It only took 9 years, but my computer can finally play Crysis (Ultra High @ UHD 60FPS)
I have had a lot of unfortunate issues with my own technology purchases over the years. Sometimes it was bad luck, other times it was a lack of money, but I was always behind the curve on gaming technology. I would go cheap on some part or accidentally purchased a component that bottlenecked the system, limiting me to choppy frame rates or lower textures. This is a bit ironic since I’ve made a livelihood from computers and technology.
The last time I could say that I had a top of the line gaming rig was around the turn of the century. I had a pre-built Quantum computer, I can’t for the life of me remember the specifications. The Quantum brand went bankrupt along with nearly all of the small computer manufacturers of the 90s. (Please do not confuse this rarely known brand with quantum computing, which is something else altogether.)
My computer was a couple years old. After saving cash for over a year, I purchased a 3dfx Voodoo 5500 video card. It was top of the line; the very first card to render a “gigapixel.” You should have seen how real the graphic-intense game Unreal looked on it. For the first time in my life, I was truly blown away by real time rendering.
Three months later, my father purchased a new computer for me as a Christmas present. He did so without talking to me (it was a Christmas present after all) and I am very thankful for the gift, but… unfortunately… the new computer did not have AGP slots. My Voodoo 5500 card was an AGP card.
Computers came and went since then as I went through my teenage years, I had to take what was offered. There was no money for fancy rigs. My first build as an adult ended up being BTX. I don’t know why I went with BTX… Intel was pushing it and I found this nice looking BTX case. At the time, I never even considered the ramifications of reversing the direction of my PCI Express slots, which is exactly what BTX did. I had been “out of the game” for years. This mistake cost me dearly.
Dual slot GPUs started to become popular right around the time I built my computer… and not too much later, nearly all video cards for gaming were dual slot. The thing you need to understand about BTX is that it’s a mirrored image of the standard ATX motherboard. ATX is what is used in almost every computer. With BTX, instead of your PCI slots aiming toward the bottom of the case, they aim up and toward the processor. On this particular motherboard, there was just a single PCI Express slot. As such, dual slotted GPUs would not fit in a BTX case as the case only allowed for single slotted cards. The motherboard had its own issues, the CPU cooler would have been in the way of the second slot. None of this would have been an issue if my GPU was aimed the other way — as it would be in a regular ATX case.
Despite these issues, I stuck by that computer for over 8 years. It was an Intel Core 2 Quad w/ DDR2 RAM. I had upgraded pieces of it repeatedly during that time. I often thought about buying an ATX case and ATX motherboard to transfer my processor, RAM, and other components away from BTX. But by the time the dual slot GPU became a bottleneck, processor architectures had changed and RAM speeds had increased. It was hard for me to justify spending a bunch of money to rebuild a computer that was already dated. Why not just replace the entire thing? Well, there wasn’t exactly money for a complete rebuild in my budget. So I did nothing.
Fortunately, there was actually a handful of OK single slot GPUs that were released over the years. The first card I bought was a single slot 8800GT. My second card was a 9800GTX w/ 2GB of on card memory. When I finally decommissioned it in February of 2015, it was running an Asus GTX650 single slot card. This isn’t a terrible card by any means, but it’s still on the low end when it comes to gaming. Combined with a Crucial solid state drive, it could run most older games well. Modern games at 1080p only ran at 15–40 frames per second. (15fps is not good.)
During this time, I went through 3 game consoles. It was easier for me to justify buying a game console than replacing my entire computer. Xbox 360, PS3 and now today I have a PS4. I still very much like my PS4, but there’s one genre of game that I just can’t stand with a controller: First Person Shooters. I had grown up playing Wolfenstein 3D, Doom II, and Quake with a keyboard and mouse. WADS is in my blood. (For the uninitiated, W.A.D.S. is literally the keys on the keyboard under your left hand. In video games, these keys are used for movement: W for forward, S for backwards, A to strafe left and D to strafe right. The mouse is used to look around.)
