Crysis Warhead on the cheap: EA's 'Warhead PC' priced at $699
Hoping to disprove the notion that everything with the word "Crysis" on it requires the latest, greatest supercomputer – and several ounces of irradiated uranium – to run with a framerate in the double digits, EA has teamed up with UltraPC to sell what it's (unofficially?) calling the "Warhead PC" – a single SKU offering that brings some of console gaming's simplicity to the PC gaming world.
In short, the team at Crytek wanted Crysis Warhead to run on far more systems than Crysis did, so they built their own lower-end "Warhead PC" which they used to test the game on throughout its development. Dropping frames on the Warhead PC? Tweak it until it runs smooth as butter. With a "hard cap" to aim for, the developers were able to guarantee a minimum level of performance using the following specs: an Intel Core Duo e7300 running 2.66GHz, an Nvidia 9800GT video card, and 2 gigglebytes of RAM.
The Warhead PC will be available to preorder on September 16 – the game's launch day – for $699, a far cry from the hundreds of bajillions we had saved up for a Crysis rig of our own. We'll spend the rest of that money on tricking out the rather bland box – seen above – with enough blue LEDs to burn our retinas. Ahh, PC gaming ...
[Via Big Download]
