Running Crysis On Near Max Settings - What Graphics Card?

[wutang200]

Right this is for peple like Cluck & Sideways to answer as you guys will have a lot of experiences with this stuff.

As with pretty much everyone else, I want to run Crysis on maximum settings at my monitors native resolution of 1680x1050 with around 2x AA and want to know what graphics card you guys would recommend thats going to be noticeably quicker than what I already have.

Currently I can play it at reasonable fps (approx 25-30) on everything set to High.

Spec:

Intel C2D 3GHz 1333MHz 4MB Cache (not overclocked) 65nm
4GB Corsair XMS DDR2 1066MHz RAM (2x 2GB sticks)
Asus P5Q SE Plus Intel P45 Chipset MB
XFX 8800GT 512MB Alphadog Extreme Edition (oem mild overclock) PCI-E 2.0

Now I was thinking of selling and replacing the 8800GT for either of the below:

XFX 1GB ATI Radeon 4890 XXX Edition (oem overclocked)
XFX 896MB Nvidia GTX 275 XXX Edition (oem overclocked)

[Stone]

runs fine on my 4870 1 gig ram in 1680 x 1050 with every thing on high a 4890 should run a little better :)

[wutang200]

runs fine on my 4870 1 gig ram in 1680 x 1050 with every thing on high a 4890 should run a little better :)

What's your spec Stone and what approx frame rate do you get?

[Sideways14a]

275 or 4890 is a good start, the nvidia offering is a decent card with a bit of clocking head room, the ati one is real quick as well and can offer more if you like to play with the clocks.
Both are good single card solutions.

However this is crysis ... and it gobbles all the graphics power you can throw at it.
So you really want to be looking at sli or crossfire.
Now there are decent benifits to going twin card, one is that you can use dirt cheep single cards for mega horse power.
For instance a 9800gts aint a rocket (really) but two of em is quite a bit of grunt.
A 4870 is a good single card but two of them is a lot of muscle.

Personally (and this is what i have) i would hit crysis with a crossfire 4870 setup (1gb each), at 1900x1200 on my pc (4ghz quad 9650) its shifts at 4aa and full detail especially when crysis is modded with an additional texture pack)
If you want to go down the nvidia route, then try and get a couple of 265 as in games where you cannot use sli or crossfire profiles you will be stuck with a single card (ok not many of them now) and you want a wee bit of muslce behind the single card to do the job.




Alternativly... buy a 4870x2 or a 295 and dont worry about the graphics power as you will have loads :wack:
Or wait 3 or 4 months as ati release the 5xxx series (estimated to be 50-70% at least quicker than the equivalent 4xxx
And nvidia will shortly after release the gt300 range

[Stone]

P5K Premium
LGA775 6600 2.4 not overclocked
4 gig
4870 1 gig not overclocked
no longer got the game on my system but well over the normal frame rate :)
prototype with everything on runs sweet as well :)

[wutang200]

My MB doesn't support Crossfire or SLI :wack: so looks like I'll need some serious graphics grunt in the form of a single card solution.

The 4890 does look very good and the 1gig memory will love my high resolution. 4870X2 is very expensive but hard to get hold of too.

The GTX295 is well out of my budget too.

Then again if I can sell my 8800GT for about £130, I could possibly throw some more in and pick up the 4870X2 card or the GTX295 powerhouse. I reckon my CPU & RAM are more than capable but my spec is lacking in the graphics department.

[Sideways14a]

There is another option, the 4850x2 is a stinker .... big grunt but imho the 4890 is the chap to go for at this level.
You may want to pump some clocks into your cpu as well, crysis loves grunt and cpu grunt is always welcome as well.
See if you can overclock the core2 to 3.4 or 3.5 ghz... :nod:

Ohh and if you get 130quid for an old 8800 you are dick turpin :D

[dow]

So how would another 8800GT paired with his current one do? I'm asking as I have an 8800GTS and was wondering if I should be considering another in the autumn as a cheap way of keeping the system up to date... running at 1920x1080...

[Lum]

It would sit there doing nothing (unless he has 4 monitors) as his board doesn't support SLI.

Do they make a 4890X2 yet? ;) I'm pretty sure the makers of Crysis said there was enough graphics options (not all of which are enabled when you pick "ultra high") to tax the next 5 years worth of graphics cards.

[Cluck]

Right this is for peple like Cluck & Sideways to answer as you guys will have a lot of experiences with this stuff.

As with pretty much everyone else, I want to run Crysis on maximum settings at my monitors native resolution of 1680x1050 with around 2x AA and want to know what graphics card you guys would recommend thats going to be noticeably quicker than what I already have.

Currently I can play it at reasonable fps (approx 25-30) on everything set to High.

