Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo Video Card Performance @ [H]

FrgMstr

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Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo Video Card Performance - Crytek released the first Crysis 2 demo a few weeks ago, giving anxious gamers a first look at the graphics and performance its "new" engine brings to the table. We've tested the demo extensively with a handful of video cards, and we're here to share our experiences with you.
 
Intersting.

Personally I found 2560x1600 to have too low FPS to play well on my rig with a 580 (see sig). FPS's in the high 30's felt sluggish to me. I had to drop down to 1920x1200 in order to get what I considered acceptable gameplay, at 60+ FPS.

Note that other games I've played have not felt sluggish at high 30s FPS, but this game does to me...
 
Crysis uses an odd little trick for AA where it blends the last frame with the current one. It leads to a sometimes noticeable ghosting effect, which you can see in the pipe at the bottom of the screenshot in the comparison of Advanced vs. Hardcore.

The 360 version uses temporal AA and I'm assuming it's the same here. This eurogamer article has some more detail on it.
 
A couple of things I'd like to point out in addition:

For those of you running @ 1920x1080, even less of a video card is needed for optimal game play (obviously). I didn't do any scientific testing, but I had a smooth and enjoyable multiplayer experience with a single stock speed Radeon 6850 @ hardcore settings.

Additionally, I wanted to point out, the MP Demo has been shut down, so unfortunately, there's on point in downloading it anymore :( Just going to have to wait for the real thing.
 
Is there going to be any video features coming up anytime soon? Enjoyed the ones that have been done so far.
 
I get along on hardcore nicely @ the grueling resolution of 1600 x 900 with a single GTX 460 1 GB. The game doesn't look too bad... I guess.
 
DX9?!?!?! I won't be purchasing this game. It sounds like they cut the balls off of it...
 
Kyle,

I know you are a big fan of Eyefinity and 2d surround. Please, please, please start doing these performance reviews in this mode! 30" resolutions are a good start, but 3 x 1080p or 1200 montiors would be awesome. I know that a bunch of [H] people would like to see this too!
 
While I find this interesting I wish [H] would include top end videocard from at last 6-12 months, afterall I think we all would expect a high end card that came out a few months ago to do a good job at most new games, but how about slightly older cards like the Radeon 5870 and 5970?
 
Kyle,

I know you are a big fan of Eyefinity and 2d surround. Please, please, please start doing these performance reviews in this mode! 30" resolutions are a good start, but 3 x 1080p or 1200 montiors would be awesome. I know that a bunch of [H] people would like to see this too!

I agree. I would like to see performance for eyefinity / surround setups as well.

While I find this interesting I wish [H] would include top end videocard from at last 6-12 months, afterall I think we all would expect a high end card that came out a few months ago to do a good job at most new games, but how about slightly older cards like the Radeon 5870 and 5970?

I think they assume that we're all smart enough to know how the previous generation compares to the new generation. You know your 5870 is faster than the 6870, but not as fast as the 6970.
 
"In the meantime, feel free to download and try out this multiplayer demo, it really is quite fun and looks good for a DX9 demo!"

I am pretty sure the demo got the axe a few days ago and is no longer working.
 
"In the meantime, feel free to download and try out this multiplayer demo, it really is quite fun and looks good for a DX9 demo!"

I am pretty sure the demo got the axe a few days ago and is no longer working.

Release date is supposed to be tomorrow. So we shall see...
 
Is there any way we could get a clickable link in the screenshot section that would result in the screenshot being shown without the frames around it?

In other words, when I go to this page, clicking the image would take me here. Whereas now, clicking the screenshot closes the window.

On a 1440x900 laptop screen, the screenshots in [H] reviews are totally worthless. I see about half of the screenshot surrounded by ads. I understand the need for the ads, but since the screenshots become useless to me I very rarely open them. If there was an easy way to view a full size screenshot after seeing the page with ads, I would be much more likely to click.
 
DX9?!?!?! I won't be purchasing this game. It sounds like they cut the balls off of it...

DX11 support is supposed to be added at a later date via a patch.

To me, this game is unfinished in its current state as I won't be buying it until DX11 support it out.

I'm not surprised to see that nVidia cards do so well considering that this is yet another TWIMTBP title.
 
I tried the beta, and minus the sound not working, all I could think of was "Call of Duty: Halo"
 
DX11 support is supposed to be added at a later date via a patch.

Pointless. It will be just another console port with some DX11 features patched in in order to try to shut up the PC crowd.

DX11 won't really shine in FPS:s until we have titles that are built from the ground up with DX11 intended as its predominant usage environment, like Civ V.

To me, this game is unfinished in its current state as I won't be buying it until DX11 support it out.

The best we can hope for is for them to patch in some surface effects, like DX11 DOF and stuff like that. I doubt any DX11 support will be significant. Best case, this will be another Metro 2033 (which wasn't a bad game, but wasn't quite up to real PC standards, and hid its shortcomings by being mostly underground.)
 
