Introduction

Everyone still remembers the day Crysis was released, Crytek did it again: release a game based on a game-engine which requires more VGA power than what current products could deliver. We’re now several months and one GPU upgrade cycle later and the only VGA card setup which can run Crysis at high detail at high resolution costs more than most complete high end PCs.

So when we stumbled upon this MOD brought forward from the Crysis modding community, it was hard to skip it and not give it a go.

The Cuban Ultima Doom Sword's CustomCrysisConfig allows you to automatically configure Crysis tailored to the performance of your system. What this means is that it goes further than the standard “low-medium-high-very high” settings found inside the Crysis in-game menu.

The config tool installation requires .NET 2.0 and helps automate the process of finding out what custom setting is best for performance vs image quality. It gives you 5 different configuration levels, preconfigured to use with low to high end gear.



So we installed this tool on our test system to see how it would impact performance and image quality. The most immediate visual impact is the “time of day (TOD)” modification, which drastically changes the game's look, staring into the sun makes everything else much darker; you can more clearly see people silhouetted against the horizon, while turning away from the sun will give you gradually more detail in the darker areas.

We’ll let the images do the talking for now.

Default High vs LVL4 vs Default Medium vs LVL3





More LVL4 Shots:



Test setup details and benchmarks next ->

Test Setup & Benchmarks

Our gaming rig is a rather dated setup compared to today’s standards. An Intel 975 motherboard with E6400 CPU (overclocked to 2.8Ghz) and Geforce 8800 GTX, 2Gb OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400.

We ran the game at 1600x1200 which seemed to offer us the best balance between screen resolutions and performance numbers.

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling	Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard	Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory	2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other	XFX Geforce 8800 GTX Coolermaster Real Power M520 520W PSU 2x Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD NZXT Tempest ATX Case

We ran the build-in GPU benchmark of Crysis to compare the performance after the modification was installed. We configured these options:

Standard Config, Everything set to High

Modded LVL4 with Time Of Day enabled

Modded LVL4 without Time Of Day

Modded LVL3 with Time Of Day enabled

Modded LVL3 without Time Of Day

And here are the results:



Image quality wise the LVL4 setting equals the High Quality in-game; as you can see the minimum FPS is boosted quite a bit; disabling the TOD mod also boosts performance at LVL4. However at LVL3 this change did not have a measurable impact. While LVL3 is noticeably using lower resolutions textures, it does run a lot smoother, still even with LVL4 and TOD enabled gameplay was more than enjoyable.

The screenshot on the previous page do not really show how big the impact is of the TOD mod, so what better way than to put into a movie? In the two videos below you can see the difference. If you start both movies simultaneously, both characters will try their best to keep the same game path ;-)

Crysis Default HQ


Crysis LVL4 with TOD mod


You can find a discussion thread about this modification at inCrysis forums. Where users with midrange 8800 GT cards have reported more impressive gains.

8800 GT - 1280x1024

Default High: 19fps/42fps (min/avg)

LVL4 w.TOD: 41fps/64fps (min/avg)

Let us know your experience with this modification in the forums!