PC Upgrade Finished!

[Miker]

CPU: 3.4GHz P4 Extreme Edition Gallatin replaces 2.8GHz P4 Prescott
CPU Cooler: New ZALMAN with AS5 replaces Old heavy one

MoBo: New BIOS replaces Old BIOS with no Extreme Edition support
Northbridge Cooler: SilenX Cooler with AS5 replaces Locked up old Cooler

RAM: Corsair XMS TwinX 2GB (2 x 1G) DDR 400 replaces Old Corsair XMS TwinX 1GB (2 x 512m)

GPU: AGP XFX 7950GT 512m replaces Old EVGA 6800 128m

Drive 2: 20x Philips DVD-RAM replaces Sony CD Burner

OS: XP Pro Full Install replaces Aging XP Home Upgrade

Suites: Web Premium CS3 for school replaces 30 Day trials

Keyboard: Logitech UltraX replaces Used to death Z-Board

Mouse: Logitech G5 and Xtrac mousepadreplaces Old Logitech trac-ball


Plus some fixed PC cooling in general.

[Santino11447]

Heavy Duty........what settings would you use to run Crysis on this rig?

[Miker]

Haven't even tryed Crysis demo. AGP drivers are all messed up right now, once drivers get better, and game gets patch I will try it. I play bioshock at 1280x1024 everything high perfectly smooth.

[Santino11447]

Let me know........I wouldn't think you'd have any kind of problems once you get the drivers ironed out.

[Sadasius]

Does the Crysis demo punish a rig as much as the actual game itself? I may try it myself to see what I can get away with.

[Miker]

Demo is puts more hurting on a rig, downloading demo now.

[Sadasius]

I am almost scared to try it for fear my video card goes :explode:

[Miker]

My processor is running at stock 3.4GHz now, I tell you how it runs, then you can see if it is worth the risk.

[Miker]

WDF! Everything but 2 on high!? At 1280x1024, no AA. Tad jumpy in fight parts, but still... It ran at a good 20FPS on high... Med will run perfect.

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o81/mikerider123/crysis.png
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o81/mikerider123/crysis2.png
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o81/mikerider123/crysis3.png

[Miker]

Tomorrow I am going to try to re-set BIOS and re-install windows... On boot last time it showed my PC as a "Extreme Edition" with no "HT"...

[Sadasius]

Downloading it now. Will use fraps and Rivatuner to show FPS and temps.

[Miker]

Any installing windows XP hints? I have my XP disk, and a SATA driver disk...

[Sadasius]

yeah don't load your disc in the floppy drive. After I jammed mine in there it made a lot of noise and didn't load worth a crap. ;-)

But seriously I did nothing special to mine. I play with the performance settings after its loaded and that's about it.

[Miker]

Sadasius, that was *SOO* helpful! :-P

[Sadasius]

Sadasius, that was *SOO* helpful! :-P

Yeah...My mom say's I'm special! *turns around and walks into a wall*

[Sadasius]

Geez, used the same settings as you on Crysis and only averaged 10 FPS. Well its probably because of the heavy downclock. Looks like an awesome game though with very high detail.

[Santino11447]

[QUOTE=Miker;113664]WDF! Everything but 2 on high!? At 1280x1024, no AA. Tad jumpy in fight parts, but still... It ran at a good 20FPS on high... Med will run perfect.

I'm impressed.........should even get better once you re-install windows.

[Miker]

Way to lazy to re-install today... :-P I just woke up. Everytime I think my PC isn't up to something it shines. I have this feeling that if I upgrade my PC right now I wouldn't be blown away. This PC does everything I could ever ask from it.

[Miker]

Did install! All is good, time to set it all up...

[werty316]

20FPS is not enough for my taste, its 30FPS or I don't play it.

[Miker]

It ran on high, for playing I would run on Med.

[Miker]

*Sigh* Some problems, some help would be nice.

First off, my Port2 Raid gives me "Error" (In Yellow, if it was red I would be scared) yet it still boots and C: drive is the right size? Who knows about that one. I will worry about that tomorrow

[Frag Maniac]

Don't know about help with your rig setup, esp if you're using raid, but I can give a few pointers I learned with Crysis setup.

First let me say I opted to go for a more affordable upgrade than you as I plan to build a complete new rig by end of next year. I had a P4 3GHz, X800XT, 1GB RAM spec and swapped the vid for a X1950Pro 512MB AGP and added another 1 GB RAM. The RAM and vid cost me $183.

In Crysis I set textures to High, shaders, shadows, water and sound to Medium, rest Low at 1200x900 with 8x AF averaging 35 FPS. 35 I find is ideal as the lowest it dips to is 20 during heavy battles which makes it easy to aim with no overhead to spare.

Some settings trivia about Crysis:

Shaders, the most visually impacting setting. Though going from Med to High adds HDR, it also adds boatloads of ambient occlusion lighting which makes everything look hazey and washed out. It has the effect of desaturating everything like an extremely overcast day. You CAN however turn this feature down or off completely via the e_ambient_occlusion command for it.

Shadows, enabled at Med level and resource hungry above that. No reason to go above Med as they look pretty good there, esp if you don't have uber spec.

Water, starts undulating at Med level and has more depth and detail. Again no reason to go above Med unless you have uber spec.

Sound, is fine at Med, you'll hardly notice any difference above. Even reverb included.

Post Processing, adds AA to foliage at High but I find is excessive in motion blur and depth of field, even to the point of causing headaches with some. A 1200x900 res will eliminate the need for foliage AA and blur can be reduced via commands if you insist on going High.

Physics, more breakable objects, particularly buildings when using Med or esp High.

Volumetrics, at Med and above adds clouds and more detailed hues to the sky. I find some cluds have an annoying flicker though.

Particles, more detailed smoke and heat haze at Med and up.

Game Effects, longer corpse stay Med and up and esp in big battles on High.

Textures, obviously more detail in all surfaces, don't skimp here.

Anisotropic, not in menu lke Far Cry but can be forced via the r_Texture_Anisotropic_Level command. Makes distant textures higher in detail.

The settings I would focus on if you want best visual quality for what you have is Textures, Shaders, Water, Volumetrics, Particles, and Shadows in that order. I skipped Particles and Volumetrics with my lower spec but you may be able to go high with one or both. I would leave Shadows at Med though.

What resolution you use depends a lot on whether you want to bump other settings up to get AA. If you want AA you have to use High shaders and if you do I'd seriously recommend turning off ambient occlusion lighting. Note that the AA you get with Shaders at high is different from the AA added to foliage with High Post Processing. Thus you have to have both Shaders and Post Processing on High to have full AA.

Post Processing and Physics are probably two of the most personal preference things in Crysis. Some really don't like all the blur PP adds and you really only notice extra physics if you blow things up a lot, esp buildings.

NOTE: Making a System.cfg file for you Config folder will allow you to make one time command settings by placing them there rather than entering them in the console each time.