Why can I run Crysis 2 better than the first?

[blake0812]

Phenom II x4 945
GTX 760
8GB ram


I mean, even with DX 11 enabled it runs very smoothly.

 

[BUnit1701]

Crysis II was intentionally less demanding than the original Crysis or Warhead were. This was partially to allow it to be put on the consoles. Crysis 3 is again a GPU slayer.

Also, there is a high detail/resolution DX11 pack you can download from Crytek, might be worth a look.

 

[blake0812]

Crysis II was intentionally less demanding than the original Crysis or Warhead were. This was partially to allow it to be put on the consoles. Crysis 3 is again a GPU slayer.

Also, there is a high detail/resolution DX11 pack you can download from Crytek, might be worth a look.

I have the high def pack already since it came with Steam.

 

[Red Storm]

Narrow, linear maps vs. a much more open island setting, plus the whole console thing.

 

[Stuka87]

There was also a lot of changes to the engine to make it more efficient. The first Crysis is known for being a very inefficient engine.

 

[futurefields]

Crysis 2 on DX11 with all settings maxed out should be more intensive than Crysis 1. Are you sure you have everything cranked up?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Crysis 1 is really dependent on CPU speed IIRC.

 

[JeffMD]

Crysis 2 was heavily consolize. The very non open nature of it allows visuals that are beyond reach of the player to be faked in a way that is optimal to frame rates. Also a lot of effects relied on tried and true dx9 shaders and very little dx10 stuff. Things fall back into place more with crysis 3.

 

[Stringjam]

Crysis 2 is helped out a lot by MaLDoHD 4.0 (and his incredibly nifty config tool).

Awesome texture work.

 

[gorcorps]

Because Crysis 1 was a terribly optimized POS that PC elitists like to appologize for for some reason that I still don't understand. Back during release people were saying it ran terribly because "it's so advanced the hardware required to do it justice doesn't exist yet". Well, here we are 7 years later and it still runs like garbage.

 

[TechBoyJK]

There was also a lot of changes to the engine to make it more efficient. The first Crysis is known for being a very inefficient engine.

It's not known to be a very inefficient engine. The people that say that don't understand the engine or like to hate because they didn't have a good rig to play it when Crysis 1 came out.

They simply overbuilt Crysis 1 to a point most machines couldn't handle it. And yes, when compares to today's iterations of the engine and other competitors, it's less efficient, but that's a function of time.

A 1GB card choking on 3GB of textures and AA isn't inefficient. It's asking too much of the card.

What makes Crysis 2 run better is the fact that they worked with a smaller texture set (hence the need to release an HD texture pack) and used smaller, more narrow levels.

This is another reason why Crysis 3 is a gpu killer. It's not that the engine is inefficient, its that they returned to some of the overly ambitious level design and art design that made Crysis 1 famous.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Because Crysis 1 was a terribly optimized POS that PC elitists like to appologize for for some reason that I still don't understand. Back during release people were saying it ran terribly because "it's so advanced the hardware required to do it justice doesn't exist yet". Well, here we are 7 years later and it still runs like garbage.

Then what about Crysis 3? It's just as much a GPU killer.

 

[nurturedhate]

Crysis 1 is single threaded along with being terrible optimized like others have pointed out. That is a major reason why.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Crysis 1 is single threaded along with being terrible optimized like others have pointed out. That is a major reason why.

Most games (not all.. but most) only utilized 1 or 2 cores at the time of release. I know a few select UDK games did but even then the performance was negligable. Using neq effectively using.

It's important to realize the game was released in 2007 when multi-core support was still making ground. Cervat Yerli stated in an interview that the entire company learned that allowing the game to use advanced engine features that most computers couldn't run was actually detrimental because it made everyone disappointed they couldn't play the game in full glory. Basically, they never should have offered the 'ultra' settings or made 'ultra' actually a mix of med/high.

It's also important to note that Crytek didn't focus on fine-tuning the game AFTER it was released. Their efforts were put into fine-tuning the engine for future iterations. This is why Crysis 2 ran so much better when combined with the lower texture footprint and streamlined level design.

I'm not saying the engine was perfect or even very optimized, but the 'oh its just a poorly optimized engine' isn't very accurate.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I think of it this way. Crysis 1 showed us what was possible, not necessarily what was playable.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Crysis should run better and if Crytek was interested, it probably would. OTOH, it does look better than most games that have tried a similar environment even today. Sandbox and modability still count for something in my book too.

I just wish that talent exodus from excellent studios such as naughty dog would land at Crytek. That 7 year old engine needs little optimization and people that can make good games to use it, it would embarrass most if not all 2014 titles.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Crysis should run better and if Crytek was interested, it probably would. OTOH, it does look better than most games that have tried a similar environment even today. Sandbox and modability still count for something in my book too.