DX11 support is supposed to be added at a later date via a patch.

To me, this game is unfinished in its current state as I won't be buying it until DX11 support it out.

I'm not surprised to see that nVidia cards do so well considering that this is yet another TWIMTBP title.

At least EA/Dice is honest with us by telling the public that BF3 will be built from the ground up on PC then ported to other platforms. I can deal with this....

But Crytek stabbed PC users in the back with this move....
 
So, was it a demo, or a beta test? I don't know any demos for PC that lose functionality before the game's release date.

it was a beta tester, evaluator, woopsCUlater, gelding of a stick-it-to ya:confused::confused::eek::eek: I still like the original CRYSIS:eek:, jungles are fun..
 
I am sad to see Crysis fall a bit behind in pushing the envelope, but it really is good news for us poor people who can actually afford to play new games.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037006023 said:
Pointless. It will be just another console port with some DX11 features patched in in order to try to shut up the PC crowd.

DX11 won't really shine in FPS:s until we have titles that are built from the ground up with DX11 intended as its predominant usage environment, like Civ V.



The best we can hope for is for them to patch in some surface effects, like DX11 DOF and stuff like that. I doubt any DX11 support will be significant. Best case, this will be another Metro 2033 (which wasn't a bad game, but wasn't quite up to real PC standards, and hid its shortcomings by being mostly underground.)

Those are exactly my suspicions on this, but i've already got an incredibly long backlog of games thanks to the recent Steam sales. Some of you guys probably can't wait, but I can wait as long as I need to. Since I generally don't replay FPS' for a while after I first beat it, I want my first playthrough to be as graphically awesome as possible.

At least EA/Dice is honest with us by telling the public that BF3 will be built from the ground up on PC then ported to other platforms. I can deal with this....

But Crytek stabbed PC users in the back with this move....

It is just the nature of the market these days. The money is with consoles, and I give major props to Dice for the fact that they will be making the PC platform the top priority. It is too bad that i'm not into these massive online only FPS' like the BF series.
 
I've it preordered. No way am I not getting it.
Judging by the review. On my OC'd 6950 I should be able to play it at 1920x1200 on Hardcore ok.
can't wait for the game to arrive...Just finished Bullletstorm
 
But Crytek stabbed PC users in the back with this move....

What you have here is a direct result of the rampant piracy on PCs. Don't blame Crytek, blame the pirates - piracy is a much less serious problem on consoles than it is on a PC, so the logical move for any games company is to develop for consoles first. It's happening more and more.

Software pirates (and I'm obviously NOT implying you are one) are shooting themselves in the foot without even realizing it (or caring), but then complain when they get hit by the results of their own actions. Too funny. :p

Not so funny, of course, for the innocent PC users who actually pay for their games.
 
My SLI 460's seemed more than a match for the demo at 1920x1200. Pretty sad.
 
What you have here is a direct result of the rampant piracy on PCs. Don't blame Crytek, blame the pirates - piracy is a much less serious problem on consoles than it is on a PC, so the logical move for any games company is to develop for consoles first. It's happening more and more.

Methinks you have been drinking too much of the industry kool-aid.

Piracy really isn't a problem at all. More games are being sold on on the PC today than ever before over Steam alone.

Steam has made buying games so easy and in many cases so cheap, that it isn't even worth the hassle of pirating anymore, especially when it comes to multiplayer online games that may or may not work in their pirated form.

I admit it. In the 80s and early 90s I was a huge disk swapper. I pirated pretty much everything and used to laugh at the intro screens in Sierra games that said "please don't pirate this game" :p I haven't pirated anything in well over a decade now, because it simply isn't worth it anymore. As soon as the internet came around, and you started to need unique keys to play on online severs, and then Steam came along with its cheap, and easily downloadable content there was no reason to pirate at all anymore.

My theory is that the majority of piracy remaining in the market is because people just don't see any games out there that are good enough to pay for. I certainly don't see too many. I'm enjoying Civ 5 (but 4 was better), and I play Counter-Strike (I bought the original Half Life when it first came out, and then the Source version on Steam when it was first launched) I bought the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, and thoroughly enjoyed them. I also remember Deus Ex being fantastic when it was first launched, but other than that, there hasn't really been a fun, well made PC game in over a decade.

Most of the junk that gets released for the PC platform are poor ports of console games, which are dumbed down to work for the intellect of children who play consoles.

There are so few good, well made, intelligent games that I am not surprised at all that noone is willing to pay for them.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
Methinks you have been drinking too much of the industry kool-aid.

Nah, I just happen to be a B2C software developer myself (not a games developer, mind you) and know first hand the nasty effects of software piracy, thank you. :D

Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
Piracy really isn't a problem at all. More games are being sold on on the PC today than ever before over Steam alone.

