Crysis Demo: Impressions and Optimization

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Alex:

We wanted to get the article up sooner rather than later so we just did some quick tests on a single system. In order to run all the usual tests you mentioned we wouldn't get the article up until late next week sometime. When we get the full game we'll put it through the gauntlet and see how it comes out.

Stemnin and Jorge40:

It looks to me like the demo is using all four cores. Here are the graphs I pulled. Let me know what you guys think. The perfmon one is a tad busy but I wanted to run it for several minutes and also log some idle time. The one from task manager isn't as long a capture time and it only shows the tail end of the entire graph so the two don't represent the same time scale. You might have to click them twice to get the full res.

crysis4xtm.jpg


crysis4xperf.jpg
 


Thanks Travis. I'm looking foward to read the full article!
 


That's what one 1 of my cores looks like, the other 3 not so much. When I get home i'll do more testing, maybe I'm just reading the graphs wrong.
 
I'm also eagerly awaiting the flood of benchmarks when it hits... Vista vs XP, 32 vs 64 bit OSes, 1 vs 2 vs 3 vs 4 graphics cards at various price points, dual vs quad core for processors of the same price, 2 vs 3 vs 4 vs 4+ gigs of RAM, and so on... building a new computer in about 2 months or so, and I want it to get the most out of Crysis that I can on a budget =D

Gotta love the "Vista sucks, ima stick with XP 4ever" people. Can't live with them, can't shoot them. Give it a rest, guys. Like it or not, Vista's here, and Microsoft isn't back-pedaling and giving up on it. It might not be -quite- as fast as XP but that's the price you pay for all of its extra features and GUI sweetness... you know, things you enjoy when you're not playing a game. Just deal with it... don't upgrade if you're paranoid or a cheapskate, but leave the rest of us alone 😛
 
A lot of people have been saying it only uses the main core of the quad core CPU range. Results are normally about 80% on the main core with the others showing 12% utilization. The conclusion from a lot of people was that it was using the cores but the demo was not fully utilizing them as it should.

But to tell you the truth I think that more performance will be gained from a driver update than a game code update. But then we will have to wait for the full game to be released to see full results wont we.
 
Finished the demo and I gotta say I was impressed visually. As for game play... it's no HL2: Ep2. It's basically FarCry on roids. Amazing environment, cool use of vehicles and not much else. I didn't find the suit controls to really do that much. The hand to hand interaction is pretty crappy. With the super strength you should be able to pick up small trees and club people or send bad guys FLYING. Instead I could just rifle butt them a little faster. Weee!. And how is it you can pick up massive oil drums and not bodies? You can cloak but you can't hide a body from being seen? Not that the AI is smart enough to even recognize a body. They more or less stand around until you shoot at them. Stealth kills would be great, especially in that environment but I was pretty disappointed mainly because you can't manipulate objects or enemies physically at all. Just toss stuff. I did like being able to super jump up to places for better firing angles but it was still WAY underutilized. This game tries to be everything to all people and it's a little thin on everything but the graphics/environment/vehicle support. But anyway, it has potential and this is just a demo so we'll see.

Now on to my question...

I have a P4 3.2Ghz, an ATI Radeon 1950 Pro 512MB, 2GB Ram and Windows XP. Before you say my system will never be able to run this game let me tell you I was AMAZED that the game was playable at 1280x1024 with all settings on High (with AA turned off)! It looked incredible and I was able to finish the demo. Of course the frame rate wasn't optimal but it was playable. Then I tried all settings to medium. WAY more fluid but the graphics went back to looking more like FarCry.

So... which settings do you guys think are CPU related and which are GPU? It seems to me that my 1950 Pro 512MB is capable of high settings for the GPU/Video Ram intensive sliders and my 2GB of system Ram is decent, but my 3.2Ghz Single Core P4 is probably dragging me down. I'm theorizing I can probably leave most GPU, Video Ram and System Ram dependent settings on High but should be turning down the CPU related settings to medium for a nice blend of medium and high. Medium was 100% smooth but not so great visually, High looked amazing but was too choppy (tho still playable!). There should be a happy middle group but there's a lot of variables without knowing which slider is dependent one what.

Obviously this is DX9 since it's XP and a Radeon 1950 Pro. I'm sure DX10 Very High settings will be another realm of coolness up but for now, DX9 High settings at 1280x1024 is very impressive. I was amazed it could be done with my setup. Anyway, I'm not really up on what is CPU and what is GPU. I figure textures are GPU, physics and sound CPU, etc. but I was hoping someone more knowledgeable than I would know for sure offhand.

Thanks for your time!

Justarius

 
shrug. I dont know. It runs awesome on my system. 8600GTS, 2.9GHz quad. cpu usage never goes over 30%.

1280x720, windowed mode. (windowed mode is an absolute requirement for me.) All settings medium, textures on high.

I'm curious to see how it might look on all max settings, but it's not worth $200 more just to find that out!
 
I tried it. I mentioned it above already. It works. That way you can get the speed benefits of DX9 with the graphic quality of DX10. I don't notice a graphical difference between DX9 forced very high and DX10 very high but the game runs about 10 FPS faster and is a LOT smoother.
 


You know I thought that, too. If I've got "super" strength I want to be able to throw a guy 70 yards and pick up a car.
 
Strenght gets you to places easily (like skipping through to play the level at night) or I go on the beach side up to that antenna post and blast the barrel with guns using the super jump, kills most of the soldiers up there if they know you're around there.
 
Has anyone compared how Crysis looks on CRT vs LCD monitor in regards to color accuracy and color range? I know that it depends to some extent on the model and technical specs of the LCD monitor but in general you can usually notice the difference right away if you have used a CRT monitor for a long time for gaming and working with graphics and then you've switched to LCD.

