Breaking News: Halflife 2 Performance Revealed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 10, 2003 7:02 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
You'll see my own numbers tomorrow night at midnight, but we've been given the go ahead to reveal a bit of information about Half-Life 2. I'll keep it brief and to the point and will explain it in greater detail tomorrow night:
- Valve is pissed at all of the benchmarking "optimizations" they've seen in the hardware community;
- Half-Life 2 has a special NV3x codepath that was necessary to make NVIDIA's architecture perform reasonably under the game;
- Valve recommends running geforce fx 5200 and 5600 cards in dx8 mode in order to get playable frame rates.
- even with the special NV3x codepath, ATI is the clear performance leader under Half-Life 2 with the Radeon 9800 Pro hitting around 60 fps at 10x7. The 5900 ultra is noticeably slower with the special codepath and is horrendously slower under the default dx9 codepath;
- the Radeon 9600 Pro performs very well - it is a good competitor of the 5900 ultra;
- ATI didn't need these special optimizations to perform well and Valve insists that they have not optimized the game specifically for any vendor.
There you have it folks, there's much more coming tomorrow.
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Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
I don't quite understand how it's elledgedly ran "fine" on a 4600 (they claimed they ran HL2 with that card and it ran fine) but it runs like shit on a 5600 and even on a 5900. So running it in DX8 mode ona 5600 will only make it "playable?" (30+ fps?). Then how is a TNT card in the min requirements? Won't a GF2 run it in DX8 mode also?...How can it be playable on that and on a GF4 but not on an FX card? That doesn't make sense to me.Also, someone mentionned STALKER. Well, they've once shown STALKER being played on an FX 5200, and it seemed to run pretty well to me. It had a lot of grass too, so I don't think the details were on "low." I own a 9800 Pro, but that still doesn't make me think that it's normal to claim HL2 runs well on a 4600, but very slowly on a 5900 and only at 60fps on a 9800 Pro. It doesn't make sense.
-Big D.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
HL2 will beat the crap out of Doom3 any day. Just look at the gameplay. Why is GTA: Vice City so great? Certainly not for the graphics, not that HL has anything to be ashamed of in that department. I have a feelig that Doom 3 will look great, but play like crap, while HL2 will have it all :)BTW: the leaked Doom3 demo works surprisingly well on my R9700 and if I recall correctly it was first showed off runnig on an Radeon9700. I know because I had just bought a GeForce 4 Ti4400 for $450 and was shocked that they didnt use a Ti4600.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
lol@#37Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
Hell why did they even call it dx9? Why did nvidia and ati make videocards specifically for dx9? </sarcasm off> Performance-wise, I'd say the diference isn't enough to give you a stroke but it's certainly noticeable.Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
Why can't people make the distinction between DirectX and OpenGL? Everytime a DX9 game comes out and performs way better on the R3xx than NV3x based GPUs are they going to keep on citing Doom III? It's not even a DX9 or DX9 class game! The NV3x still even needs a special pathway in that game that runs at lower precision to beat the R3xx. I doubt even the guys developing Stalker can make the NV3x outshine the R3xx in a fullblown DX9 game.Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
"Valve recommends running geforce fx 5200 and 5600 cards in dx8 mode in order to get playable frame rates."The differences from DX8/9 are VERY minimal. And its not bumb-mapping on the NPCs that you lose it's simply shading of the skin to look sweaty.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
#26.... valve weren't "crappy coding guys" when HL1 came out several years ago were they?At that point they used ID software's Quake 1/2 engine.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
"tomorrow night at midnight"is illogical.
Midnight is the very first event of morning, not evening.
Micronaut - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
Didn't specifically program for one or another? But it runs like crap on nVidia, but great on ATI?Where's my BS flag?
(not that I really care, I won't play HL2)
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link
What would you prefer to play, based on the previews/videos/etc, Doom3 or HL2? I vote HL2 hands-down. id haven't made a compelling game since Doom2. Just an opinion, don't take offense, of course Carmack & Co are extremely gifted.