Rig 2007

With the plethora of great games coming out soon it was about time to invest in a new gaming rig. My 2005 era junk can’t cut it no more.

There are at least three titles I’ll want to play. Call of Duty 4 which is Battlefield 2 infantry warfare sped up. Much fun. Unreal Tournament 3 which is mostly an update of the 2004 title. Amazing graphics and more balanced play. The multiplayer demo is lots of fun.

And then there’s Crysis.

The follow-up to Far Cry. A singleplayer demo is currently out and my god is it good. Every couple of years a new game comes along that sets new standards. Crysis is one of these games. The graphics is absolutely spectacular. It is jawdroppingly good even at small resolution with low detail. You have dense forests and bush, all dynamically rendered, even at distance. When you walk into a bush the branches move and makes sound. There are so many details in this game it’s unbelievable.

Nice graphics without good gameplay obviously don’t make much of game but Crysis excels in gameplay as well. Let me put it this way. I’ve never played a singleplayer demo more than once. The Crysis nanosuit enables you to increase your speed, strength and armor or cloak yourself for a short period of time. Cloak makes it possible to sneak in on the North Korean soldiers and put a bullet in their neck. It’s fucking priceless.

So anyway to play this beast of a game I needed new hardware and went with the following:

• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0 Ghz CPU
• Noctua NH-U12F CPU cooler
• 2 GB Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC8500 RAM
• Inno3D 8800 GT 512 MB graphics card

In 1680×1050 with all settings on high and 2xAA I get around 20 FPS which is actually quite playable. At 1360×768 with no AA the FPS increases to around 30.