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
Turning on Antialiasing
Quite possibly the biggest difference between Half Life 2 and Doom 3 (other than the fact that Half Life 2 is infinitely brighter) is that aliasing is far more pronounced in Half Life 2 than in Doom 3. The aliasing isn’t overwhelming and at resolutions of 1280 x 1024 and above it is minimized relatively well, but it’s still something we’d like to get rid of.
Enabling 2X AA proved to help somewhat but not as much as we would have liked, thus we turned our attention to enabling 4X AA on the cards compared here today. We haven't included any screenshots in line because they would have to be scaled down to fit on this page, so we are offering a zip file of all of the screenshots we are talking about here.
Our first test was 1024 x 768 with 4X AA enabled - we found that while 1024 x 768 with 4X AA enabled gave us some very solid image quality, we preferred playing at 1280 x 1024 without AA. Most cards offered slightly reduced performance playing at 1280 x 1024 vs. 1024 x 768 with 4X AA.
Next we looked at 1280 x 1024 with 4X AA enabled - here we found that 1280 x 1024 with 4X AA enabled was a good alternative to 1600 x 1200, however with most cards 1600 x 1200 ran faster than 1280 x 1024 with 4X AA enabled. In the end the choice here comes down to whether your monitor supports 1600 x 1200 or not; if it does, then by all means, 1600 x 1200 is the resolution to run at, otherwise 1280 x 1024 with 4X AA is a good alternative.
Finally we have 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA enabled - this is truly a beautiful setup and while you can definitely play it on even a GeForce 6800, it is best paired with a GeForce 6800 Ultra or Radeon X800 XT or better yet, two GeForce 6800 Ultras. You don’t get a much better looking game than Half Life 2 at 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA enabled.
So interestingly enough, although Half Life 2 definitely appreciates antialiasing being enabled, in reality the performance hit is just not worth the resulting gains in image quality – especially when compared to just cranking up the resolution and leaving AA disabled. For those of you that are interested in enabling AA anyway, we have provided some AA benchmarks on the next pages. But before we get to the benchmarks let's have a look at AA image quality.
First let's look at both ATI and NVIDIA with everything disabled:
Antialiasing Disabled on ATI
Antialiasing Disabled on NVIDIA
So far so good, both ATI and NVIDIA look identical (except for the birds flying around in the background, but regardless of how many breadcrumbs we left out they would not stay still).
Now let's turn on 4X AA:
4X AA Enabled on ATI
4X AA Enabled on NVIDIA
You can immediately see the benefit of having AA turned on in Half Life 2 (these screenshots were taken at 1024 x 768), but let's zoom in for a closer look to see if either card is doing a better job:
ATI (4X AA - 200% Zoom) |
NVIDIA (4X AA - 200% Zoom) |
 |
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From the screenshots above it is tough to tell the difference between the two competitors. It looks like NVIDIA may have a slightly more blurry AA implementation than ATI, but it is really tough to tell the two apart.
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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 :)