Spec:

Intel C2D 3GHz 1333MHz 4MB Cache (not overclocked) 65nm
4GB Corsair XMS DDR2 1066MHz RAM (2x 2GB sticks)
Asus P5Q SE Plus Intel P45 Chipset MB
XFX 8800GT 512MB Alphadog Extreme Edition (oem mild overclock) PCI-E 2.0

Now I was thinking of selling and replacing the 8800GT for either of the below:

XFX 1GB ATI Radeon 4890 XXX Edition (oem overclocked)
XFX 896MB Nvidia GTX 275 XXX Edition (oem overclocked)Your spec is very similar to mine, but I run as 8800GTX rather than 8800GT. It ran Crysis at ultra settings (DX10 stuff on Vista) at 1400x800-ish at ~20-25fps. That was, believe it or not, perfectly playable :nod: .

Personally, I'd wait at the moment. With DX11 coming on stream with Windows 7, there will be some new offerings from both ATI and nVidia. That will bring the price down on the DX10 cards :) (oh, er, as Sideways said :wack: )

[New200guy]

Ohh and if you get 130quid for an old 8800 you are dick turpin :D

was going to say the same thing. 8800gt is not worth that much. I have an 8800gts 640mb model and it aint worth squat as you can get a 9800GTX for about $120.00.

[wutang200]

Think I'll wait a month or 2 and see if I can pick up some sort of hardcore graphics card.

OC'ing my CPU is a no go as it gets super hot already due to being 65nm :(

Ideally I'm after the 4870X2 or GTX295.

[TrIcK^]

Got the core 2 clocked from 2.4 to 3.5 ghz with air by using a massive fan. Petty quite still though :)
Reckon 2 of these in crossfire should shift well http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169832
How much of a differance would going from ddr2 ram to ddr 3 make? Think Im running 4 gig at present.

edit: christ memory got cheap :eek:

[Sideways14a]

You need some more cpu grunt, so either buy a bigger heatsink/fan and go for 3.5 (should be a walk in the park) or buy a quad.

As your board hasnt got the required pcie support for twin card then your a bit stuck.
A 4890 would be my first choice in this case, its an awful lot faster than an 8 series card, especially when AA is being used.
Again the 275 is a decent offering if you find the 4890 difficult to locate or you want to stick with the green team and would prob be my second single card choice..


Unless you can get a 4870x2 or 295 of course :wack:
Chat is that the next 5 series card from ATI will be similar in performance jump to what the 4 series had over the (lackluster) 3 series.
The 4870 is almost exactly twice as fast as the 3870 so if true then a 5870 could be a stinker....
Nvidias new stuff will be a little longer down the line and prob a fair bit more expensive but they promise some good figures as well.

Ohh and dont go worrying about ddr3, its not really worth swapping ddr2 out just yet.


HEre is crysis running properly with a texture pack on some hefty hardware.

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5750/00087nw1.jpg

[TrIcK^]

Well I though screw it and treated myself :wack:
Bought a new monitor 23" 2x xfx 4890 xxx editions and some ddr 3. Ill only fit one card today as Im not sure about the psu yet :wack:

Going from a 3870 which was a good card anyway.

[John Bennett]

For all the money an effort to get Crysis to run quickly at silly resolutions with AA, don't you end up spending £300 on graphics cards that nothing else comes close to using (and by the time stuff does, there'll be a new range out).

Does warhead run any better?
I've been holding out for a couple of years (to make me do more work :whip: ) but I reckon I'll get a 4890 by the end of the year. Don't fancy the heat, noise or power use from a twin card setup.

[Grazor]

HEre is crysis running properly with a texture pack on some hefty hardware.

:eek: I thought Crysis looked good on my Rad 4870... wow

[Sideways14a]

Twin setups dont need to cause a lot of noise, if you have good heat management in your pc in the first place then under normal conditions they wont be to bad even the 4890 which some have claimed is a bit noisy (its not actually all that bad)

But if you dont have good airflow inside then the cards will spin up and any card type will then sound like a hoover lol

[TrIcK^]

wtf are ATI doing. Cant get the drivers without using that bloody driver robot!


For all the money an effort to get Crysis to run quickly at silly resolutions with AA, don't you end up spending £300 on graphics cards that nothing else comes close to using (and by the time stuff does, there'll be a new range out).


Not for me. This is the first I have spent in 2 years since building it, so tis due a little love.

[Sideways14a]

:eek: I thought Crysis looked good on my Rad 4870... wow
That is perfectally doable at decent rates on high resolutions if you have say a couple of 4870s and the tod packs (texture packs) for crysis.
The mods make the game look a millions times better and really good.



wtf are ATI doing. Cant get the drivers without using that bloody driver robot!

Ehh just get them from atis home page, no problems
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

[TrIcK^]

Ehh just get them from atis home page, no problems
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Oops, the pages looked similar, thanks :D

[wutang200]

You need some more cpu grunt, so either buy a bigger heatsink/fan and go for 3.5 (should be a walk in the park) or buy a quad.

