Crysis on the 8400M GS/GT

[Ex Bond]

After long toil and tweaking, I have finally gotten Crysis to run on my 8400 GS at a playable 22 FPS. I won't lie, this game requires a lot. i will note that even in low graphics mode, the game still looks amazing but come on, what gamer stops there? By default, I was able to run the game very well in 1024 x 640 with all options set to medium. However, overclocking has allowed me to venture further, and with the help of Rivatuner I have finally found a compromise that allows stunning visual quality while maintaining a playable framerate. First thing I did was visit www.tweakguides.com they have a website that tells you everything about the game settings and how to individual tune them to perfection. Once I familiarized myself, I was ready to fine tune it. With the help of Rivatuner I was able to enable a custom resolution of 1152 x 648 at 60 resfresh rate. I love this resolution mainly because its 16:9 and is a great balance between 1024 resolutions and 1280 resolutions. Also, I had my card overclocked to 650/500. I run the game without AA, 1152 x 648, and the following settings have been intergrated into the diff_normal file:

con_restricted=0

cl_hitblur=0

cl_hitshake=0

e_particles_thread=1

e_vegetation_static_instancing=1

e_hw_occlusion_culling_object=1

r_MultiGPU=0

r_GeomInstancing=1

g_ragdollMinTime=3

g_ragdollDistance=1

e_decals_life_time_scale=0.3

r_MotionBlur=0

g_dof_ironsight=0

g_radialBlur=0

r_useEdgeAA=1

r_Glow=0

r_SSAO=0

e_shadows_max_texture_size=512

r_ShadowMaskResolution=0

e_gsm_lods_num=3

e_lod_min_tris=0.01

e_vegetation_min_size=10

r_WaterUpdateFactor=0.5

e_water_ocean_fft=0

r_HDRRendering=0

sys_flash_edgeaa=1

It seems disabling all motion blur effects, removing the shrubs and tall grass, using medium quality shaders and shadows , no anti-aliasing, allow me to get very high texture qualities and object qualities with 22 fps.

[Guest yabani]

Noted :)

Thx for share

[Anchel]

Umm... now THAT's interesting.

But before I test anything, that diff_normal file is the one which controls the game settings, right?

I mean, if I change those, can I still change the same options in-game without problems?

I have an 8600M GS, and while it surely should be able to crank up a little bit more, I will test this settings first and see what I get.

Oh, and by the way: is this DX9 or DX10?

[Ex Bond]

Umm... now THAT's interesting.

But before I test anything, that diff_normal file is the one which controls the game settings, right?

I mean, if I change those, can I still change the same options in-game without problems?

I have an 8600M GS, and while it surely should be able to crank up a little bit more, I will test this settings first and see what I get.

Oh, and by the way: is this DX9 or DX10?

What I recommend is set the in-game options to whatever you want them to be, then load the individual commands. Remember, just add them to any of the difficulty files and make sure you play on the difficulty file you edited. Also, I get best performance out of DX9. But in order to get the Very High texture settings, I play on DX10, although it is possible to do so in DX9.

Edited November 8, 2007 by Ex Bond

[Anchel]

Ok so I've just tested what you propose and... well, I can't say I'm happy with the results.

First of all, the game runs the same as before for me: not smoother, not slower.

I also tried switching back to 800 x 600 without gaining many benefits (all right, it IS faster at 800 x 600, but still too damn slow, I mean, this is an 8600M GS! It should be doing more than THAT!).

But turning off the grass... while I really appreaciate your idea, I think it completely messes up the whole point of the game.

Crysis is supposed to give you the feeling of playing in a tropical island, with a lot of vegetation, full of trees stretching out everywhere and plants growing in unpredictable directions. Your settings make it look like playing in the park next to my house: just a plain landscape with flat grass. I can't play Crysis without the jungle-look, it defeats the purpose of the developers!

Once again, I'm not trying to critizice (do you spell it like that?) your idea. In fact I think it is a pretty good one which is surely useful for those who are using an 8400M GS/GT or slower video card, in which case the grass probably struggles too much with it. But those of you who try it, take into account that you will be missing the jungle-look of Crysis.

You know... maybe I will take pictures so you can compare how much the landscape changes with and without this options.

But those of you who want to crank up a little bit better framerate... why not? Give it a try!

Meanwhile... I'm still trying to figure out why my 8600M GS can't play Crysis well even at 800 x 600 with everything on Medium (even turning shadows and water to low don't give me the framerate one could hope).

[Ex Bond]

Ok so I've just tested what you propose and... well, I can't say I'm happy with the results.

First of all, the game runs the same as before for me: not smoother, not slower.

I also tried switching back to 800 x 600 without gaining many benefits (all right, it IS faster at 800 x 600, but still too damn slow, I mean, this is an 8600M GS! It should be doing more than THAT!).

