Crysis Demo: Impressions and Optimization

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The game is certainly a beast, i'm hoping the retail game has better optimization for multi-core processors (i've seen screenshots of it using dual cores properly and others not so much, I haven't checked with my own q6600).

I see you were using a quad (q6700?), did you check to see how it's making use of the 4 cores?

PS made a quote (in my sig) from what you said, it's so true..
 
I've run through the demo twice now and had much the same impression. First time through I treated it like another 2142/tf2 map and it was not any more fun than those games when treated like that. The second time I treated it like I was in predator mode and used the suit abilities and I must say it was AWESOME. On the settings front I have not even went after it yet I just played at what the game wanted to load and I must say it is the best looking game I have ever laid eays upon.
For Me the real question is what will the MP gane be like since I don't really play SP games anymore? Will it be just 12x12 in the jungle or will there be MP team objectives...???
Anyway thats my 2cents for now.

Cheers
 


There's a deathmatch (called Action I think) and the Power Struggle mode (there will be more with mods I assume), I haven't played the multiplayer beta, but the Power Struggle map seems to be pretty big, I think you can also open it with the Sandbox editor (I think the map is called Shore if you want to take a look). Take a look at the Power Struggle vid on gametrailers or other places.
 
Pros: Best look and fill to any game. The boats were great and getting to sink one of the enemy boats well I just loved. Driving the vehicle's was great and simply beats anything HL2 has produce.

Cons: Lack of persistent body and thus no rag doll affects after killing enemy's. HL2 has crysis beat here by a good length. Maybe this will be used in multi player modes.

Other thoughts: Like all games crysis will see a good number of hacks and match this with the ability to be invisible could cause some major headaches in multi player modes. Crytek will have to work hard to stay ahead of hackers and keep the game from being hated.
 
* Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66 GHz
* Windows Vista 32 bit
* 4 GB of RAM (only registers as 2814 GB, thanks Vista!)
* 768 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
*
o Core clock speed - 576 MHz
o Shader clock speed - 1350 MHz
o Memory clock speed - 900 MHz
o ForceWare 169.01
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Is the issue it registers as 2814GB or 2814MB?
If its MB then that seems to be normal considering the 32-bit OS choice.
Why someone would build a 32-bit vista ready machine is beyond me.
 
Best thing to do when playing in Vista is to use the well known .cfg trick to set all of the exclusive DX10 Very High graphic settings to high in the .cfg files. I moved all of the preset graphic options one lower so Very High is the new High, High is the new Medium, and Low has Medium settings. Then right click the shortcut, and load the game under DX9. You get the visuals of DX10 with the smooth performance of DX9. I have a E6750, 8800GTS 320 MB, and 2 GB RAM. Running the game at 1024 x 768 with AA off, I average about 15-20 FPS with all settings Very High in DX9, and about 5-10 FPS in Vista. If I set everything to High, I get about 25 FPS on average in DX9, and about 15 FPS in DX10 but with lots of stuttering and slow downs that I don't get in DX9. Especially cutscenes, they play very slow in DX10, but are nice and smooth in DX9. I haven't noticed a visual difference between DX9 with Very High forced and DX10 set to Very High. I took a couple screenshots and compared but didn't notice anything, and the two Shader and Postprocessing effects I noticed in Very High both work in DX9. So basically DirectX 10 sucks and if you're running Vista, your best bet is to run in DX9.

That's the most important optimization advice people need to know. I don't know if just playing in XP gives an additional performance boost or if running Crysis in DX9 is the equivalent of running it in XP. Either way, running in DX10 is a bad idea.

So far, I think the game is good. I don't see how you can call it your average shooter. Everyone praises something like Halo 3 or Half-Life 2. If you ever played Far Cry, you know what to expect. And that is sort of one of the big disappointments of this game. It's basically an upgraded Far Cry, but I liked Far Cry and thought it was better than HL2, so it's not a bad thing for me. And one of the best things about Far Cry was shooting dead bodies and admiring your Jackson Pollock blood spatters. One of the most impressive things was getting a dead body into the water, and seeing the cool graphic effect as they bled in the water. I thought the AI didn't seem very smart at first either, but I think the AI actually is pretty good now. No AI is perfect, but the Crysis AI is definitely well down.
 
