What you need to know
- Crysis can be played in software mode on the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X without a dedicated GPU.
- It's the first CPU that can render the game at a high enough framerate to be mostly playable.
- This is more of a performance milestone than a practical application, but it's fun to nerd out to!
Anyone who was into PC gaming in the late 2000's will tell you the importance of being able to run Crysis. It was the benchmark for PC graphics even years after it came out, sporting the most detailed visuals and impressive physics modeling for its time. Now in 2020, a new reason to revive the old mantra has arisen: can CPUs run Crysis? That benchmark has finally been met with the advent of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, the first CPU that can play Crysis without a dedicated GPU.
The Linus Tech Tips channel on YouTube took the new Threadripper for a spin in a series of tests and, to see just how advanced AMD's insane new 64-core CPU is, loaded up Crysis in software mode to see how well it performed. The results weren't just surprising, they were record-setting. While Crysis won't run anywhere near as smooth on the Threadripper as it will on any modern GPU, it's important to note that CPUs simply aren't built for this kind of gaming. That's what makes it so impressive that the Threadripper 3990X can run Crysis so well.
While there's a bit of hitching, stuttering, and periods of generally unplayable framerate, dedicated gamers could actually play through significant parts of the game just to prove a point. That's good because the Threadripper will cost you a pretty penny at $3,990 and leave little room for an expensive GPU, as well.
You'll also need a more expensive Windows license, as only Windows 10 Pro for Workstations or Windows 10 Enterprise has the ability to fully utilize all 128 threads on that processor. It's pretty clear that if you want the very best the market has to offer, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is the processor to get.
This processor packs 64 cores, 128 threads, and has a max base clock of 4.3GHz. It also supports NVMe RAID so you can combine up to six NVMe disks.
