Intel Larrabee development system found running Crysis with recovered drivers

A Reddit user named pkellythompson found an Intel Larrabee "Visual Adrenaline" development system inside a storage unit purchase. The kit included an Intel DX58SO motherboard, a C0-stepping Larrabee engineering sample, and a diagnostic board. Two USB drives holding about 82 MB as well as 728 MB of Intel development software, including drivers, documentation, and VBIOS instructions, were found with the hardware. The owner has uploaded these files to the Internet Archive.

Crysis · official art via IGDB

Reports say the system required specific settings to work, including using DVI instead of HDMI and switching the BIOS storage controller from AHCI to IDE to boot Windows 7. With the drivers installed, the prototype reportedly ran Crysis at 1280x720 with medium settings and no anti-aliasing. One driver build achieved just over 17 FPS, while a different build from the archives reached approximately 36 FPS. Sources noted that cards like the Radeon HD 3850 and GeForce 9600 GT delivered higher performance in Crysis at 1280x1024.

Intel originally detailed the Larrabee architecture in 2008. It relied on multiple x86 cores equipped with wide vector units and dedicated texture hardware to process the graphics pipeline primarily through software. Intel canceled the consumer version of the project in December 2009.