In December of 2013, I came very close to replacing my computer. I ordered an 850 Watt PSU and full size ATX case. But of course, life got in the way; the parts sat on a shelf. Then mid 2014, I was doing a large programming project for a customer and purchased myself a UHD display. This new monitor was awesome, I could see tons of code on the screen at the same time. The UHD resolution also allows me to multitask 8–10 remote machines simultaneously when I’m doing any type of remote work, which I frequently do. But it totally choked out when I tried to game!
Why? Because my pathetic single slot video card was now being asked to render many more pixels per second. My old 1080p display required 2,457,600 pixels per frame, while the new UHD display requires 8,294,400 pixels per frame. My GPU would need to work at 337.5% of what it did before. It wasn’t physically possible.
Bad planning? Maybe. I was coming to realize that the computer needed replaced, but I just wasn’t ready to pull the trigger yet. I wanted to hold out for better tech: DDR4 had been out briefly and there wasn’t a lot of diversity on the market. If I could hold off a little longer, there would be a whole new generation of technology to choose from.
In February of 2015, I finally pulled the trigger on some new parts. I went with a 6-core Intel i7–5820K @ 3.30GHz, 32GB DDR4 2800 RAM, MSI X99S motherboard, and a Noctua NH-D15 SSO2 heatsink for overclocking. Other components I have which were purchased previously include a BitFenix Shinobi XL case, Media Card Reader, Blu-ray Burner, and Corsair 850 Watt PSU.
Unfortunately, that had tapped my bank account pretty thoroughly; there were no funds for a new GPU. I sadly moved my Asus GTX650 card from my old BTX case into my new case. It looked so puny compared to all the other components. I had planned this when I ordered everything, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it.
At long last… the wait is over. Last week, I installed an MSI GTX 980 ti Gaming 6G GPU. For the first time since my Voodoo 5500, I have a computer that can play games at max settings on a “next-gen” resolution!!
So while I was definitely behind the bell curve on this, I immediately purchased and installed Crysis. For years, people would ask the question “Can it run Crysis?” when asking about your gaming rig. I maxed all the settings to ultra (except for Motion Blur, I turned that off. I hate motion blur) and enabled Vertical Sync. I was blown away that a game from 2007 could look so good!
Having been relegated to console gaming for all these years, I couldn’t help myself. After 3 hours of vanilla gameplay, I broke into the console and gave myself infinite ammo and all weapons. Oh how I had missed the console… I’ll be honest with you here though, it wasn’t incredibly straightforward to do.
To enable cheats on Crysis, you have edit four configuration files inside your Crysis\Game\Config folder. All four configuration files begin with “diff_” and need to be edited separately. At the very bottom of those files, these codes need to be entered:
con_restricted = 0
i_unlimitedammo = 1
i_noweaponlimit = 1
r_displayinfo = 0
Inside your Steam library, you have to right click on Crysis and select “Properties.” Click “Set Launch Options…” and enter -devmode. This enables developer mode, which is needed for most of the cheats to work.
Surprisingly, I did not find a comprehensive guide out there with all of these steps. I found a piece on one forum, another piece elsewhere, a tip here, a google search there; it was a lot of trial and error. But in the end, I was rewarded. It was glorious to shoot down a helicopter with a hand held nuclear weapon using infinite ammo in 4K UHD @ 60fps — not even a hint of framerate drop.
Of the games I’ve tried thus far, it’s been incredible. Here’s some shots from Wolfenstein: The New Order. I beat this game on PS4 earlier in 2015, but as you can imagine, the PS4 isn’t even in the same ballpark when it comes to graphics rendering.
And here’s some shots from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It’s not great to compare Wolfenstein to CoD because one is OpenGL while the other is DirectX. They are both beautiful in their own regard and look simply fantastic in 4K.
The most amazing part for me is that I’m not yet seeing the full potential of this hardware. Everything I purchased is ready to be overclocked, but I‘m currently running stock. I’m hitting 60fps so why bother?
Yes, I have played with the MSI overclocking tools. I had my CPU up to 4.0GHz per core and stable for 2 months. I’ve spent lots of time adjusting fan speed and monitoring my temperature. Their Command Center and AfterBurner are awesome programs and further reinforce the quality of their products. And I’m glad to know that I can push my system even harder when the time comes. But for now, I’m saving those speeds for another day.
Update: Some bonus screenshots from Crysis…
