Can it run Crysis Remastered? Devs say 'there is no card out there' that can hit 30fps at peak 4K

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13 years after the release of Crysis, Crytek is back giving a ray-traced lick of paint to it's GPU-torturing masterpiece.

(Image credit: Crytek)

Crysis Remastered is due to launch this Friday. Boasting software ray tracing as well support for hardware acceleration, it takes the original game, released way back in 2007, and re-skins it to make use of modern hardware, and to run on the latest high-resolution screens all the way up to 8K displays. We sat down with the Project Lead of Crysis Remastered, Steffen Halbig, to find out what the new take on the game brings to the table, and also discover what's happening under the hood. 

There were a number of interesting things that came out of the interview, including why software ray tracing still matters, how things have changed in the last 13 years, and whether ray tracing really is the future of gaming, but the thing that jumped out most was about the new 'Can it run Crysis' mode. 

Crysis Remastered has the usual gamut of settings for honing the performance to your particular setup, but for those that want to push their machines to the absolute limits there's the ultimate setting called 'Can it run Crysis' mode, which riffs off the meme that was created with the release of the original game. 

For those that are too young to remember, Crysis was hard on hardware, and even the top graphics card at the time, the GeForce 8800 Ultra, struggled to maintain a smooth 30fps.

So, what does the Crysis Remastered mode do? Crytek showed off the possibilities with a single screen on its twitter account recently which boasted some incredibly pretty visuals. Steffen elaborated, 'It means unlimited view distances. No pop ups of assets, and no LoD changes anymore.'

When asked about the kind of performance you can expect when using the mode, Steffen replied, 'In 4k, there is no card out there which can run it in 'Can it Run Crysis mode' at 30 FPS'. 

But where did that mode name come from? Originally as a bit of a joke, but then it stuck, as Steffan explained: 'We came up with the meme 'Can it run Crysis', and everyone was laughing in the meeting, but I said no, I was serious. And over the next few days, people came around to the idea and then we implemented 'Can it run Crysis' mode, which is very very heavy in performance'.

You'll be able to find out if your own machine can run Crysis Remastered tomorrow, when the game hits the Epic Store.

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Alan Dexter
Alan Dexter

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.

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