Impressions: I've run through the demo three times now. The first time I went through I took my time trying to go stealth and found it a little more challenging with the energy dropping so quickly. And in the end just went full bore. I do like the fact that though the story is obviously linear, you can take many many routes to get there. And in fact do other secondary objectives before going back to the primary objective.

Cons: Yeah the play so far is fairly mundane. The only difference Far Cry and Crysis, play-wise, was the nanosuit, which certainly adds another dimension and adds to the fun of playing. But unless, like the reviewer mentioned, this game gets some twists it will be extremely mundane... as most of us know already... there are definitely twists ahead! :)

Graphics: I'm running an 8800 Ultra and I was able to turn everything to high and 16x anti-aliasing at 1920x1200 and the game was comfortable (I estimate 30-40 fps). I did not see the option to turn anything to "very high." I understand now that this is a tweak. Where do I find this tweak? Anyways, the only setting I could not do was the 16Q. It was playable but not comfortable at all.
 
To get Very High quality graphics with just a High setting in DX9, go to \Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis SP Demo\Game\Config\CVarGroups and open and edit all of the .cfg files (except sys_spec_full.cfg). Might want to backup the CVarGroups folder first. Each .cfg file represents a category in the advanced graphics screen in the game. So one config file deals with Shaders and another deals with Post Processing. Within the .cfg files, each group of numbers represents a graphic setting, [4] being Very High and [1] being Low. So to make Very High graphics available, you want to copy and paste everything under group [4] and replace anything under group [3]. The best thing to do is copy and paste and move all of the settings down one group and completely erase Low settings, unless you absolutely need them, in which case you shouldn't even bother with this trick. So move 2 to 1, 3 to 2, and 4 to 3. So within the game, High will have Very High graphics, Medium will give you High graphics, and Low will give you Medium graphics.

If you're running in DX9 with Very High quality settings and you want to be sure it's working, just look at the sun shine through trees or under water and you should see rays coming from it. That's supposed to only be a feature under DX10 with Post Processing set to Very High, but it you get the effect if you edit the settings like I described. There might be some Shader options that don't work since if you edit Shaders, it will show up as Custom in-game, but it still looks good.
 
Quoting myself incase missunderstandings will appear, somehow I believe they most certainly will
Using Quad cores are no use with the demo, I think they limited it to 2 cores like in the Multiplayer Beta i play.

Btw, the game runs on 25fps on Medium with my 6800XT, but with Very High and 8800GTX it runs with 22fps average? One word: drivers :)

After the second beta release I got a 6 fps boost with my graphics card, and another 2fps boost after the newest beta drivers.

The game is gold, but Crytek is allready working on a patch, so hopes up folks!
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There is no such things as direct x 10 elements or graphics, just the fact that DX10 uses unified processing which gives the opportunity to create effects like Global Illumination without stressing the card that much. It is mostly just an efficiency of the graphics processing.

DX10 utilizes unified architecture and geometry shading which allows more instances at one time and faster working, not that a DX9 card can NOT handle it, it will just demand more of it.
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Yeah do what Maxor127 says - even if you have Vista, since XP adds about 15 more frames (seriosuly)

Vista is absolute **** atm lol...

My PC runs it about 25 FPS all maxed out with DX10 h4x.

hawhaw, turn off shadows and you get it real smooth.
 

I agree with you. Why Vista 32??? I have 64 with 4GB and work fine.
 
I've played the demo a couple times and must say that it is great! I completely agree with the review. Having settings higher than your current system can handle is a good thing. The game is a lot like FarCry which is also a good thing. The suit's special features are going to be totally fun to play with. The vegetation is similar to FarCry except it is more dense, moves when you brush it, and falls over when you shoot it! This adds a lot to the game. The environment is much more destructable.

Played the first time on easy and I'm thinking how am I ever going to get past that camp of NKs on higher difficulty?? This is the beauty of Crysis! It makes you think! Lets see I could just walk up here like last time and get my fanny shot off or.....hmmmmmm.....I could go stealth, sneak up and steal a truck with a mounted gun! Oh yeah! Come get some you @^@$%#s!! Eat lead! Nearly died the first time on easy, didn't get a scratch the next time on with harder settings.....

