Crysis minimum specs released

We know many of you have been eagerly anticipating Crysis, the "sequel" (used loosely) to Far Cry. So, for those of you who haven't cared enough to take a trip over to one of the games fansites, we figured we'd let you know the estimated system specs:

Minimum Specs:

• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+/Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz;
  
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 / ATI Radeon X800GTO (SM 2.0);
  
• RAM: 768MB/1GB on Windows Vista;
  
• HDD: 6GB;
  
• Internet: 256k+;
  
• Optical Drive: DVD;
  
• Software: DirectX 9.0c with Windows XP.

Recommended Specs:

• CPU: Dual-core processor (Athlon X2/Pentium D/Core 2 Duo);
  
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX / ATI Radeon X1800XT (SM3.0) or DirectX10 equivalent;
  
• RAM: 1.5GB;
  
• HDD: 6GB;
  
• Internet: 512k+ (128k+ upstream);
  
• Optical Drive: DVD;
  
• Software: DirectX 10 with Windows Vista

These specs are surprisingly low compared to what many of us were expecting, as Crysis certainly contains some jaw-dropping visuals. It is interesting to note, however, that Vista and DirectX 10 are recommended, but a DirectX10 card is not. This may be just because there aren't any on the market yet, but it could also mean all those awesome visuals are just DirectX 9 code...which would mean a substantial bar-raising for other game manufacturers and what they do with the older hardware.

Does your PC make the cut for Crysis? Are you as surprised as we were about the specs? Shoot your thoughts in our forums.

Update 11:30GMT 25th July:
With everything else going on yesterday, it seems that the source of this story slipped through the net. It was assumed that the story came from an official source, but in fact it is from a fansite with no affiliation to Crytek. Crysis-online is a fansite and the specifications listed are based on assumptions made by an avid Crysis fan. The only official specifications released by Crytek thus far are:

• Minimum: 2.0GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and a SM2.0 card
  
• Recommended: Multi-core processor and a high-end SM3.0 card or a DX10-based card

// Tim