Halo IQ

The long awaited PC port of Halo is DX9 based. We ran our benchmark using their built-in feature from the commandline (-timedemo -use20 -vidmode x,y,r). Unfortunately Halo does not currently support antialiasing so we are unable to bring you those numbers.

Of course, we have gotten plenty of emails pointing out the hack that allows AA to work with Halo. This involves adding a flag to tell Halo to DisableRenderTargets for your particular video card. The problem with this is that rendered textures are used all throughout the game, and many of the awesome PS2.0 effects are lost. Water effects disappear, walls go from dirty and grimy looking to plastic and shiny, and the image quality we get from the hack takes away too much to be worth it in our opinion.

NVIDIA 45.23 (click to see full image)

NVIDIA 52.14 (click to see full image)

ATI Catalyst 3.7 (click to see full image)

It is also nice to see that there isn't any image quality difference between NVIDIA and ATI cards with this game.

GunMetal Performance Halo Performance
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  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    Wasn't Anand allowed to use ShaderMark v2.0 for det. the pixel shader performace?
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    lol read this article take me a 1/2 hour. this article is great but it can be improved
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    why anand didnt review bf1942 :(
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    why is anand bashing Tomb raider
    and whats up with PS 2.0 graph
    why not just post the fps, makes it seem
    like nvidia is beating Ati. Also why are beta drivers being tested with nvidia. Should have used
    cat 3.8 for Radeon.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    im still waiting that a site post a review for an 9600 XT
  • Pete - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    Overall, a good read. Thanks, Derek and Anand.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    im not biased towards either card. i myself own a 9800pro. what concerns me is the immaturity shown by other ATI card owners. you guys act like nvidia can never measure up to ATI (which is so untrue). there was none/little difference in the IQ and benchmark results (with few exceptions, but explanations were given for the most part). also keep in mind that the 9800xt specs are higher than the 5900/5950 and it still managed to get beat in some of the tests. anyway, good job nvidia. you guys are certainly headed in the right direction. i was a bit sad to see my card excluded though :( ... they said they'll benchmark the value cards soon...i hope to see mine there ;)

    ps: i could be wrong about the specs, but i do remember anand saying the XT had higher memory bandwidth (which could've accounted for some performance differences).

    all in all, a good review, ill be waiting for more updates.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    18, he says he saw it saw it, he doesnt know why it was there, there is no reason to exclude regular fps graphs, especially since people want to know the fps of this game, since it is the ONLY truly dx9 game in the entire suite
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    Hey Anand did nvidias check arrive yet
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link

    Haha, yet again, we see fanATIcs (#10, #14) coming out of the woodworks to claim that Anandtech's review is either biased or NVIDIA is still cheating. lmao, losers!

    And by the way #14, you're plain dumb if you couldn't figure out that the TR:AOD graphs were showing a percentage difference. Christ, read the review.

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