Played it once with a 8800GTS and again with a HD2600XT. Of course it had to be turned down a notch or two in order to run on the 2600. I'd say people would have a gripe if the game did not offer lower quality settings and you HAD to have expensive hardware. I say stop worrying about your hardware and have fun blasting!
 
Hey how about some benchmark results on the charts for single cards and sli. I'm seriously interested whether a second card has any impact on this monster. GREAT ARTICLE!
 
Dear Travis Meacham,

The article is missing a lot of information such as more comparative benchmarks with various ATI and Nvidia cards, single videocards vs SLI, vista 32-bit vs 64-bit, and last but not least, RECOMMENDATIONS.

It would have been great to test the game on an Intel Xtreme Quad processor with 8800Ultra SLI and look at benchmarks. Should I buy another 8800 or should I wait for the next GPU model (most likely).

I don't mean to critic because I read Tomshardare article often and you guys do a pretty good job but given the hype prior to the release, it would have been appreciated to have legitamate information as oppose to certain people posting false representation in forums.

Nota: I will be forgiving. I totally understand that the game is not even released yet and I also understand the given time for you guys to come up with results on a "demo version" of a game...

Thanks for the article anyways!

Alex
 
Alex,

I would actually get pretty upset if Tom's was going to put that much effort in just testing a demo. I hope they will address it with the released game code but doing all that on a demo is waste of time, and most likely not representative for the full game.

Tthanks for the update Travis, and could you please answer that question from Stemnin whether you've seen the demo actually using all 4 cores?
 
The demo isn't complete, no SLi (I don't have an SLi equipped PC, but i've read about alot of problems and really low framerates on various crysis fan forums), no multicore use (it was only using 1 of 4 cores when I tested it, and only ran it until I got to Jester, i'll haft to try at more intense spots.) Right now it seems hard to find out the best rig possible.
 
I noticed that the driver version the reviewer is using is only 169.01, I have been running the demo with version 169.04 with the same system bar a few changes. A Q6600, 2GB’s of memory & Vista X64 Ultimate. I am able to make the game playable at 1680X1050 with everything set to ‘very high’ bar the shading setting that has been reduced to ‘high’. I don’t have AA enabled at that resolution though, and the demo I am running is the 32Bit version.

Apparently I have heard that revision 1 of the demo works in 64Bit mode and that version 169.02 works the best for that revision giving much greater results than Revision 2 and the latest drivers. I will need to test this out, I will also post benchmarks of what I have achieved once I get home tonight.
 
I don't mean to imply that anyone has stated otherwise, I truly think that it is up to each individual to decide what is acceptable as far as frame rates go. Higher frames are nice but it's pointless to shoot for 80+ FPS if you're monitor's refresh rate is 60 Hz. 20+ of the rendered frames you'll never see. I figure for a game like Crysis, start out with max settings and then shoot for half your refresh rate. That way, on average what you see will appear more smoothly.

Just food for thought:
 
Yeah, I was a bit concerned when it was said that Crysis was like a standard FPS... if you're playing Crysis like any other FPS, you're doing it wrong.

Crysis isn't just about running and gunning. It's not just about picking people off from the bushes. It's not about sneaking by undetected or going non-lethal. You can do any and all of these things of course, but Crysis exists for the following reasons:

Shooting a tree down on top of a cluster of troops.

Cloaking, grabbing somebody, using them as a human shield and retreating into the bushes.

Sniping the gas tank on a jeep while people are in or around it, using the ensuing chaos to get by.

Cloaking while driving a vehicle, plowing it into some troops, and jumping out at the last moment... still cloaked, so you can make your way to cover and pick off any survivors.

Using max speed and sprinting up to somebody, popping him in the face with a shotgun.

Cloaking to hide and line up a shot, uncloaking just long enough to fire off a tranq dart, re-cloaking, and moving in for an easy kill when it's convenient.

Throwing a drill press at somebody from several stories up.

Running around cloaked while carrying a live chicken.

THAT, my friends, is the purpose of Crysis... awesome gameplay resulting from a decent level of realism and a creative player. I know this because, in addition to playing the demo several times through myself, I watched a friend play it for 4 hours straight on my computer, experimenting with all the ways to stalk and harass the AI, usually involving large drops, heavy objects, and vehicles.
 
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