Crysis has been known to bring even the most powerful PC's to their knees, but according to Crytek's Cervat Yerli the upcoming shooter follow up, Crysis Warhead, will be playable on lower spec machines thanks to optimizations made to the company's CryENGINE 2.
Specifically, Yerli claims that a $600 PC will be able to run the title with high settings enabled, at 30 to 35 frames per second - though he didn't mention at what resolution these "high settings" would be playable at. He went on to say that performance tweaks included in Warhead can eventually be applied to Crysis via patches, but you shouldn't expect them anytime soon as the company's main priority at the moment is getting Warhead out the door.
It seems Crytek realized that making games with jaw-dropping visuals that can only perform well on super high-end PCs might not be the best idea from a business standpoint. Hopefully, they'll be able to back their claims when the game hits retail shelves this fall.