Good question!  Crytek's Cevat Yerli hopes to address those fears with a release of the minimum and recommended specs as well as his thoughts behind selecting those targets.

“Our vision for Crysis has always been to create the most stunning, immersive FPS experience ever, and we’ve been working hard not only to do that on the high end, but also in pushing current generation hardware so that everyone gets the maximum experience,” said Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek. “And while these specs affect how Crysis will perform now, we have also optimized Crysis so that the game scales forward 1-2 years --we want to make sure that Crysis’ gameplay, visuals and performance improves as technology does.”

This is an approach we're seeing more often from the development end - implementing future forward support so that the games will look goood over time.  How well this strategery will play out remains to be seen.  Psychologically speakling most gamers I know are concerned that their rigs cannot even play the multiplayer beta that's available now - let alone the full-featured single-player experience.

Granted, no final judgements should ever be made based on beta software - but with the release dates so near, and a history of this game showing choppy play even on high-end systems - the concern is valid.  I guess we'll all get a more realistic look when the single-player demo hits on October 26th.

To be clear - this is not a knock on Crytek - let me be clear - Cevat!  We ALL want this game to rock - we just want to be able to enjoy it they 'way it's meant to be played'!


Here are the minimum and recommended system requirements from Crytek and EA:

Minimum System Requirements
OS – Windows XP or Windows Vista
Processor – 2.8 GHz or faster (XP) or 3.2 GHz or faster * (Vista)
Memory – 1.0 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card –256 MB**
Hard Drive – 12GB
Sound Card – DirectX 9.0c compatible

* Supported Processors: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista) or faster, Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista) or faster, AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or faster.

** Supported chipsets: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT or greater; ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Integrated chipsets are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.

Recommended System Requirements
OS – Windows XP / Vista
Processor – Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
Memory – 2.0 GB RAM
GPU – NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or similar