But turning off the grass... while I really appreaciate your idea, I think it completely messes up the whole point of the game.

Crysis is supposed to give you the feeling of playing in a tropical island, with a lot of vegetation, full of trees stretching out everywhere and plants growing in unpredictable directions. Your settings make it look like playing in the park next to my house: just a plain landscape with flat grass. I can't play Crysis without the jungle-look, it defeats the purpose of the developers!

Once again, I'm not trying to critizice (do you spell it like that?) your idea. In fact I think it is a pretty good one which is surely useful for those who are using an 8400M GS/GT or slower video card, in which case the grass probably struggles too much with it. But those of you who try it, take into account that you will be missing the jungle-look of Crysis.

You know... maybe I will take pictures so you can compare how much the landscape changes with and without this options.

But those of you who want to crank up a little bit better framerate... why not? Give it a try!

Meanwhile... I'm still trying to figure out why my 8600M GS can't play Crysis well even at 800 x 600 with everything on Medium (even turning shadows and water to low don't give me the framerate one could hope).

Wow. all i can say is I'm glad I didn't buy a 8600 then. What is your framerate anyway? Remember these got me 22 fps at best. Also, are you overclocking?

[Guest Cunami]

Hi!

may I ask what kind of notebook exactly you have? +which Nvidia driver did you use? and also what program did you use to overlock the VGA?

[Guest Cunami]

Hi!

may I ask what kind of notebook exactly you have? +which Nvidia driver did you use? and also what program did you use to overlock the VGA?

Man,no edit button:(

I found youre notebook,so pls just answer the others questions:) +do u think that the game would be faster with a 8400M GS which has 256MB dedicated memory,instead of youre 128MB?

[Anchel]

Ok so I have been doing some more tests with the game and with different drivers, and I can now say that Crysis runs much better.

Right now I'm using 169.09 drivers and Crysis runs very well with all settings on Medium at 1024 x 768. The only settings I change sometimes are the shaders to low (it makes the game run smooth even with many enemies shooting at me) and I can afford to use water effects on High (Very High is just too much though).

So things work a whole lot better now for me. I can now show the game to my friends and they go WOW with the graphics (ok, so I sometimes turn settings on Very High just so they see what the game can do graphically, but it all becomes a slideshow).

For those of you having trouble getting a decent framerate, the most important setting to turn off seems to be the shaders. They just eat the whole graphics card. One thing you can test near the start of the demo is the red firelight at night near the place you arrive when you land (where the first three enemies are). That red light will be flashing and making use of the shaders if they are on (giving the usually plain sand a volumetric effect). If your PC can't handle the flashing right with the shaders as you have them, you should definetely lower them or turn them off altogether.

Now on with your questions:

My laptop is a Sony Vaio FZ21S. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.2 GHz, 2 Gb of RAM, a 5400 RPM HDD, and an NVidia GeForce 8600M GS (256 Mb - 1023 of total video memory when sharing).

My current drivers are the 169.09 ones and they work great for me (no stability problems, and they are the fastest ones I have tested so far FOR ME).

And NO, I don't overclock. I don't really know how to do it and I'm not really sure I want to risk it. Besides, I use my laptop a lot in mobility (I use it for work unplugged) so I don't wanna have to lower the clock speeds every time I need to take it out from home.

[Ex Bond]

Ok so I have been doing some more tests with the game and with different drivers, and I can now say that Crysis runs much better.

Right now I'm using 169.09 drivers and Crysis runs very well with all settings on Medium at 1024 x 768. The only settings I change sometimes are the shaders to low (it makes the game run smooth even with many enemies shooting at me) and I can afford to use water effects on High (Very High is just too much though).

So things work a whole lot better now for me. I can now show the game to my friends and they go WOW with the graphics (ok, so I sometimes turn settings on Very High just so they see what the game can do graphically, but it all becomes a slideshow).

For those of you having trouble getting a decent framerate, the most important setting to turn off seems to be the shaders. They just eat the whole graphics card. One thing you can test near the start of the demo is the red firelight at night near the place you arrive when you land (where the first three enemies are). That red light will be flashing and making use of the shaders if they are on (giving the usually plain sand a volumetric effect). If your PC can't handle the flashing right with the shaders as you have them, you should definetely lower them or turn them off altogether.

Now on with your questions:

My laptop is a Sony Vaio FZ21S. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.2 GHz, 2 Gb of RAM, a 5400 RPM HDD, and an NVidia GeForce 8600M GS (256 Mb - 1023 of total video memory when sharing).

My current drivers are the 169.09 ones and they work great for me (no stability problems, and they are the fastest ones I have tested so far FOR ME).

