I finally managed to get some new video cards that were powerfull enough to play this game with the DirectX 11 Ultra patch and the HiRes Texture pack that just came out.   I’ve always loved Crytek for how they continually push the boundaries of what is possible in gaming, but I must say I’m somewhat blown away by how amazing this game looks on my 30″ monitor.   Since I’m late to the party, the fact that they just released these patches really doesn’t matter to me… however had I bought the game and cards to play it with when it came out, I’d be pretty pissed that it didn’t ship with the patch they just released.  Oh well…

I was torn between getting 2 of the latest and greatest EVGA Nvidia cards to run in SLI, what with Kepler supposedly coming out at the end of this year, or with getting cards that would be adequate to play Diablo 3 and SW:OTR this fall, plus Crysis 2.  I went with the latter, figuring that when the next generation comes out (GTX6xx?) I wouldn’t need them quite as soon.

Going from some old GTX285′s to these new GTX570′s is a pretty dramatic change, especially now that I can take advantage of the full DX11 benefits.  I went with 2 of the EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD 2560MB cards, since at my resolution VRAM makes all the difference.  As you can see from the screenshots, each card is consuming just over 2GB of VRAM… much much more than the standard 1.5GB that most cards are coming with now.  EVGA is the only (reliable) company that is providing cards with extra VRAM, so this was an easy decision for me.  Plus they have amazing customer support and a great track record… wouldn’t buy any other brand of cards personally.

Check out some more screenshots I took, if you’re interested.  I may upload more as I continue to play… sometimes I’m just awed at how good things look.  To think that I can remember the days of 8-bit sprites and now we have trees that look almost photo realistic.

Crazy.