At last! After weeks of testing and debating, our Crysis PC project has finally turned a corner and entered the development phase. Here's a look at the specifications for our new $3,000 gaming system.
The system looks good.
THG recommended Win XP with Crysis before for good reasons.
But when will THG start using Vista 64 and DX10 ?
I had to go through a lot of trouble to get Crysis to work well on Vista 64 (not blaming anyone)
Even after a simple hack to get near "very-high" DX10 graphics in Windows XP, the motion blur and depth of field still looks better in DX10.
Or Crysis will never be a mature 64bit - DX10 game?
I think Ben & Bob just want to get the game running because it's still JUST A GAME. However, the hardware needed and issues with Crysis in Vista 64 will pop-up again as other "high-end games" get released in the future.
This is ridiculous... I don't see the need for the expensive hard drives, or the GTX's. 2 G92 GTS 512mb would be fine, no? You could overclock them probably better than a G80 anyway. $295 for 4gigs of memory?
This is ridiculous... I don't see the need for the expensive hard drives, or the GTX's. 2 G92 GTS 512mb would be fine, no? You could overclock them probably better than a G80 anyway. $295 for 4gigs of memory?
I mean, really, Raptors? 2 150GB Raptors? For that kind of money you could have gotten a 32MB cache terabyte drive.
And $300 on RAM??? RAM is cheap now - you can get 2GB DDR2 for less than $50...and you're spending $300?
I don't want to come off as a cheapskate or anything - but you guys could have built a decent Crysis comp. for under $2,000 (besides, it's not like any computer could break 60FPS on Crysis Very High DX10 settings anyway - with the exception of maybe a workstation....but that's a different league).
And another thing - what's with the 8800GTX??? Unless you're going to do that triple-SLI thing, you'd be better off just getting two 8800 GTS 512MB....
You guys might want to mention what size monitor you're planning to have and the resolution you're going to run the game at.
Personally, if I'm going to buy Crysis today, it would be for the eye-candy, and in that respect, I would shoot for two 8800 ultras (or two overclocked GTX's), both water-cooled, and an overclocked Q6600 with a Swiftech waterblock. It's just too bad that the nForce 680i chipset doesn't overclock very well with quad-cores, and until nvidia comes out with something better, the chipset here will be the Achilles Heel...
That issue aside, if the above setup runs the game at 1680x1050 at 30fps with settings just below the top end, it should still look amazing and make most users happy.
But since I'm not buying Crysis today, I'll wait for a better SLI chipset and the next top-end video card! By then Crysis will be on sale for $20
Message edited by Luscious on 12-19-2007 at 10:55:34 PM
---------------
Owner of the Dual Core Goliath.
Now building the Quad Core Colossus...
Totally unnecessay article... Everyone who reads THG knows how to build a crisis PC with 3000$... It would be a much interesting article if it was a "How to build a crisis pc with 500$".
Totally unnecessay article... Everyone who reads THG knows how to build a crisis PC with 3000$... It would be a much interesting article if it was a "How to build a crisis pc with 500$".
$500? Interesting idea. I suppose it's theoretically possible, but I'm not sure how you could pull that off.
As I stated in the article, the point of the project is to give people an idea of what kind of money you would need to spend to build a rig that could adequately run Crysis. We could have gone cheaper, but it would have taken more time to find better deals. And we could have gone for a higher cost rig, but that seemed to defeat the purpose of the project. We had lots of gear in our lab, and we have some truly insane PCs, too -- like a 3-way SLI system from Falcon Northwest. So we'll run Crysis and other games on those high end beasts. The point, again, was to build a totally new system, which included buying new gear the same way a reader would.
As for where we purchased the items, we got the bulk of the products online from places like NewEgg, TigerDirect, and even Amazon.
$500? Interesting idea. I suppose it's theoretically possible, but I'm not sure how you could pull that off.
As I stated in the article, the point of the project is to give people an idea of what kind of money you would need to spend to build a rig that could adequately run Crysis. We could have gone cheaper, but it would have taken more time to find better deals. And we could have gone for a higher cost rig, but that seemed to defeat the purpose of the project. We had lots of gear in our lab, and we have some truly insane PCs, too -- like a 3-way SLI system from Falcon Northwest. So we'll run Crysis and other games on those high end beasts. The point, again, was to build a totally new system, which included buying new gear the same way a reader would.
As for where we purchased the items, we got the bulk of the products online from places like NewEgg, TigerDirect, and even Amazon.
I recently put together a PC, with a total price at approx. $ 1.100,- or 6.000 Danish Kroner.
I contains:
Q6600
ASUS P5N-E SLI
2x 2 GB OCZ PC2-6400 5.4.4.15 2T RAM
2x 36,7 WD360 in a RAID0 config
1x 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
1x HD 3870 512 MB
ODD, PSU and a Zalman CNPS9500 LED nVidia something (Green LED :-/ )
Vista Business (MSDNAA) 64 bit
All above, is running at stock-speeds. I'm currently gaming with a avg. frame-rate of 30-40 FPS, 64 Bit, DX10 all settings @ 'High' (except phys, which is set to 'very high').
And still, I get a decent framerate. My monitor is a Acer AL1916W@1440x900 and my Cat.-driver is set to 'balanced'.
So please, tell me why I should choose a PC with a total cost of 2.800 USD ?! I feel, that my computer is running 'Crysis' very well. And in the future, it would be considered a minor investment, to get 'Crysis' running with a frame-rate above 60 FPS@'Very high'.
It just seems silly to me, that THG.com sugest, that one should go out and spend more than $ 2.000,- or what would be more than 15.000,- Danish Kroner. It's just insane.
Seriously, guys. You (THG) are considered one of the top-most-state-of-the-art Hardware-sites where I come from (Denmark), and you pull of a stunt like this.
$500? Interesting idea. I suppose it's theoretically possible, but I'm not sure how you could pull that off.
"... We could have gone cheaper, but it would have taken more time to find better deals. And we could have gone for a higher cost rig, but that seemed to defeat the purpose of the project. ..."
- Not wanting to sound like a wise-ass. But I assembled my new within 14 days. I only had a Toshiba Sat A100-886 (with 2 gigs of memory), three weeks ago. Still, within 14 days, I collected all the parts for my new rig. Within my budget and time-frame (it is Christmas time, so some money have to go around for presents).
'Crysis' was released November the 15th in DK. That's little more than a month ago up and until now. Again, I started from scratch, and the best you guys can pull of is this (very unfortunately) expensive rig. I have higher thoughts of you, than this. So saying, that it would have taken more time to finde better deals. True, but not more time, than you could have made an adequate (?) gaming rig, to a cost of ~ 1.000-1.500 USD
