# Crysis Demo (reposted)



## Green (Oct 27, 2007)

(Reposted from the "twilight zone" version of the forum...)


Anyone played it yet? I've been having a little dabble. You can really feel the Crytek stamp on the game.

And shooting down trees is immense 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 Some of the acting is pretty terrible and the voice syncing seems to be off, but nevertheless looks pretty good so far.

Only problem... my computer won't run the game smoothly on anything higher than "medium" settings. Gutted. 8800 GTS, 2 gig of RAM and E6600 dual core, and Crysis laughs at me.

EDIT - other problem: the demo's well too short.


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## Lenny (Oct 27, 2007)

I don't suppose you've got a link to the demo? How big is it, by the way?

And out of interest, which version of the 8800GTS have you got? 320mb or the 640mb?


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## Green (Oct 27, 2007)

I got the 320 after I read a couple of reviews for some of the 640 versions. Seemed like the extra performance wasn't worth the extra money.

Crysis Demo Download Live Countdown October 26th 2007 PC EA Games

It's 1.8 gig.

It's a real shame about the settings - I have all the recommended specs except for the 640 vs 320, so I'm a bit peeved that it won't run smooth on anything higher. I can stand around and look at the scenery with the "very high" settings, and damn, it looks beautiful. I just can't move


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## Lenny (Oct 27, 2007)

Thankee.

Give me an hour and I'll see how my system handles it. 

I've got all the recommended specs, so hopefully it'll be alright.


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## Green (Oct 27, 2007)

I might have another crack at it later on with all the Vista settings turned down. I can't believe Aero takes up that much crank, but it's worth a try.

If you can get your PC to run the game smooth on "very high," I will be very jealous.


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## Lenny (Oct 27, 2007)

Heh heh. 

All I've got over you is an extra gig of RAM, and the 640mb version of the graphics card. Processor speeds are the same, and we both run Vista.

I can't see what I've got making that big a difference with something as resource hogging as Crysis, to be honest. It'll just let it hog more.


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## Fake Vencar (Oct 27, 2007)

Game Downloads, Game Patches - FileFront.com

Best place to get the demo.


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## Lenny (Oct 27, 2007)

I've just played it - my ptimal settings are apparently Medium! Laughed at us, Green? Crysis might as well bend us over sideways and... yeah...

I managed to persuade it to run at High settings, with 8x anti-alias, and it worked, but just about. Took a while for all the textures to load, but they eventually stayed there. 

I can run it at "Very High"... as long as I don't mind a lag of about a second.


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## Green (Oct 28, 2007)

Not just me, then  What do you think of the game?


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## Commonmind (Oct 28, 2007)

Downloaded and played it. After I got my PC components out of its slobbering maw I decided to put it back in its cage until later this year.


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## Green (Oct 28, 2007)

Aye, it is a hungry beast.


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## Lenny (Oct 28, 2007)

The database crashed as I was replying earlier. Oh well.

---

It was brilliant! Though I stupidly wasted all but my pistol ammo shooting down palm trees, and then segmenting them into the smallest pieces they could go. Testing the engine! Honestly! The trees split in set ways, sadly, though it is where you shoot them.

I especially liked the way the suit works. When taking people out I took the stealth option - get on the ground, cloak mode, move forward, scope the land with binoculars, shield until energy back up to full, cloak. Stand up, single shot to the head, get back on the ground quickly, wait for energy to be back up, cloak, creep forward and take their ammo. Repeat. It took me nearly two and a half hours to complete the demo! 
Oh, and for those who want it, there are new ForceWare drivers out tomorrow (169.01 - nVidia graphics card drivers). You can download them from the site today:

Windows Vista 32-bit

EDIT: That's interesting, they've removed them. Ah well. They might have them back up tomorrow.

---

How'd it play on your system, CM? With your Uber, 768mb card?


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## Commonmind (Oct 28, 2007)

Sadly, as I mentioned in the "Show Us Your" thread, my card is currently on RMA  I believe there was a problem with that 768mbs of ram, at least I assume that was the issue, considering my experience with having gone through several cards that died because of problems with video memory. I threw both my old 7800GTX and an X1950XTX in the machine to test and they were horribly underpowered. Hopefully I'll get the card back soon, as I'm itching to see this thing in all its DX10 glory. 

(Just as an aside, several of the guys I frequently talk to from my old XS benchmarking days have some of the best rigs on the market and they are all equally frustrated with their Crysis performance. Some of them are running dual 8800 Ultras in SLI, with Quad Core processors pushed to the limits under some pretty pricey cooling solutions; it seems even the enthusiasts won't be running this game up to the standards the videos have been displaying for another six months to a year.)