I guess only a few people will understand what I am getting at, so I'll provide a crude example. If you look at the following screenshot from Crysis (link below), you will most likely see greater detail on the trunk of the palm tree and the areas on the stones which are reflecting the light (this might also apply to other areas such as the side of the boat or foam in the water) if you're using a CRT monitor compared with an LCD monitor. I don't know if it will show in this particular case, but this is the kind of difference that I kept noticing all the time in games and images right after I switched from CRT to LCD a year ago (that's on Viewsonic VP930, which is supposed to be one of the better LCD displays in regards to color range). Especially all of the "glossy" and "reflective" objects used in modern games look a bit more realistic on a CRT display because the hundreds of thousands or even millions of colors that are used in those areas get substituted on an LCD with approximated/nearest colors and the quality of those details suffers. Basically, LCD monitors do the same thing as when you work in a graphics program on a CRT monitor and reduce the amount of different colors used in an image from, say, 700k different colors to 100k colors (you can notice the very slight differences/color "approximations" quite clearly if you've worked with 3D and graphics programs). All in all, I'm wondering if it's possible to get from "Very High" to a kind of "Ultra High" level of graphics or mainly image quality in Crysis by switching back from an LCD to a CRT monitor. 😗


http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=crysis2kg5.jpg
 
I found the physics in the game very blocky and generic. Trees hit an invisible obstacle and pause movement for a fraction of a second when they fall. Plus, when a grenade explodes next to a tree, the tree should blast to pieces, not just fall over the same way every time (hence why I said generic). Of course, that will require even more horsepower to render every new object (the splinters of wood and stuff), but an extra option for that kind of realism would be cool. I am more interested in physics than visuals.

Now the other objects you can break... ugh, terrible. How can throwing a barrel at a building bring the whole thing down? Why can't a punch a hole in a wall rather than have it just fall over? Everything has pre-made "break points" that just split there all the time when they get hit, and they simply fall to pieces rather than break off small parts first. And how can the entire roof of a building be held up by a single wooden pole in one corner? :lol:
 
Agreed. Advanced physics and environment interaction are the coolest new additions to "next gen" games and they are rather ho hum in Crysis. Although one could argue the buildings are all cheap tin shacks that could be shoved over by an angry goat let alone a barrel, but yeah I take your point. One time I drove a truck full blast into a shack and the car bounced off of some unseen indestructible point and didn't give me the desired effects of ramming right thru the shack and out the other side in a hail of destructibles and objects. Other times I've been able to punch one to pieces.
 
a Total HEAVYWEIGHT games.

I have Q6600@3.2GHz, 8800GTS 320MB 670/1000 and 2GB RAM, set all High on DX9, average 26 fps on 1280x1024, AA 2x.

Set all High on DX10, average 19 fps, same resolution and no AA.
Set all very high on DX10, average 11 fps, same resolution and no AA.
Set high or very high on DX10 with 2x AA, it's a slideshow.

Games aren't utilizing all cores, in quadcores rig, only 2 cores are mostly showing activity and they barely hit 50% each on loading games. On playing, cores activity are around 10%-15%, sometimes 20% but that's only one core work.

GPU rules on this games, overclocked GPU or higher end GPU such those ultras or SLI will give more fps, but i think even with SLI Ultras you'll barely touch 60 fps on Very High settings 16x12 res, 4X AA.


- AI can stuck inside a car or trees
- on easy mode, AI doesn't make lots of movement compared in delta mode.
- When AI are dead, their body position are unimaginable.
- When you shoot trees or rocks, sometimes doesn't make any holes even on high settings or very high settings.
-Throw a grenade on water (water area where you just disable GPS jammer), sometimes it won't blow, or it blows but water action are less amusing than when you shoot on water.
-Shooting on cars will need 2 rounds to make the cars blows but with 4 times hit, it blows.
-on DX9, high settings, sometimes the sky become solid color, mostly solid blue or brown.
-Shooting on bananas leaves will leave black dot than holes.
-1 round of shooting on building make the building collapsed. Throwing 1 grenade on building will make the roof fly but the building aren't collapsed.
-Shooting coconut trees sometimes doesn't make fall or it's fall but like there's something hold it or when it touch the ground, it can fly again and looping for 3 or 4 times.

Maybe there's other...but for a moment that's it.
conclusion : It's awesome games, but unfortunately you need high-end rig to play it, some glitch still occurs and some event on AI aren't to be compared in real life.
 
it is fun to kick things around and stuff
 
I LOVED the demo, though granted it is a bit run of the mill until you start playing with the environment, like others have said. I think that the suit's abilities make you very powerful in the game, but the length of time they are available doesn't make you overly super human... The energy runs out too fast. One trick I found with the cloaking is to crouch and move slow. You won't use the energy quite as fast.

One thing I noted, when I was swimming in to the shore at the beginning of the game, I went to the bottom just to see what was there. I noticed my shadow did not follow what my "body" was doing, like it was a swim stroke behind. I didn't see it again, so maybe my experience was just one in a million. If it was truly being rendered at the time of game play, the shadow would follow my body's movements, no matter what. At anyrate, that is my two bits on the shadows.

I will end up buying the game, even if I cannot get other friends to play it. (they tend to not like special abilities in their games...) I will enjoy this one immensely. 😀
 
the physics arent that great agreed.. its very half pie done I feel ..
Seems they have concentrated on things like oil filled barrells which empty out as they should.. but then you have like mentioned the shacks which always fall down with a barrel , not even bullet holes show up properly as they should!..
Great game , but not all the trees can be blown up .. only plams and the like !..
I guess what I expected from this game was not what I expected..
IE all vegatation would be destructable not just some..
 
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