Crysis runs on DX10 notebook
8700M has the power
By Wily Ferret: Tuesday 24 July 2007, 09:49
WE'VE EXPRESSED plenty of doubts about the suitability of current-gen DX10 hardware to deliver a solid gaming experience in the upcoming wave of PC games. Plenty of benchmark tests on titles like Lost Planet and Colin McRae seem to suggest that any decent level of performance is going to require GeForce 9800 level hardware.
But it seems that we could be wrong, if this report at DigNews is anything to go by. The chaps there had a chance to go hands on with Crysis, the DX10 posterboy - running on a Toshiba Satellite laptop with GeForce 8700M graphics.
The 8700M is a little less than high-end and suffers slightly from being in a laptop, with all the constraints that that incurs. But that doesn't stop the DigNews fellas from being blown away by the looks of the game. "Damn, this game is beautiful," the writer enthuses. "It’s hard to take in the lush, organic jungle environments and not be impressed. The beautiful water, the wonderful lighting, the fantastic character models... and every last inch crafted with such amazing detail."
If it all sounds rosy, then it isn't quite - the writer admits that, "Even running on a top-of-the-line PC, the framerates still frequently shuddered," but we're amazed that a mid-range mobile part managed the game with any aplomb at all, frankly.
So will we see a better gaming experience on Crysis than we have on some of the half-hearted Xbox 360 conversions we've seen recently? It seems we may, and that will surely be something to smile about. DX10 performance might not be quite such a crisis, after all. µ
runs fine 