Crytek cries, ends PC exclusivity, supports consoles

[lord of the mark]

odd though, IIUC Orange Box released at the same time for PC and console, and IIUC sold BETTER on the PC than Crysis.

Why? Better game? More effective antipiracy? The spec issue (including perceptions)?

Ive also heard some folks pirated Crysis just to test if their rigs COULD run it. So I wonder how many lost sales that really was.

So do people think this means no more AAA PC exclusive FPS for the foreseeable future?

[Asher]

Yes.

[Solver]

Ive also heard some folks pirated Crysis just to test if their rigs COULD run it

I can confirm that. I've seen messages from numerous people who downloaded the game just to see how it runs and not necessarily to play it more than a bit. Crysis is the most taxing game right now (whether it should be is another subject), and di...spec measurement contests have always been popular.

[Asher]

Ditto. I downloaded it and didn't bother playing past the first 10 minutes.

The technical issues pissed me off that much.

I also know I'm not alone...

[Solver]

Hey, at least your rig still allowed you to run it somewhat decently

I'm curious as to what framerates you'd get in the final third of the game with that hardware. In my experience, some effects that appear then cause the performance to drop compared to the first two thirds or so of it.

[Quillan]

That matches my experience, Solver. I would hardly say it ran fine to begin with, though it was acceptable (to me) frame rate, but I had to start dropping detail settings down even further once I hit a certain point. I noticed it when I hit the port, but it was very prominent once I made it out of the alien ship. We'll see how it runs on the new system once I get it all put together this weekend. The one major comment I have consistently found about Crysis was that it didn't look good enough to run as poorly as it did.

[Asher]

The one major comment I have consistently found about Crysis was that it didn't look good enough to run as poorly as it did.

Bingo.

This is one reason I love consoles, as a technologist. I love it when developers squeeze every possible bit of performance out of a piece of silicon. Developers like Crytek just take it all for granted. It's a completely different paradigm.

[DrSpike]

I'm still planning to check Crysis out when I upgrade next, but since I didn't like Far Cry as much as most people seemed to, I may not be a huge fan.

[FrostyBoy]

Sucks to be you then Asher. My system at work and at home both run it just fine.

The one at home I have to run on High, but office on Very High, the only difference between the two computers is that the one in office is running Quad Core, which I believe is the real reason why it is able to run Crysis so well.

[Quillan]

The console developers do it because they have to. As the old saw goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention". They can't make the hardware any better, so they keep coming up with ways to get more from what's there. The early games on any platform are clunky compared to the ones released at the end of that platform's life cycle. Unfortunately, with the PC there are so many different hardware combinations and such a short life cycle for those components that you never get this level of optimization.

I think Crytek takes it a little to extremes, is all. I'll probably drop Crysis on the new box either tomorrow or this coming week when I have the time. We'll see how it runs. I still don't think it can possibly look good enough to justify the performance hit. On the old box, to get performance equivalent to what I got in Far Cry, I had to lower detail settings down to the middle, and it didn't look any better than Far Cry at those settings.

[Asher]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Sucks to be you then Asher. My system at work and at home both run it just fine.

The one at home I have to run on High, but office on Very High, the only difference between the two computers is that the one in office is running Quad Core, which I believe is the real reason why it is able to run Crysis so well.

Maybe I just have much higher standards than you. I'm very sensitive to framerate on the PC, I also absolutely need AF and AA both on to pretty high levels. My home computer is a quad-core as well.

It sounds to me like you probably don't even know what AF is, and you certainly don't use AA.

There are a lot of very stupid approaches Crytek took to designing their engine, from a performance perspective. These are discussed in great detail on the Beyond 3D forums, if you dare enter there...

Regarding your claim about quad core helping, I suspect you don't know what you're talking about here either. Crysis is inexplicably dual-core optimized, not quad-core. When I play the game and log my CPU usage, core 0 and 1 get 80+ usage, cores 2 and 3 usually hover around 20% a piece -- and these are driver / operating system tasks, not Crysis. Crysis is extremely GPU limited, not CPU. A quad core, at the same frequency as a dual core, will offer a slight performance benefit just because video drivers + OS tasks get their own cores, but it's not that big of a difference. The higher clock speeds of a comparably priced dual-core help more on poorly designed games such as Crysis.