As your board hasnt got the required pcie support for twin card then your a bit stuck.
A 4890 would be my first choice in this case, its an awful lot faster than an 8 series card, especially when AA is being used.
Again the 275 is a decent offering if you find the 4890 difficult to locate or you want to stick with the green team and would prob be my second single card choice..



I'm not gonna be able to go any higher with the CPU overclocking as my whole setup I've gone for is to minimise noise at idle so I have a specially sealed case with sound deadening all around with just 2 fans (one at the front and one at the rear) to aid airflow and games like Crysis makes the whole system produce a hell of a lot of heat.

So I was thinking I might as well buy a card that has 2 processors onboard the PCB such as the GTX295 or the 4870X2 to compensate for the lack of an extra PCI-E slot. Also means I'll have the same amount of heat produced compared to a twin card setup. Also won't have to change my PSU :)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NZXT/Hush/images/HUSH.gif

The cooling is taken care of using a Zalman cooler with an adjustable fan which I don't think is the best of designs. I've used Arctic Cooling thermal paste too.

http://www.infotechbyte.com.br/admin/fotos/cooler_zalman_cnps7500_lcu_led_amd_intel.jpg

[Sideways14a]

What size of psu do you have because anything sub 550 watts aint going to play ball with one of the big cards.
Also your cpu is most certainly a bottleneck with an x2 or 295, even a 4890 is going to be getting throttled by the processor.

[wutang200]

PSU is 630W. I'll just go for a dual GPU card and upgrade the case at a later date then overclock the CPU properly.

[TrIcK^]

What size of psu do you have because anything sub 550 watts aint going to play ball with one of the big cards.
Also your cpu is most certainly a bottleneck with an x2 or 295, even a 4890 is going to be getting throttled by the processor.

Well the 4890 in mine is running sweet on a 580 OCZ PSU :D Oh and zero slow down in crysis on max everything.

[Sideways14a]

Well the 4890 in mine is running sweet on a 580 OCZ PSU :D Oh and zero slow down in crysis on max everything.

A 4870x2 would take that psu near the limit, especially if there was a big overclocked cpu in the mix.


Buying a top card at the moment is a good idea, then when you chop the case,board and cpu in later you can use it in crossfire if you want (quadfire actually in the case of twin x2's)
No point in doing this unless you want to run >1920x1200 and upwards resolutions though as most of the cards lower down the tree like single 4890s provide ample power for resolutions like 1600x1024 ect..

[Stone]

other problem is heat and PSU, ive got 850watt PSU and watercooled cpu but still gets warm when hitting the hardware for some games !!!!

[wutang200]

To give you guys an idea of the kind of temps I get in my PC:

Right now at system idle, the system temp is 44C and the CPU temp is 34C.

Can easily reduce this by a fair amount with a bigger case that's more efficient in the cooling department. Might just get a massive case with a few huge fans blowing over everything.

[Sideways14a]

Pfft that cpu temp has loads of scope, get it wound up 500mhz and see what it does under load.
60deg C is fine for them under heavy use.. Hell i run my quad at 40c unloaded and about 70-75 with a beating
Fine...
You might need to wind some voltage in though...

Fan noise will only increase when you load the system up and it warms, when playing a game... And when you playing a game the amp and speakers will be blaring out boom bang bang boom so no prob..

[wutang200]

I'm reviving this thread to find out what cards will handle Crysis easily that are currently available on the market as I've now noticed there's loads of new contenders :)

[Sideways14a]

5870x2 and GF480 are your only candidates.
With that in mind though you can also include
5870's in crossfire and GF470s in SLI but of course you need 2 of those.

Thats for say 1080p resolutions with high AA, AF and max detail (which is what you want to play crisis on :D), obviously a powerful cpu setup like a 3gh Quad as well.

[wutang200]

Damn they're over £300 for the single cards :(

[wutang200]

Wow I can pick up a 4870X2 or a 4890 fairly cheap off Ebay :eek:

[clarity]

I didnt think you could put DDR3 memory in DDR2 slots :confused:

[wutang200]

Just placed a bid on a 4890 card :D £85 which is not too bad. Think the best way to buy these powerful graphics cards is to wait until they've been discontinued then hit Ebay.

GTX295's are still very expensive though :eek:

[Sideways14a]

Mega bang for buck these days is still crossfire or sli based stuff.
Crossfire 4870s still hoses some big numbers in crysis, crossfire 5770s are a step up and are major grunt for the money.
On the Nvidia side, the 480 is mega expensive and hot so go for SLI 470s if you can find them for some major push.

5870x2 is bonkers expensive and fast, and the even more bonkers special editions are even more expensive, and prob no use to anyone without a 30" lcd with mega resolutions.