Piracy is and will always be a problem. I suggest you give THIS article a read, it's the most exhausting research on this subject I have ever seen. All I can say here would pretty much just be a repeat of what is said in that article.

User expectations for games these days is so high that the days of the single game developer are pretty much over. Now you almost need a multi-million dollar team and resources to make it in the games market. With that kind of investment, bad sales of a single game can break a company.

Steam does make it more convenient to buy a game rather than pirate it (and convenience indeed helps tremendously), but it doesn't solve the problem. Zero-day warez, especially, is a MAJOR catastrophe for any games developer, Steam or no Steam.

Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
especially when it comes to multiplayer online games that may or may not work in their pirated form.

Yeah, but not all games are suited for online play, and, furthermore, this also causes single player campaigns to be given less and less love. I, personally, prefer the single player campaigns for instance.

Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
I admit it. In the 80s and early 90s I was a huge disk swapper. I pirated pretty much everything and used to laugh at the intro screens in Sierra games that said "please don't pirate this game" :p

Yeah. Most people just don't realize that behind game, or other software, companies are other people just like you or me, who also need to eat and feed their families. Just like people frown upon cigarret smoking these days, I think one of the ways to solve the piracy issue is to make it as socially un-acceptable as smoking is, or more. :)

If, instead of hailing crackers as cool 'heroes', we educate our kids on how bad software piracy really is, how much pain it brings and why, we will have gone a long way toward eliminating software piracy. It's all about respect and what is acceptable and what isn't.

Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
I haven't pirated anything in well over a decade now, because it simply isn't worth it anymore. As soon as the internet came around, and you started to need unique keys to play on online severs, and then Steam came along with its cheap, and easily downloadable content there was no reason to pirate at all anymore.

But that's YOU. Piracy is still pretty much alive and kicking.

Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
My theory is that the majority of piracy remaining in the market is because people just don't see any games out there that are good enough to pay for.

That's BS, just an excuse, a rationalization that people use to justify stealing from other people to themselves. If they are not good enough to pay for, they are not good enough to pirate either. But that's not what happens.

When I buy a book, I might enjoy it or not. I don't go around stealing books from shops just because not all books are top-of-the-crop. At most, I'll wait for a review and then decide wether I want to buy it or not.

Zarathustra[H];1037009569 said:
There are so few good, well made, intelligent games that I am not surprised at all that noone is willing to pay for them.

Oh, and you think that piracy actually helps making more inteligent games? ;)
 
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User expectations for games these days is so high that the days of the single game developer are pretty much over. Now you almost need a multi-million dollar team and resources to make it in the games market. With that kind of investment, bad sales of a single game can break a company.

Seems to me that the small developers are experiencing a resurgence. Super Meat Boy, Minecraft, Magicka, etc. are all A+ games that come from a single-person or a small team and they've experienced fantastic sales numbers.

As for piracy. Crytek sold over a million copies of Crysis. Any developer would consider that to be a great selling title on a console, let alone the PC. Any developer except for Crytek anyway.
 
Nah, I just happen to be a B2C software developer myself (not a games developer, mind you) and know first hand the nasty effects of software piracy, thank you. :D



Piracy is and will always be a problem. I suggest you give THIS article a read, it's the most exhausting research on this subject I have ever seen. All I can say here would pretty much just be a repeat of what is said in that article.

User expectations for games these days is so high that the days of the single game developer are pretty much over. Now you almost need a multi-million dollar team and resources to make it in the games market. With that kind of investment, bad sales of a single game can break a company.

Steam does make it more convenient to buy a game rather than pirate it (and convenience indeed helps tremendously), but it doesn't solve the problem. Zero-day warez, especially, is a MAJOR catastrophe for any games developer, Steam or no Steam.



Yeah, but not all games are suited for online play, and, furthermore, this also causes single player campaigns to be given less and less love. I, personally, prefer the single player campaigns for instance.



Yeah. Most people just don't realize that behind game, or other software, companies are other people just like you or me, who also need to eat and feed their families. Just like people frown upon cigarret smoking these days, I think one of the ways to solve the piracy issue is to make it as socially un-acceptable as smoking is, or more. :)

If, instead of hailing crackers as cool 'heroes', we educate our kids on how bad software piracy really is, how much pain it brings and why, we will have gone a long way toward eliminating software piracy. It's all about respect and what is acceptable and what isn't.



But that's YOU. Piracy is still pretty much alive and kicking.



That's BS, just an excuse, a rationalization that people use to justify stealing from other people to themselves. If they are not good enough to pay for, they are not good enough to pirate either. But that's not what happens.

When I buy a book, I might enjoy it or not. I don't go around stealing books from shops just because not all books are top-of-the-crop. At most, I'll wait for a review and then decide wether I want to buy it or not.



