and one Nvidia 8800 Ultra GPU. Since we already have systems with 32-bit Vista on which will test Crysis here in the lab, we're leaning toward going with 64-bit Vista and 4 GB of memory. It's expensive, but it may ultimately be worth the price. Plus, it looks like the greatest benefit to you, the reader, will be if we can provide a comparison with higher end 64-bit system with two GPUs (no promises, of course, since we're still finalizing the build).
Some readers suggested pushing the CPU level even higher with an Intel QX6850 platform. While we'd like nothing better than to stack this rig with the most expensive and latest hardware, we're going to show some restraint because we want to keep the costs down so that readers can get an idea of what an affordable system for Crysis looks like. Also, it's not clear - at least from the demo performance results - how much a faster quad core platform will improve the game's performance. There have been some questions about how well Crysis utilizes quad cores as opposed to dual cores. While there may be some scaling issues, it's important to remember that this is a demo and not the full version of Crysis.
Now for more demo results: we've run Crysis on a 32-bit Vista system here in the THG lab with an Intel core 2 duo platform and one Nvidia 8800 GTX GPU. With a resolution of 1680x1050 and all of the system settings turned up to high with 4x AA, we achieved average frame rates of around 20 to 22 FPS (depending on the section of the game). The results were similar to our first trials on an Alienware system, although the frame rates were slightly better. The demo was playable at these settings but noticeably slow in many sections. While turning up the settings to the maximum levels was worth it to see the game's brilliant visuals, gamers will surely have a hard time playing the full version of Crysis with those kind of frame rates.
Let us know what you think of our plans so far. Feel free to e-mail us any suggestions and feedback or chime in on the forum discussion thread. And stay tuned for more editions of our Crysis PC series.
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