[wutang200]

Crossfire or SLI would work out too much for me as I'd need to change the MB and also replace the PSU to cope.

The 4890 sounds a good balanced card that seems like it'll handle Crysis well.

[GrahamB]

I didnt think you could put DDR3 memory in DDR2 slots :confused:

You're right you can't. The location slot's in the wrong place for a start :thumbs:

[spencer_foxwell]

Bah I need to overclock my CPU AMD 6400+ x2 but I can't :\

Using my uguru bios sees the frequency going up to 3216mhz from 3200 :/ If I try going higher it suddenly jumps to over 3.5ghz and won't restart :wack: Balls to it

[wutang200]

I've now got my E6850 comfortably running at 3.6ghz so just need the 4890 now :nod:

Just not worth buying new graphics cards these days for £300+ when they'll depreciate extremely quickly just like all other PC components.

[spencer_foxwell]

Yeah but on the flip side if you buy a used card it is very likely to have been overcloked at some point and maybe won't last very long... Saying that I had 2 brand new 8800GTX's in SLi and one died after just over a year.... Gay

[DLowe]

bit off topic, but if anyone needs another 8800GT card to SLi I have one for sale in the misc. section :)

[Sideways14a]

4890 will not run crysis at max on a WUXGA sized screen, its not got the grunt to do it at full detail and 4AA + decent AF.
It will do 1600x1200 at decent Detail and maybe 2AA though... which is still pretty nice looking.

[Cluck]

My single 5870 ran Crysis at just over 30fps at 1920x1200 - DX10 mode but no AA (really is no point at that res IMHO when you're running around all the time) :nod: . That's on a Core2Duo E6850 running stock speed of 3GHz.

Mind you, I'll be replacing the processor soon. Finally getting fed up of supplying computers that are faster than mine :wack:

[wutang200]

I'll be playing it at 1680x1050 as that's the max my monitor will support.

[Sideways14a]

Crysis isnt very multicore aware, its happy with two cores but with a shit load of clocks on them (say 3.5 - 3.7ghz)
A lot of other games though are, crysis 3 better be.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/07/05/how-many-cpu-cores-do-games-need/2

[dow]

My Vapor-X 5870 (came with a slight overclock and better cooling) manages to shift crysis at 1920x1080p with 4xAA at over 30fps. Thats with an i7 930@3.5ghz and 6gb DDR3 ram.

[Sideways14a]

The 5870 is very fast so its not surprising its holding good frame rates at that kind of level. The overclocked ones even more so.
ATI hasnt bothered to release an updated high end card since they pulled the 5870 and x2 out, this says a few things.
The 5870 is already quick enough for everything.
The NV480 isnt to much faster and thus not much of a competitor
The 5870x2 is more than overkill for just about everyone
And there isnt a market for it :D

The 6xxx series is due to be release late this year, if they can provide 5870x2 performance in the single 6870 like they did with the 4870x2-5870 then i doubt there will be any games out there that could take advantage of the immense grunt on offer.
Suspect the next ATI card will be more focussed on GPU-CPU apps like Fermi is.
Also Fusion is due imminently as well, a new CPU (K10.5 at least) with a built in 5450 level of graphics grunt on the chip. Should provide laptops with a good bit of gaming power.

[wutang200]

Thing is the 5870 is big money (£300 to £400 :eek:) for the average consumer :(

Hopefully it'll be more affordable once the 6 series is released though.

[pyro]

I haven't subjected my 480 to Crysis, yet. It wasn't THAT good. CBA re-installing a 2 year old game. :wack:

[Martin T]

The 5870 is very fast so its not surprising its holding good frame rates at that kind of level. The overclocked ones even more so.
ATI hasnt bothered to release an updated high end card since they pulled the 5870 and x2 out, this says a few things.
The 5870 is already quick enough for everything.
The NV480 isnt to much faster and thus not much of a competitor
The 5870x2 is more than overkill for just about everyone
And there isnt a market for it :D

The 6xxx series is due to be release late this year, if they can provide 5870x2 performance in the single 6870 like they did with the 4870x2-5870 then i doubt there will be any games out there that could take advantage of the immense grunt on offer.
Suspect the next ATI card will be more focussed on GPU-CPU apps like Fermi is.
Also Fusion is due imminently as well, a new CPU (K10.5 at least) with a built in 5450 level of graphics grunt on the chip. Should provide laptops with a good bit of gaming power.

The 6 series won't be a game changer. The shaders are the same - they are just changing the memory controller and keeping at 40nm for now.
They had to abort their 28nm plans as they don't trust TSMC to deliver on their 28nm after the 40nm debacle.

[wutang200]

This is an interesting little chart to give buyers an idea of what to expect from a graphics card:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-radeon-hd-geforce-gtx,review-31939-7.html