A Twitter user managed to successfully install Crysis 3 on their RTX 3090 graphics card, running it at 4K resolution. Apparently, the Nvidia GPU was able to handle the game on very high settings with respectable fps and quick load times. It turns out it can run Crysis – quite literally.
Strife212, the Twitter user who pulled it off, summarized their successful experiment in an earlier tweet this weekend. Installing Crysis 3 on the new RTX 3090 was made possible by use of its 24G of video RAM, or VRAM. Strife212 created a 15GB NTFS partition with the card's VRAM and slapped the game on there.
Of course, there isn't much of a practical purpose behind the test run – something Strife212 readily admitted to. "There's no benefit to it really except I found it really funny, load times are pretty much the same as on a fast NVME drive, was hoping it would be faster but there is probably some weird bottleneck like this instead of doing it the 'proper' storage API way." Essentially, putting Crysis 3 on the GPU's VRAM is impractical because it would have to be reinstalled each time it is powered off.
Nevertheless, users on ResetEra found the discovery equal parts impressive and amusing. User Omniblack commented, "This is the long rumored PC2" and J_ToSaveTheDay quipped, "GPUs as the next cartridges confirmed. Next-next-next gen confirmed." Although the test was unrealistic, sometimes "just 'cause" is enough reason to go through with it anyways. And yet, while running any Crysis game on a GPU alone is impressive, the recently-released Crysis Remastered has already proven itself as the most strenuous hurdle so far.
This story also further confirms the value of Nvidia's new line of RTX graphics cards, providing plenty of power within a reasonable price range. Consequently, the market gobbled up the 3080 and 3090 cards during their respective releases last month. The hardware was so popular, in fact, that fans even had trouble dealing with scalpers eating up stock. Now, the launch of the 3070 has been delayed until the end of the month; Nvidia is determined to do a better job selling their final card in the lineup.
Source: ResetEra