And NO, I don't overclock. I don't really know how to do it and I'm not really sure I want to risk it. Besides, I use my laptop a lot in mobility (I use it for work unplugged) so I don't wanna have to lower the clock speeds every time I need to take it out from home.

lol. Just grab ATI Tool. Its a real simple program to use.

[Anchel]

As I said, I'm not really interested in overclocking as I don't want to risk overheating my system. I also noted that I take my laptop out every single day, and I don't want to be changing overclocking options everytime I go out with the laptop just to save battery.

Besides, does overclocking really give you an important increase in framerate? Or does it only crank up a few frames more?

I've read several times that overclocking should only be used as a last resort. And so far I'm not THAT needed of higher framerates. I only play the Crysis demo for testing, as I don't have the full game, so faster speed in that game is not really something I'd die for.

Meanwhile, Bioshock runs great for me, and that is more than enough for my needs.

[Guest zac007]

To Anchel:

Yes overclocking an 8600m GS or other 8600m series card really is worth it. I recently overclocked my HP DV9644 CA which has the 8600m GS in order to play Crysis. I used RivaTuner and went from 500core 400mem to 660/460. Before overclock with all low settings at 1440x900 I was averaged 9fps, but after the overclock (and with switching to 169 forceware drivers) am able to play with a mixture of medium and low at 18-22 fps. If i turn shaders to low I hit 30fps. Stability is perfect, in fact my fan rarely switches to full speed, and I have run crysis for 1-2 hours straight.

System:

C2Duo T5250 1.5 Ghz

2Gig Ram

8600m GS

[Nfan]

Frankly your tweaks are not really worth it. They turn off too much eye candies for my liking. Might as well turn down the graphics option from the game menu itself.

[Bades]

Sorry,

Why did u turn the shaders off??

the shaders are the best thing in Crysis!!! Wat are u doing? Shaders enable all the cool game effects.

I have an 8600M GS and i can run Crysis on medium/high on low res.

Object Quality, thts wat reduces fps big time:P and i have an old driver, 163.69, no overclocking involved.

My specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz T7300

2 GB Ram

8600M GS card

[Drwaltoa]

Sorry,

Why did u turn the shaders off??

the shaders are the best thing in Crysis!!! Wat are u doing? Shaders enable all the cool game effects.

I have an 8600M GS and i can run Crysis on medium/high on low res.

Object Quality, thts wat reduces fps big time:P and i have an old driver, 163.69, no overclocking involved.

My specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz T7300

2 GB Ram

8600M GS card

I've got an Acer Aspire 5920 with almost exactly the same specs, no overclocking, but can't get Crysis to run at anything playable, even with everything set to low. I can't change object quality for some reason - it's a different colour to all the other settings. Can anyone help? :)

Edited May 14, 2008 by Drwaltoa

[cyclone93]

i have an 8400m gs using 169.09 drivers for windows xp, i can play it all on high except objects quality which is on low at 800x600 at about 10 fps :) i'm not overclocking but the fan spins quite loud when i play it

my specs are: amd turion 1.9ghz dual core processor

2gb ddr whatever ram

nvidia geforce 8400m gs running on 169.09 driver ( its awesome you should try it XD)

windows xp pro (plz ignore on the sire it says home) sp3

160gb hardrive MASSIVE !!!! xd

my laptop is HP Pavilion dv9646em which is now discontinued :)

not very good seeing that i bought it this year in january

my screen is 17"

im a noob at computing so i dont know how to overclock

ill make a youtube video to prove this, add me my youtube name is cycl0ne93, coz all the good names are taken

Edited July 2, 2008 by cyclone93

[Guest Bobby]

What gives! I get like 15 fps on crysis on my 8400m gs and I over clocked it to your speeds I dont get it

[Pankaj]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1420 with C2D T5750 @2GHz and 8400M GS with 128MB DDR3 and 4GB RAM. I can easily play Crysis on low with more than 35fps, when I overclock my card to 500/550 (default is 400/500), i easily get 25fps with medium...also when i oc, the max temps i get is arnd 95 dec C

Edited March 6, 2009 by Pankaj

[Equal1zer]

i can play with med/high settings at 800x600 and no AA.. My specs are 8600m gs oc'ed about %55, t7300 2.0ghz, 2gb ram win xp 64bit

[Shakey_Jake33]

Crysis plays very well on my machine at 800x500, no ini tweaks needed. The 8400m GS gets far too much critisism. It's bottleneck is fill rate, so if you don't mind dragging the resolution down a bit, you can play pretty much anything. 800x500 looks fine on my 13" laptop.

That said, I play CoD4 at 1280x800.

Edited June 21, 2009 by Shakey_Jake33

[Spax87]

how does crysis look with this config??