The Crysis system requirements have not yet been released, though here's some general guidelines:
- You will need a DirectX 9/Shader Model 2.0 (or higher) compatible graphics card.
- Crysis will run on 2 to 3 year old PCs (or even 4 year old PCs).
- What framerate is acceptable depends a lot on personal preference. Some people can play well with around 20fps and others will not go below 50fps. Obviously those who can't stand "low" frame rates need better hardware or they will have to sacrifice image quality for performance by lowering graphics settings.
- The only DirectX 10 compatible cards available now are the NVIDIA Geforce 8800 Series, GeForce 8600 Series, GeForce 8500 Series, GeForce 8400 Series, ATi Radeon HD 2900 Series, Radeon HD 2600 Series and Radeon HD 2400 Series. There will be more available before Crysis is released. "Vista ready" is simply a clever marketing trick used on the previous generation cards. A card with this badging is not necessarily compatible with DirectX 10.
- SLI and Crossfire multi-GPU technologies are supported (this only works if you actually have two graphics cards connected with one another).
- Single core, Dual core, Multi-core and multi-threaded/hyperthreading processors are supported in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. We do not know how much processor power is needed, though in a recent PC Gamer UK magazine preview Cevat Yerli said an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 card could run the game at "ultra detail" settings.
- You do NOT need a DirectX 10 card or Vista to run Crysis.
- You CANNOT run DirectX 10 on XP. A DirectX 10 card does work on XP but only in DirectX 9 mode.
- Special Vista/DirectX 10 effects and optimizations cannot be enabled with Windows XP/DirectX 9 card.
- Optimizations and features specific to Shader Model 4.0 can only be run with cards that support it. The same is true where optimizations and features specific to Shader Model 3.0 are concerned - this includes true HDR.
- Almost all the older media you've seen has been rendered in DirectX 9, which means that Crysis will look absolutely awesome in DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Many of the features included in DirectX 10 are possible in DirectX 9 also.
- Crysis takes advantage of 64-bit processors although only by using a 64-bit operating system such as Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition or Windows Vista 64-bit edition. According to Cevat Yerli, Crysis will have a 10-15% performance increase per thread running in 64-bit. Thus a dual core processor will run 20-30% faster than a single and a quad will run 40-60% faster than a single.
- CryENGINE 2 is multi-threaded and Crysis thus takes full advantage of dual/quad-core processors.
- Crysis does not have support for the AGEIA PhysX card.
- DVD drive is required.
- Crysis will run only on Windows XP or Windows Vista. There will be a dedicated server package for Linux, however.
- There will be two types of multiplayer server, DirectX 10 servers and DirectX 9 servers. This makes online play fairer, due to features used in DirectX 10 which aren't supported in DirectX 9. DirectX 9 players may enter DirectX 10 servers, where the server software is responsible for gameplay balancing.
- In order to play the game Crysis, the DVD must be in the DVD player.
Latest Crytek statement:An "Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (or AMD equivalent), 2GB of memory, and either a Radeon HD 2900XT with 512MB of memory or a Geforce 8800 GTS with 640MB of memory" computer is "well-within [Crytek's] plans". However, Crysis is expected to scale back to three-year-old hardware, as well as the next-generation hardware. (Maximum PC, October 2007 Edition)