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## Green (Oct 29, 2007)

I feel a little cheated by that, though I'm not entirely sure why (I mean, I haven't been robbed or anything). There was some discussion about this on the PC Gamer podcast, whereby one guy was saying he wants to play his games on the max settings if he has a great rig. Why would games developers spend time and resources making the game for hardware that isn't even commercially available yet?

The counter argument to this was that in a year, you can go back with your new uber card and play it again on the highest (or in this case, probably second-highest) settings, thereby getting a new experience out of the same game.

I'm afraid I'm in the first camp. In a year's time, there will be newer, better games out, and I'd rather be playing them than going back to Crysis again. I'd rather they'd poured that time into the reasonable-settings version of the game and got it out six months ago. Maybe it doesn't work like that, though.

Like Commonmind says - people have been saying that Crysis will be able to run on surprisingly low-spec machines (though nobody said low spec will run the highest settings), and all the videos looked tasty. And now we find out that _nobody_ can run it in tasty mode, and the low spec machines will be playing on the very lowest settings.


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## Lenny (Oct 29, 2007)

And run on low spec machines it does! I have proof! Well, not with me, but I've seen it.

A friend of mine has a Vista machine with a gig of RAM, the lowest spec DX10 graphics card he could find, and I think it might be a 2.0ghz processor. He can't get it to run on anything higher than the lowest settings, but run it does.

In all honesty, *Medium* settings are more than good enough. Whilst it would be nice to have the rights to brag about be able to run Crysis at *Very High* specs, Medium will do for me... and maybe High, if I turn off every unneeded process. Like Aero, and my virus checkers... and Windows.


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## Happy Joe (Oct 29, 2007)

I find that I like advances in games that push the hardware envelope.  It gives me an excuse to upgrade at least a few parts every 2-3 years (changed out the processor for this one).
As long as a game is entertaining and plays smooth I don't really care much about the visual details (there is no time to look anyhow if you are about to die).  
Replayability (I'm in your second camp), for me, is one of the things that I look for in a "good" game (Crysis looks like it will be very replayable thanks to the open environment).  IMO, replayability is often enhanced, when games push the hardware capabilities (currently on medium).  If they had limited the game to look the best on antique hardware (i.e. my 7800GT) only a very few people would be happy and most of us (including you) would complain that the graphics were dated.  I, too, like playing new games but I occasionally like to replay the oldies (usually there are few good PC games released each year).

I'm not certain how tasty the settings have to be (it depends on your computer budget I guess).
Enjoy!


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## Lenny (Oct 29, 2007)

I can remember Christmas 2004. We got Sims 2 for our then four year old PC in the kitchen (it'll be about seven now, my word), and found out that we needed a graphics card that was DirectX 9.0c compatible. And so we bought our first graphics card - the 128mb nVidia GeForce FX 5200. The fella in PC World told us that it would play any new game for at least a decade! Cheeky beggar. 

And now look - we've got people with cards that are less than a year old, struggling to play a game that recommends said card for best results! Amazing!

I don't see how you can wait so long before upgrading, Joe.


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## Happy Joe (Oct 29, 2007)

Over clocking helps!  It lets me squeeze some extra performance from dated hardware.
Enjoy!


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## Lenny (Oct 29, 2007)

Now that's something I'd really like to try.

But I'm not too sure about it with this computer. It's an oldish AMD processor, and it's got to last me at least another hour. I might give it a shot with this system when I've built myself a new one, though, just to see if I can get my Vista base score up.


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## Happy Joe (Oct 29, 2007)

Be careful, overclocking is one of those things that can turn in to an obsession. It started as a hobby, I went as far as building a refrigeration (phase change) unit for the processor, then I scaled back; now I just do it to get an edge. 
Using Windows XP pro instead of vista for games helps performance too.
Enjoy!


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## Lenny (Oct 29, 2007)

I know the feeling.  Just general computery stuff started as a hobby a few years ago, and has since turned into a complete obsession. Not that I'm complaining, mind.  Though I do need to branch out a bit. So far, it's only been RAM and graphics cards that I've really done anything with.

Problem is, more and more games coming out for the PC will require Vista, and DX10 to play them. Still, hopefully the dev's will optimise things for Vista.


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## Happy Joe (Oct 29, 2007)

Yes, I will be forced into vista sometime in the next year.  I'm not certain which will come first; a new vid card or vista.  I would like to wait untill Micro$$$ releases the first vista service pack.  I would also like DX-10 but so far only extreme details are different between it and DX-9c. 
Enjoy!


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## Commonmind (Oct 29, 2007)

I've been running Vista Ultimate since launch and have had no major hiccups. Some of the other features the OS offers more than makes up for the slight hits to performance some have seen; though that's pretty subjective, as I'm sure many of them couldn't care less about some of those features and are more interested in using Vista as a gaming platform. 

