Hiya,

Me being the FPS junkie that I am, like most of you, I've been giving the Crysis demo a try. I've had to run it with everything at medium with 800*600 res so I think you can guess what I'm about to ask. This could be useful for anyone else thinking of upgrading for Crysis I guess.

At the moment, these are my PC specs:

Intel Core2 Duo E6750 @ Stock 2.66GHz
Geforce 7800GTX
2046MB DDR3
SB Audigy 2 Soundcard (like we care, heheh)

I'm looking to upgrade my GFX card, or anything else that might need 'ubering' up. What GFX card do you recommend? What's going to give me the biggest boost for Crysis?

Obviously I'm going to be wanting to play Crysis with everything at high and I wanna run it with a resolution of 1280*768 for my widescreen TFT. I've never gone over the top with AA, so I'll be using 2x, but maybe 4x if I'm feeling a little funky.

I'll probably be getting out a small loan so I don't screw myself over for Christmas, and that means I may be able to go SLI after things have calmed down a little. Anyway, hope someone can help!

Cheers,
russ

The 8800GT just came out and is surprisingly cheap for what it is.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/26/geforce-8800gt-today-130-quid

It's faster than an 8800GTS in mos cases and for that price, have two? ;-)

They say Crysis loves quad core CPU's as well.

Ooooh, ****ing nice find mate, I'll look into it

From the stuff I have been reading crysis demo still ain't using the cpu properly, sometimes less than 30 percent usage on a quad core.
However I would still recomend one as games will start using it, nice fast hard drives are a must as well.

I happen to think sli is a piece of shit, with buggy performance and things half the time running slower not quicker, and never double. Still I ain't used SLI since I had 7800gtx, so maybe its changed with the 8800 models, also with my 7800 in sli, you could only use one monitor output out of the four which is just utter shit.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1210/18/page_18_final_thoughts/index.html

Seems like a GREAT value card, should be able to order one this week coming it seems.

Yeah, sure is giving the GTX a run for its money. Hopefully it's out by Wednesday so I can order two I should still be saving a load of money for not getting a GTX!

Aye the one word of warning is that this might be the mid-range card of the new product refresh, it's possible a much faster high end card might appear sooner or later.

The new ATI radeon 3800 series should also be out soon. However, the 8800GT looks great value and if you need to buy now, seem you can go wrong.

Yeah, I was thinking that. They normally release a new card just before christmas don't they?

Pretty stunned that it's only ~£130, for a card that runs so well. I'm hoping my o/c'd x1950XT will hang on long enough for the next card or a ATI 3800 series

It seems to be because ATI stopped ripping Euro customers off with their last release and started charging us the same as US customers. Seems NVidia have followed suit.

Cool! The GT was released today wasn't it?

NDA ends today so more reviews will pop up soon, might be able to buy one later too but I dunno for sure.

Ralinn mate I would recommend holding on until the ATI radeon 3800 is released .

The logic for this is :

1) It is likely to be slightly slower than the 8800 GT & so will hit the market for less , this will get you a better price on the 8800 GT if you still choose to go for one

2) If it runs games within 10 FPS of the 8800GT it would make a better choice of hardware namely because it has DX10.1 support , not an issue today or even this time next year but the IQ optimisation / performance in the DX10.1 API may make the card a real winner in a years time.

3) The next quantum leap GFX wise is likely to happen in early 2008 with dual GPU DX10.1 compliant cards & so it might be wiser to go with a low cost card this year & flog it or relegate the card to another PC before taking the plunge on a card which should play the likes of Crysis in all its splendor in about a years time when they in turn become affordable.

4) DX10.1 should not be taken to lightly as the current penetration of DX10 HW is still minimal & so one can expect game developers to take advantage of the improvements this API will bring to the table such as improved performance for
complex shaders , improved compatibility of anti aliasing quality with HDR rendering & advantages include global illumination
delivering lighting and shadow quality in real-time that matches the ray tracing techniques used in CG films.

TTFN Spit

I refuse to go with ATi. I had enough of them on my previous cards and I had enough of the people in that company.

Personal experience of course, but I'm sure you understand.