[Solver]

I definitely have lower standards, probably lower than average. Heck, I have to really concentrate to notice any difference between anisotropic and bilinear filtering. But I find that for any recent game AA is pretty critical - no AA and minimum AA makes a world of difference. And Crysis needs AA more than most other games due to the huge amount of foliage in-game. And here's the problem, AA in Crysis absolutely makes systems choke, even ones that can run it otherwise well on good settings.

[Quillan]

I am hardly sensitive to framerates at all. Generally, I won't even notice until it drops down to about 20 frames per second. In a first person shooter where twitch reflexes are necessary, 30+ is plenty for me. On the old system (Athlon X2 4800+, 2 gigs of DDR-400, 6800 Ultra video card), I had to run Crysis at 1024x768. Most of the advanced detail settings were at medium, a couple (like water) were at high, and a couple were at low. AA had to be off completely. I got acceptable (to me) framerates, but occasionally when a bunch of korean soldiers were on the screen at the same time it would get a little choppy. At these settings, it didn't look quite as good as Far Cry did.

The new box (Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale @3.06 Ghz, 2 gigs of DDR2-800 @ 3-5-5-15 1T timing, 8800GT Superclocked), I was able to run it at 1280x1024, all advanced detail settings to high, 4x AA. I haven't installed FRAPS yet and can't remember the console command to show the framerate, so I don't know just what I was getting. However, it had to be 35 frames per second or higher, because I didn't get a single slowdown to the point where I noticed it until the end of the first level.

The bit with the frozen boat still made the new system chug a little, however I did not get the animation/sound desynch I'd get there on the old box. It looks great. It runs great. Still, I just can't see that cutscene causing that type of slowdown since it's an enclosed area. They definitely could have optimized it a lot more.

[FrostyBoy]

Same here Quillan, mine runs at about 35fps as well.

I have read on various tech forums that Quad core does in fact help a lot.

If I get a chance Asher, I will prove it to you.

[Asher]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Same here Quillan, mine runs at about 35fps as well.

I have read on various tech forums that Quad core does in fact help a lot.

If I get a chance Asher, I will prove it to you.

Blah blah blah, I tire of your lies.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2209093,00.asp

Crysis installs two batch files in its bin32 folder, one of which is a CPU benchmark. In this test, your character runs around a village and blows lots of stuff up—it's essentially a glorified physics test. Lots of debris and particles fly through the air. The batch file runs this demo four times. The typical scenario is that the first result is low, while the last three are roughly the same.

We ran the Crysis CPU test on five different Intel CPUs, all of which run with a 1333MHz front-side-bus: the E6550, E6750, E6850, QX6850, and the brand spanking new Core 2 Extreme QX9650. We ran the tests on our ASUS P5E3 system with DDR3-1333 memory. The OS used was Windows Vista Home Premium.

Two different resolutions and detail levels were run: 800 x 600, with graphics features all turned to "low" and the default, which is 1024x768, but with graphics detail turned to high. The graphics cards was the same PNY 320MB 8800 GTS we used in the Yorkfield review. Here's what we found out.





The most interesting result is the comparison between the Core 2 E6850 and Core 2 Extreme QX6850. Both CPUs run at 3.0GHz, but the E6850 is dual core while the QX6850 is quad core. As you can see, the results for both high detail and low detail are essentially identical. The low detail result is particularly illuminating because it suggests that Crysis won't benefit from quad core CPUs.

Note that once you crank up the detail level even moderately, the game becomes graphics bound at 1024x768; the performance only drops slightly when you use an E6750, and you don't see a noticeable drop when running high detail until you drop down to the E6550.

How about instead of reading people's opinions on forums on the matter you actually find scientific testing? Just a thought.