But Can It Run Crysis? 10 Years Later

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

wh3resmycar

Distinguished
Crysis 2 ran better because the Map is smaller in scale and it's more Linear. Also it ran on Dx11. It's a visual downgrade somewhat to accommodate the consoles.

But still, you cannot find a game from 2007 that is supposedly "OPTIMIZED" that looks good 2017. YOU CANNOT.
 

csm101

Distinguished
Aug 8, 2007
180
13
18,715
Crysis even after the last patch is still a poor game in terms of the code that the game is based on. just look at crysis 2 and 3 and anyone willl realize that the game engine got smoother and smoother while introducing new graphic stuff. so if your card can run crysis 3 smoothly at FHD, or 2K or 4K then you are fine.
 

csm101

Distinguished
Aug 8, 2007
180
13
18,715
Crysis even after the last patch is still a poor game in terms of the code that the game is based on. just look at crysis 2 and 3 and anyone willl realize that the game engine got smoother and smoother while introducing new graphic stuff. so if your card can run crysis 3 smoothly at FHD, or 2K or 4K then you are fine.
 

Xajel

Distinguished
Oct 22, 2006
170
10
18,685
Finally we got to know that they can run Crysis :D

But seriously THG, why still not having Ultra Wide resolutions ? I mean 3440x1440, 2560x1080.. I know there's 3440x1080 but it's only one screen.
 

brendonmc

Distinguished
Nov 6, 2009
48
0
18,530
Who better to write the 10th Anniversary review of the game that changed the world? I still play it and love every inch of that gorgeous island.

Thanks Chris!
 

wh3resmycar

Distinguished



you mean DX11 vs dx10 had nothing to do with it? uhm and the linear and smaller scale maps of 2 and 3 was a bonus? you don't say.
 

Draven35

Distinguished
Nov 7, 2008
806
0
19,010
Chris, I remember '... but can it run Crysis?" being such a prevalent meme here on Tom's that people were asking it in the comments for my workstation reviews.
 

mapesdhs

Distinguished
LGR recently did a retrospective on the game, worth watching.

One thing missing from this is the way one could customise the settings even more to add further detail. I've upped the shadow detail and distance so that even a GTX 980 only gives about 45fps (I hate LOD effects in games). Another thing missing is the fact that, back in those days, SLI/CF were very effective and better supported; I used two GTX 580 3GB cards to run the game nicely, with settings designed not to exceed the available VRAM at 1920x1200. Two 7970s was very potent, but oh dear grud the noise level. :D

Also, the way Crysis Warhead improved performance shows that the initial Crysis engine was not that well optimised. Crysis 2 looks nicer but is a much narrower environment (urban areas can look cool but there's less complexity in a typical scene). Crysis 3 is even worse; think you can get to that cool looking place over yonder? Nope.

I tried to use the Crysis bench program to test GPUs but I was getting inconsistent results so I gave up.

Ian.

PS. The forum posting is broken again.
 

JoeMomma

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2010
860
2
19,360
I ran my own test with a GTX 1070 + i5 4690K at 4.5GHz. 1080p Very high everything.
I got 140-70 FPS depending on the scene. But my GPU and fans were pegged near 95%. The CPU was only around 35%. And the screen tearing gave me epilepsy.
 


That would only be possible in comparing very old games. The 512MB VRAM 9800 GTX doesn't meet the minimum game specs for today's titles, or even those of several years back. It *might* be possible at an extreme low resolution like 800x600, but that wouldn't allow a real comparison on the GPUs as such low resolutions bring out more of the CPU than GPU. This of course doesn't even take into consideration that Nvidia stopped supporting driver updates for that 9800 GTX. The last one was WHQL 342.01 (Dec. 14, 2016). My guess is that it would still be faster than Intel's 630 iGPU if there could be a validated comparison.
 

bit_user

Titan
Ambassador


Code:
9800 GTX: 70.4 GB/sec; 470 GFLOPS (fp32)
HD 630:   38.4 GB/sec; 442 GFLOPS (fp32)
If specs are worth anything, it looks like a clean win for the 9800 GTX.
 
^^Yep - and a nearly ten year old GPU at that. Reminds me of an argument I got into with a guy on Reddit a couple of years ago. He insisted that dedicated PC GPUs were a dying platform and the trend would be towards iGPU/CPU one chip solutions for graphics. I told him no way as AAA game titles, resolutions, and GPU VRAM demands continue to go higher and higher as they have for the past 20+ years since Quake 1.
 

bit_user

Titan
Ambassador

iGPUs will always be at a disadvantage, because fast GPUs want die area and loads of memory bandwidth. HBM2 can solve the memory bandwidth issue, but you still have to contend with the issue of die area adding cost to CPUs that are principally used by non-gamers.

EMIB might be the way this gets sorted out. You could have a huge package that can accommodate a big GPU die and multiple HBM2 stacks for gamers, and a smaller one with less/no HBM2 for mainstream users.

That said, cooling constraints will ultimately limit the size of GPU you can package with the CPU die. There will always be a market for discrete GPUs, because that's the only practical way you can dissipate 250+ W.
 
@Datamaster

Absolutely. The biggest issue it had at launch was a massive memory leak. I was running 4GB back when 1 was common, most people were still running XP and 32bit, and it would eat it up fast.

The other issue was lower VRAM back then. The best nVidia GPU had 768MB, the 8800 Ultra. The HD2900 Pro had 1GB, pretty much the same GPU as a HD3870, which helped with higher texture settings but not much else.

It looked great for the time high performance made it hard to enjoy.
 

TheRaven_62

Distinguished
Feb 3, 2010
3
0
18,510
Crysis is still seen as a bench mark and not jokingly. I tested my GTX1050 Ti along with 8GB (DDR4 [DDR3 should also work well]) and maxed all settings. Crysis ran well, real well and for the first time at all maxed without any graphx mods. My GPU runs straight PCIe (no rail) so I was extremely impressed.

Crysis 2 was optimized from the standpoint where many things (graphx wise) were taken out and a default configuration for graphics settings was enacted with a few user defined settings (check the "video" settings in each if you think I'm bs).

Crysis (being slop under the hood) may not be the best, most optimized graphics rendering poster child, but it approached many topics that are standard like ray-tracing and reflections essentially focusing heavily on the atmospherics; it did its job well, but because it was so demanding and would unconditionally strangle anything looking like a GPU it became a "bench mark". At the time it was pretty unique as games went (everything else was compared to it for a long time).

There are newer, meaner games with higher demands these days for comparison purposes often embodied with the Witcher and Tomb Raider installments; Crysis is slowly, but surely reaching retirement -it does have a few breaths left, but not many.
 

pegasusted2504

Prominent
Nov 15, 2017
6
0
510
I remember Crysis with a fondness :) I also used a graphics card you didn't have listed which I find surprising since it was the "most" powerful of its time and you have the 2 that made it... I used to use(still have it somewhere) my 9800GX2, now that WAS a beast of a card, I remember I had to upgrade from my Amd cpu to an Intel to get the performance out of the card so I paired it up with a QX9650x(awesome chip)
 

fonzy

Distinguished
Dec 23, 2005
398
1
18,785
VERY sad to see the state of PC gaming, a 10 year old game still holds it's own even among the best titles today.

Consoles are a big reason why.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.