Back in July, Chris Remo brought us the news that EA would be selling a computer specifically marketed as a reliable way to play the upcoming Crysis Warhead. Aside from a general idea of what it would priced at (600 to 800 dollars) there really weren’t many details about this mystery PC aside from the fact that it was coming out at some point. With Warhead’s release only a week away, it looks like the involved parties are finally ready to talk specifics, along with some history about how this idea came about.

“When we started working on Warhead, we decided performance was a big issue,” stated producer Bernd Diemer, obviously keen on avoiding another Internet backlash over ridiculously demanding software. “So we said, ‘Guys, we’re going to build a PC which has a maximum price of six or seven hundred dollars, and it has to run Warhead in high spec at an average framerate of 30.’ We built that PC—Crytek in the Budapest office [where Warhead was developed]—and we put it in the middle of the studio, and every review was on that machine.”

“For us, it was really helpful, because we sort of had a hard cap,” Diemer elaborated. “You couldn’t say, ‘It works on my computer, looks great on my machine.’ No no no, this is the benchmark, guys. If it sucks on this, the whole thing sucks. For us as a team, that was really valuable. We had a tangible border we could bump our heads into.”

Crytek was originally going to give this PC’s specs to EA as the game’s recommended requirements, but the pair eventually decided to get Nvidia and UltraPC (who will be selling it) involved so that it could be sold directly to consumers. Remo unconvered that the finalized price has been set at $700, that it will be shipping next week along with Crysis Warhead, and found out some of the system’s specs, which are listed below. He also snapped a picture of the case, which is surprisingly light on the EA branding.

• CPU: Intel Core Duo e7300 (@2.66GHz)
• Video card: Nvidia 9800GT
• RAM: 2GB