Oh, and you think that piracy actually helps making more inteligent games? ;)

I say BULLSHIT to some of the stuff you mentioned. Esp for the pirating stuff. I was speaking to someone from EA about pirating at GDC2011 here in SF. While there is some pirating going on, most of the time, it is that game developers are just lazy anymore. They can create a game on a console platform and cross it over to the PC with minimal effort. He had stated to me that Piracy is not their number 1 issue anymore. The problem is that the console(s) are just so much more valuable and make the companies more money. That is why they develop on the console then port crap over to the PC. Services like Steam are around for a reason: To provide a distrobution platform for developers, so that physical media is not needed anymore. You only need to download a client, login, download and play your game, then you are done. No physical media, no printed material, just a digital cop that you can take any where. Come back in 10 years when the CD/DVD for installs goes the way of the Dodo bird....
 
I say BULLSHIT to some of the stuff you mentioned.

And exactly which parts are bullshit?

The problem is that the console(s) are just so much more valuable and make the companies more money.

Have you stopped to wonder and think how that can be possible if there are many more PCs than there are consoles (I like to game and I don't own a console, for instance)?

Perhaps one of the reasons is precisely because piracy is an order of magnitude less of a problem on consoles and therefore companies make more money there?

People who are pirating software need to wake up and realize that they are killing their own favorite hobby. Can you honestly say that you think this is bullshit too? :)

Cevat Yerli of Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead has publicly stated:

"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future."

So there you go.
 
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what that cevat said is not my concern.
i won't buy crysis 2 until it has dx11 support, better grapihics than crysis warhead and can take full advantage of my dual gtx 580 rig
 
Am I the only one who thinks the "Advanced" looks better than the "Hardcore"? Look how much more clear the textures are in "Advance - maybe it was a bad pick of screenshot by [H]. Decent demo though. Was basically like COD.
 
My 3870's didn't fair so well with the demo. I wish they were 1GB each but I'm at that point that where it is now time to update my graphics cards if I want to keep playing at 1920x1080 with newer games.
 
Cevat Yerli of Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead has publicly stated:

"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future."

So there you go.

Crytek is run by retards who think that every pirated copy is a lost sale. Crysis would never have sold 4 to 5 million copies on the consoles.Those are 1st party AAA title numbers.

They sold over 1 million copies of Crysis on PC alone. Those sales came solely of it being a PC exclusive graphics powerhouse. Crysis 2 is now multiplatform, has nothing to really differentiate it from the huge amount of console FPSes, and has lost a portion of the PC crowd. I'll be surprised if they sell 1 million copies of Crysis 2 between the PC and consoles. Who will they blame it on then?
 
Crytek is run by retards who think that every pirated copy is a lost sale. Crysis would never have sold 4 to 5 million copies on the consoles.Those are 1st party AAA title numbers.

^^^THIS.

The problem with those who whine about piracy is that they count every downloaded copy as a lost sale. Who's to say that those doing the downloading would have bought the game if they weren't able to pirate it? Who's to say they even have the means to buy it if they weren't pirating it? (after all at $60 a pop, games have become pretty expensive)

If Gabe Newell has taught us anything it is that lowering the price of something leads to a greater increase in sales than even most experts anticipate. While he was mentioning it as a benefit to the digital distribution model with less costs per unit, it is still relevant here.

Lets say a game like Crysis costs $60 and at that price the demand is 1 million copies. What do you think the demand would be at "free"? It would be amazingly high. Sicne pirated downloads are essentially free, this is why you see so many of them.

Thinking that this translates into real demand at the $60 price level just shows a complete lack of understanding of micro economics. The truth is - and I'd be willing to stake my reputation on this - that software piracy leads to almost no lost sales. The people downloading games illicitly are mostly going to be people who would never have bought the game in the first place if they had to pay for it.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037011801 said:
Thinking that this translates into real demand at the $60 price level just shows a complete lack of understanding of micro economics. The truth is - and I'd be willing to stake my reputation on this - that software piracy leads to almost no lost sales. The people downloading games illicitly are mostly going to be people who would never have bought the game in the first place if they had to pay for it.

What you're descrbing is an honor system.
 
I thought the latest Radeon series had a new special AA effect it could do? How does that look? Does it work well on this demo?
 
What you have here is a direct result of the rampant piracy on PCs. Don't blame Crytek, blame the pirates - piracy is a much less serious problem on consoles than it is on a PC, so the logical move for any games company is to develop for consoles first. It's happening more and more.

Software pirates (and I'm obviously NOT implying you are one) are shooting themselves in the foot without even realizing it (or caring), but then complain when they get hit by the results of their own actions. Too funny. :p

Not so funny, of course, for the innocent PC users who actually pay for their games.

This isn't a piracy discussion
 
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