Half Life 2 GPU Roundup Part 1 - DirectX 9 Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2004 11:22 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Battle in the Canal
Our first benchmark is packed full of just about all of the stressful elements you will encounter throughout Half Life 2. The demo starts aboard a boat driving in a tunnel before making a splash into a wide open body of water. The boat is piloted over to the shore where the player dismounts and heads inside for some action.
While inside the flashlight is used to illuminate dark areas and the player encounters a few firefights before heading upstairs to the outside. While outside (and while being pursued by a helicopter) the player encounters a few enemies on his way into a warehouse. The demo concludes inside the warehouse.
We created this demo because it incorporates just about everything – water, the flashlight, a vehicle, engaging enemies indoors as well as outdoors and sunlight. Since we’re dealing with all very capable cards here, let’s first look at performance at 1280 x 1024. Remember that we used the highest detail settings with the exception of anisotropic filtering and antialiasing, which were both disabled for this test (we will look at their impact on image quality/performance later on in this review).
It’s no surprise that we find ATI’s Radeon X800 XT at the top of the charts here, but interestingly enough, NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 Ultra is not far behind. In fact, the X800 XT only outperforms the 6800 Ultra by around 5%.
At the $400 price point, the GeForce 6800GT is able to outperform the Radeon X800 Pro by just under 10%, so while ATI takes the #1 spot, NVIDIA takes numbers two and three here.
As we drop down in price we see that the Radeon X700 XT, GeForce 6800 and GeForce 6600GT all provide virtually identical performance. With the GeForce 6800 being the most expensive of the three, the winner for the $200 - $250 range ends up being both the X700 XT and the 6600GT. If you want an AGP card then your only option will be the 6600GT.
The Radeon 9800 Pro doesn’t actually do too bad at 1280 x 1024, however in actual gameplay the GPU can stutter a bit, interrupting an otherwise smooth performance experience. Radeon 9800 and 9700 owners will find a much better balance of performance and image quality at 1024 x 768.
The biggest thing to take away from our resolution scaling graphs is an idea of what cards are best suited for 1024 x 768 and what it takes to have butter smooth performance at 1280 x 1024.
The Radeon 9700 Pro and 9800 Pro are both best suited for 1024 x 768, while they will play 1280 x 1024 just fine if you are willing to deal with some choppiness.
While the 6800 and the 6600GT perform relatively well at 1600 x 1200, their sweet spot is much closer to 1280 x 1024. Even though all of the cards here seem to scale relatively similarly to one another, only the highest end $400+ cards manage to truly perform well at 1600 x 1200.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
79 Comments
View All Comments
zhangping0233 - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Try xecconlight.com and Flashlightbox.com, you will find the best flashlight for the world. Shipping to all the world.nthexwn - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I've also noticed that having the steam client running in the background can place quite a load on your entire system! After downloading all the content to cut down on network/disk/buffering wierdness I did some tests benchmarking UT2004 with the ons_dria demo from nvnews and noticed that my fps drops up to 10 when steam is running in the background!Might it be possible to compare performance between the retail version of Half-life 2 and the steamed version available for internet purchase to see if there's any sort of performance difference? Or does the retail version just run through an offline steam client anyway? (I bought over web)
cryptonomicon - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
if your game crashes when switching to fullscreen it is because you have refresh overrides in place.add:
-width X -refresh Y
to your command line, for example
-width 1024 -refresh 100
it fixxed all my video problems.
meatless - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
#10 - That's a pretty stupid thing to say. Kyle used the cards that his readers were most likely to buy; I know I wouldn't waste my money on a non-BFG nVidia 68xx card, and I know most other gamers wouldn't either. It's a part of [H]'s focus on doing real-world-style benches instead of OMG LETZ C IF NV RULZ ATI 2DAY IN HL2!!111111With all that said, it's great to see stiff competition in the video card arena, finally--should make for exciting product lines on the next go-round.
Jedi2155 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
#64there is a hidden HL2 MP in the game....however its not yet complete....
quote
11/17/2004 22:58 PST | Half-Life 2 | by MarmaladeMan
HL2 World is reporting that they've found a working Half-Life 2 multiplayer built in to standard retail HL2. Here's the story, including how to do it:
Here's how:
net_start
sv_lan 0
deathmatch 1
maxplayers (whatever you want)
map (mapname)
restart
It will add you to the master server and it works. I know, it looks like the leak, but I assure you this is the retail HL2.
They have a screenshot, as well as a test map for you to check out if interested. Head on over to HL2 World for the full story.
http://www.hl2world.com/
/quote
jonmcc33 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Get back to Half-Life 2? Why? There's no point other than the fact it's a pretty single player game. If I wanted single player than I would have raved about Max Payne 2, which I didn't. Why Valve didn't think to make a Half-Life 2 MP side is beyond me. That's where the market is these days. Single player games, you play them once and you are done. Multiplayer is always changing. I don't want to wait for any stupid MP mod either. Curse you, Valve, for making us wait a year longer and then only giving us one piece of the cake!TrungRacingDev - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
you do realize that the fx5900 is default directx 8.1 right? if u think its beautiful now...try a directx 9.0 card =)Motley - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I'm glad I didn't read this article before actually playing HL2.My system:
P4 3.4GHz, 2GB Ram
5900 Ultra video card
ASUS P4P800 Motherboard
I was playing HL2 at 1280x1024 with 6xAA, and 16xAnitropic Filtering, with everything else turned on to maximum. Besides a half-second stutter just after loading a new level, the game played GREAT, looked GREAT.
Then again, maybe I'm not expecting the world, but, I can say that I was pleased, and maybe the x800 or 6800 can turn out better numbers, HOWEVER, at no time did I feel that I needed (or even wanted in the slightest) faster frame rates, or smoother gameplay. It just owned from the beginning to the end.
southernpac - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
Anand, In light of the significant ATI X800XT DX9 (HL2) performance over the nVIDIA 6800 Ultra, would you today favor the X800XT PE graphic card in combination with the MSI K8N Neo2 motherboard? In your last High-End Buyers Guide (30 August) you recommended the nVIDIA 6800 Ultra be used with the MSI K8N Neo2 because Wesley thought that motherboard performed "a bit better" with a nVIDIA card. What would your recommendation be today? Can we anticipate another High-End Buyers Guide this month(its been 3 months)? Billblckgrffn - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link
I know, I know, but if gf2 can play at 800*600 MQ than maybe they can handle 1024*768...that would mean that a bunch of my friends wouldn't have to upgrade from their $60 cards, and they would be overjoyed :)