WidowPC Gaming Computers - Crysis Tips and Tricks
To play Crysis is one thing. To play it and optimize performance is
another world in Crysis gaming! This series of Crysis tips and tricks will
give you the best Crysis performance. We've also listed our
recommendations for the best hardware for the game.
This Thanksgiving, my dad and I snuck away after the massive feast and played
Crysis. His new gaming computer was keeping up with the game well, but I
could see that some game tweaking was necessary to get the most out of
Crysis. So, I've compiled this list of Crysis tips and tricks to help
speed up the game. Have fun, Dad!
Display Your Frame Rate In-game
Obviously, Crysis is an incredibly demanding game. You can allow
the game to analyze your hardware to automatically opimize the best detail for
performance, or you can hand tweak it. If you're like me, you prefer to do
it manually. Here's how:
- Enter console mode (hit the ~ on your keyboard)
- Type in the following and hit return "r_displayinfo = 1" (no
quotes)
- Hit the ~ again to exit console mode
- You will now see your frame rate and other info on the upper right part of
your screen
Suit Shortcuts
Although this has nothing to do with hardware or software settings
optimizations, these keyboard short cuts greatly speed up the play. If
you're still using the mouse to change the suit settings, this will make Crysis
a whole new gaming experience.
- Make sure you have the "Suit Shortcuts" option enabled on the keyboard
settings
- You can then "double tap" the following default keys to access the
different Crysis suit modes
- Jump (spacebar) = Strength
- Sprint (shift) = Speed
- Move Backwards (s) = Armor
- Crouch (ctrl) = Cloak
Removing the Intro Videos
Speed up the load time by removing all those videos at the beginning
- Go to this folder from your install location
"Crysis SP Demo\Game\Localized\Video"
- Create a new folder to backup the videos (i.e.
Backup)
- Move all videos from the directory in step 1 to this
newly created folder except for bg.sfd and intro.sfd
- Next time your run Crysis it will go straight to the
game menu
Run Benchmarks
It's easy to run both a GPU & CPU benchmark in Crysis as they
have provided batch files to do this. Keep in mind that the benchmark is based
on the current settings you have already setup in the game. You need to change
the settings in game before your run the benchmark.
- Go to this folder from your install location
"Crysis SP Demo\Bin32"
- You will see "Benchmark_GPU.bat" &
"Benchmark_CPU.bat" in the directory
- Open a command prompt (Click on Windows Start Menu then
click on "Run" then type in "cmd" and hit return
- Navigate to directory in step 1
- Run either file in step 2 to benchmark your system.
Once benchmark is complete you can hit the "ESC" key to return to the
command prompt and view the results
Run Crysis using Direct X 9 on Vista
If your run Crysis on Vista it will automatically launch using Direct X 10. Some
people claim that you can get better frame rates running under Direct X 9. You
will be doing this at the expense of some nicer eye candy available in Direct X
10 and you will not be allowed to access the Very High settings within the
game.
- Copy or Create a shortcut for Crysis.exe
- Right Click on the shortcut and select "Properties"
- At the end of the "Target" line add -dx9
- The Target should now look something like this ("C:\Program Files\Crysis
SP Demo\Bin32\Crysis.exe" -dx9)
- Launch the game from this new shortcut and you should be all set
- To verify you can enable the console command to display frame rate
(described above) and it will tell you what version of Direct X you are
running
A Good Method to Get Very High Settings in DX9
Here's a great guide
with a file to download and instructions to achieve this at Crysis-Online
Recommended Crysis Video Settings Based on Video Card Memory
MadBoris over at Voodoo
Extreme spent hours researching the video memory requirements for Crysis in
the various different resolutions. The table below should be incredibly
useful for those with 256MB and 320MB video cards.
Looking at the video memory requirements of the game, you can see how this is
the key to optimizing performance. The higher you go over the dedicated
memory available to your video card, the more "herky jerky" the Crysis
game play will be. You can optimize the performance quantitatively with
the FPS view above. You can also optimize the performance further by
playing Crysis in DirectX 9 mode (see above). DirectX 10 allows for much
more appealing detail through textures and effects not available in DirectX
9. However, the performance is not quite optimal for today's video cards
as those graphics tend to take up more video memory. Until video cards
commonly sport 1028MB (1GB) video memory, playing with DirectX 9 will be the
performance tweakers preference.
| Resolution |
Settings |
Video Memory |
| 1280x1024 |
Medium |
300MB |
| 1280x1024 |
High, textures medium |
300MB |
| 1280x1024 |
High |
380MB |
| 1280x1024 |
HIgh, 4x AA |
460MB |
| 1680x1050 |
Medium |
300MB |
| 1680x1050 |
High |
390MB |
| 1680x1050 |
High, textures medium, 4x AA |
530MB |
| 1680x1050 |
High, 4x AA |
580MB |
| 1920x1200 |
High, textures medium |
380MB |
| 1920x1200 |
High |
490MB |
| 1920x1200 |
High, textures medium, 4x AA |
570MB |
| 1920x1200 |
High, 4x AA |
650MB |
| 1920x1200 |
High, 8x AA |
710MB |
Recommended Desktop Hardware
Obviously, if you're playing Crysis on subpar hardware, you're probably
starting to think about how you can get something with a little more
muscle. Here's a list of hardware components that will run Crysis at the top settings
while still delivering the optimal game play in order of how much it will impact
your Crysis experience. If you want to purchase a full system with everything you need to
run Crysis at the fastest frame rates check out the WidowPC Widow IX2 SLI. It recently
toasted the Dell and HP competition during a PC Gamer review, nearly doubling their FPS
scores in Crysis.
NVIDIA Video Card - For those on a budget the NVIDIA 8800 GT is
perfect. If you've got plenty of cash, go for the 8800 GTX. It's got
more video memory, which is so key for Crysis.
Quad Core CPU - Look for an extreme edition version.
Specifically, the Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 is my recommendation. It's a good
bang for the buck, overclocks easily (on the right motherboard) and will provide
plenty of processing power to deliver maximum Crysis game play experience.
Obviously, if you have a larger budget go for the fastest extreme edition quad
core you can afford. The more powerful the CPU, the better.
Maxed out RAM - If you're running Vista, upgrade your RAM to
4GB. Crysis will use every bit of it. If you're not running Vista,
don't bother. You won't be able to use all 4GB under Windows XP. The
XP max RAM usage is 3GB. Make sure the RAM you buy has the same speed as
the bus speed of your system. For example, if your system bus is 1066MHz,
buy 1066MHz RAM.
Cited Sources
A big thanks goes out to Mark Krynsky. He found many of these Crysis game
tweaks at other sites and compiled them on his blog at Krynsky.com.
He's got some interesting thoughts on gaming. Go check
him out!
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