There always comes a time in a PC gamer’s life when he feels he absolutely, positively needs to upgrade his PC, or be left in the dust and debris of old, obsolete games. This is not true for everybody of course, but for the select few who needs to play the lates games at the highest possible resolution that their hardware (and wallet) is capable of, they have benchmarks that change from generation to generation that reflect the needs of the gaming industry so much that they become the basis of “leetness” and determines how updated your hardware is.

                                             Luxury didn't factor into the building of the Warhead PC.

Before, it was Quake. Then it was Half-Life. Now if you can’t run Crysis, then your PC isn’t approaching any kind of “capable” on a scale of “over-qualified” and “just can’t do it”. The problem is, this whole Crysis thing is a case of hardware playing catch-up with the very demanding software - this has been true for many months now. Now, with the help of Crysis creator Crytek, EA, and their partner PC vendor UltraPC, a tweaked, super-optimized PC is in the works and will be released at the same time as the sequel to Crysis, Crysis Warhead. This sequel promises to be as graphically intensive as its predecessor, yet remain at a price level that’s several degrees lower than “outrageously expensive” or even “unreasonable”. In fact, this “Ultra Optimized PC” will clock in at a mere $699 where boutique and luxury PC makers commonly market $4000 to $6000 PCs, targeted at the enthusiasts who has always thought that they needed super-expensive machines to play a demanding game like Crysis.

It’s true that better components will  give better results, but what EA and UltraPC has done here is find a balance, or at least a compromise, between cost and performance, with the scale leaning more towards the cost side. What’s amazing with this PC’s performance is not in the numbers, it’s in the components that were used to achieve these numbers – a Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz E7300 is at the helm – hardly an “extreme” CPU, while a 9800GT with a relatively measly 512MB of RAM plus 2GB of system memory rounds out the core components. Between these relatively modest components and the tweaking done on the game itself, consistent 30fps speeds can be had.

Of course, a compromises were also made on the hardware – to achieve the price level, a micro-ATX board was used, and the optical drive is a simple read-only DVD-ROM drive. There is no mention of a monitor, much less an LCD, anywhere, although keyboard and mouse is included in the package. So, as long as you just want to be able to say that your PC plays Crysis well, then this is the PC to get – it will save your wallet contents along the way too. But if you think that you’d like more quality and well-roundedness than what this configuration can offer, then it’s best to shop elsewhere.