The way I see it the hardware market is currently a very volatile environment. New technologies are literally flying off the benches of R&D teams on a global scale, and it's only getting worse. We're quite literally living in a world without hardware standards, and that's starting to have a large impact on the general consumer, where before it has been an issue only enthusiasts have had to deal with. Given another year or two, after all the hardware manufacturers have settled in with their new technologies and I'm sure you'll be seeing more consistent performance out of DX10, and in turn next-gen games.


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## Green (Oct 29, 2007)

Lenny said:


> And now look - we've got people with cards that are less than a year old, struggling to play a game that recommends said card for best results! Amazing!



I think this is what irks me - I have (almost) got the recommended specs, but I can't play the game to the standard I've been "promised" in the promotional vids.

Graphics aren't everything, of course. Look at HL2 - that game looked great when it came out, but nowadays the engine is looking a bit past it. But it suits the game brilliantly. I just finished playing through HL2 all the way up to Episode 2, and it's an almost perfectly crafted game, and it didn't matter that it was starting to look a few years old.

Actually, one of the best features of that game is the sound.


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## Happy Joe (Oct 29, 2007)

I was just surfing and found that there is a file mod to get DX10 results in crysis from high end graphics cards (like the 8800GTS) when running DX9 in XP;

DX 10 Features in Windows XP - MUST SEE

Enjoy!


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## Green (Oct 29, 2007)

Very good. Not worth resinstalling XP for, but a good find for XP users


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## Happy Joe (Oct 30, 2007)

I agree; not worth a reinstall. 
By following the instructions then juggling the game control panel parameters, I was able to significantly improve the fine detail (foam on waves etc.) and still get playable frame rates (with everything on high it was not playable) (7800 GT and amd/x2 6000 @ 3Ghz, 2 gig of ddr3). I ended up by keeping some of the effects on high and others (shadows, sound) on medium or low. It is not a world shaking difference but it is an improvement and better than I thought this system could do.
Enjoy!


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## Green (Oct 30, 2007)

I am going to have a play with some of the settings over the next few days, see if there's some I can drop down to low in sacrifice to some of those that would look nice at high, or with some AA going on.

Any recommendations?


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## Happy Joe (Oct 30, 2007)

I' going to try to optimise today also.
The first ones that I dropped were shadows and sound.
Once I get a good compromise I'll post back.
After getting a semi optimized with the buttons I will see what I can do to improve things by shifting variables within the config files themselves.
Enjoy!


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## Happy Joe (Oct 31, 2007)

OK, here is what I came up with as my best compromise between detail, frame rate and playability (AMD x2 6000 @ 3Ghz, 2 gig memory, 7800GT;

Texture - custom (very high)
objects - high (grayed out)
Shadows - Medium
Physics - Medium
Shaders - Medium
Volume effects - Low
Game effects - Medium
Post processing - high (very high)
Particles - High (very high)
Water quality - High (very high)
Sound - Low

Of course these settings are totally subjective and everyone's results can be expected to vary. (High (very high) and custom (very high) refer to settings that have been moved beyond the standard DX-9 allowed settings by tweaking the config files.

Enjoy!


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## Green (Nov 2, 2007)

In case anyone's interested, this week's episode of PC Gamer Podcast talks about Crysis, and its mixed reception (not just the graphics/performance, but also the gameplay).


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## Green (Nov 9, 2007)

Another bit of info for Crysis players... 

Apparently (and I've not yet tried this yet myself), if you're running from within Vista, you can turn on Windows XP Compatibility mode while you play the game, and it will give you a pretty hefty frame rate boost.

I guess this might turn off the DX10 stuff or something similar, but if you're only able to play on medium/high anyway, maybe you wouldn't notice.


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## Commonmind (Nov 9, 2007)

Running in compatibility mode does indeed disable some of the DX10 features and you'll see the same benefit by simply lowering settings from very high to high in the game. I think this came from the PC Gamer podcast, but I'm not sure the person who made the comment actually understood it was forcing the game to run in DX9 mode. 

Tweakguides has its Crysis Tweak Guide posted if you want to do some performance optimizations and I highly recommend it. After putting together the new PC I wanted to take the older P4D based machine I had and try and get as much out of it as I could. With an 8800 GT (with an antiquated processor and 2gb of DDR2 533) I was able to get a steady 25 FPS (playable) with everything set on very high. Using some of the console commands you can really streamline the experience while retaining almost all of the subtle details.


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## Green (Nov 9, 2007)

Yeah, this was from the PCGPC.

"Same benefit by simply lowering settings from very high to high"... was the guy not talking about a _general_ boost in performance, not just from the top-end to the almost-top-end? I couldn't run in high, anyway, but was hopeful it would enable me to add some of those settings in there.

Meh, if people want to get an extra couple of bhp out of their Ferrari, then they've lost touch with the comman man


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