I just wish that talent exodus from excellent studios such as naughty dog would land at Crytek. That 7 year old engine needs little optimization and people that can make good games to use it, it would embarrass most if not all 2014 titles.

They have refined the engine. The reason Crysis 1 was 'neglected' and not refined any further is they would have been refining old code they had moved on from.

The current iteration of CryEngine is awesome, efficient, and very capable. Best? Debatable, as I really like Unreal Engine as wel, but it's still state of the art none the less.

I do, however, really, really wish they'd take Crysis 1 and update it to run on the new engine, and refine it. Crysis 1 HD or something. Just a little bit of modernization and upkeep could start the whole 'can it play Crysis' thing all over again.

 

[TechBoyJK]

I think of it this way. Crysis 1 showed us what was possible, not necessarily what was playable.

That's exactly why Cervat (Crytek CEO) said they wish they would have left the 'ultra' settings out of the game. It wasn't playable for even most die hard gamers, but it left everyone thinking it was the engine, not their machines.

 

[Stringjam]

I have to lol when people say Cryengine2 (or Crysis) was crappy code, as if any other engine was doing anything close to it at the time.

Hmm....let's see how many other games have rendered that much animated vegetation with real-time lighting, SSAO (which they invented), and sub-surface scattering (which they were the first to do) in all its glory.

*chirp*

I thought so.


There was nothing at the time that was even a dot on a line compared to that game. At least they were trying to do something special, even if they didn't quite have the tech yet to pull it off efficiently.

And that wasn't all - - Crytek included the same SDK they used to build the game FREE with the game, along with ALL ASSETS AND ACCESS TO ALL SCRIPTS. It was basically like "Here you go modders - knock yourselves out." It was advanced enough at the time to drop you in at any point in the game-world - real-time.....something UDK couldn't do until just recently (and acted like it was some sort of big deal).

 

[Fire&Blood]

Cryengine 3.x is probably the best looking but most wouldn't know because their frame rates tank before they can form that opinion. It is a bit of an unfair comparison but I can hop into a 64 player BF4 game at 1440p ultra and 2X MSAA and rarely dip into 30's while Crysis 3 doesn't let me go above 40 however it shows me enough to "justify" the frame rate. And the difference in manpower between BF3/4 and Crysis shouldn't be forgotten either. Other than CE games, only Witcher 2's uber mode and Metro 2033 run my FPS below playable FPS.

If I were prompted to point to most unused potential over the past 10 years, Crytek wins hands down, a distant second is ID tech. They started off great with Far Cry, I was convinced it would be GOTY after GOTY from there. I'm not saying Crysis 2 & 3 were terrible games, I enjoyed them but they weren't home runs either and Warface & Ryse flopped. Though people who played Ryse tell me that despite 3/10 reviews, it plays more like 7/10. I hope Crytek has something up it's sleeve good enough to establish a franchise before Snowdrop, UE4 and Frostbite titles flood the next gen scene in 2014/2015.

2007 vanilla:

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Because Crysis 2 is a console game and most games still don't compete with Crysis 1 SEVEN years later.

 

[toyota]

Because Crysis 2 is a console game and most games still don't compete with Crysis 1 SEVEN years later.

lol no. Crysis 2 looks better overall but both games look good in some spots and really bad and others.

and the main reason the first game is still too demanding is that now that we have much faster gpus we realize the damn game is cpu limited in spots. the game drops to 30s on any modern stock clocked i5/i7 and no cpu in the world can keep the framerate above 50 in some spots no matter how much gpu power you have.

 

[toyota]

Crysis 1 is single threaded along with being terrible optimized like others have pointed out. That is a major reason why.

it uses 2 threads

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

lol no. Crysis 2 looks better overall but both games look good in some spots and really bad and others.

and the main reason the first game is still too demanding is that now that we have much faster gpus we realize the damn game is cpu limited in spots. the game drops to 30s on any modern stock clocked i5/i7 and no cpu in the world can keep the framerate above 50 in some spots no matter how much gpu power you have.

Use enough tricks to reduce demand on rendering and you can do amazing things with graphics with crappy hardware... there's a reason consolization is thought of as a disease though : p

 

[toyota]

Use enough tricks to reduce demand on rendering and you can do amazing things with graphics with crappy hardware... there's a reason consolization is thought of as a disease though : p

and use poor optimization like on the pc developed Crysis 1 and it cant even stay above 50 nevermind 60 fps on the fastest hardware in the world 6 years later. cant play everything on the consoles...