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
The Slowest Level in the Game
For our fifth and final demo we turn to one of the last levels in the game – d3_c17_12. This city level takes place mostly outdoors and gave us the lowest average frame rates out of any level we played in during our testing of Half Life 2. A combination of all of the fire shaders as well as the explosions and weapon fire and the outdoor lighting make for one very stressful test.
Our player fires upon one of the mammoth mechanical spiders using a handful of weapons, including the RPG which in itself ends up being decently stressful on the GPU.
Although this demo yielded the lowest average frame rates out of our entire suite of demos, the level itself does not appear to be overly GPU bound. Instead it would seem that even at 1280 x 1024, we’re mostly CPU bound here which is definitely not what we expected.
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ballero - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
it'd be nice a comparison between cpuJalf - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
To those wanting benchmarks on older hardware, remember that this is a hardware site, not a games review site.Their focus is on the hardware, and honestly, few hardware enthusiasts can get excited about an 800 mhz cpu or a Geforce 3. ;)
For AT, HL2 is a tool to compare new *interesting* hardware. It's not the other way around.
CU - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
I would also like to see slower cpu's and 512meg systems tested. It seems all recent cards can run it fine, so it would be nice to see how other things affect HL2.CU - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Based on the 6800nu vs 6600gt I would say that HL2 is being limited by fillrate and not bandwith. I say this since they both have about the same fillrate, but the 6800nu has around 40% more bandwidth than the 6600gt. So, unlocking extra pipes and overclocking the GPU should give the most increase in fps. Anyone want to test this?Jeff7181 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
... in addition... this is a case where minimum frame rates would be very useful to know.Jeff7181 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Those numbers are about what I expected. I'm sorta thinking that triple buffering isn't working with the 66.93 drivers and HL2 because I have vsync enabled, it seems like the frame rate is either 85 or 42.I also suspected that anistropic filtering wasn't particularly necessary... I'll have to try it without and see how it looks... although with 4XAA and 8XAF I'm still getting acceptable frame rates.
nserra - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
#8 i never heard of 6800 extra pipes unlocked, where did you see that. Arent you making some confusion with the Ati 9500 cards?MAME - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Make some budget video card benchmarks (Ti4200 plus or minus) and possibly a slower cpu or less ram so that people will know if they have to upgradeAkira1224 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
#8 Thats not a fair comparison. Yes atm it would seem the 6800Nu is a better buy. However if you go to Gameve you will find the XFX (clocked at PCIe speeds)6600GT for $218. Thats a much better deal than your example using Newegg. You talk about a $5 diff... if you are a smart shopper you can get upwards of a $50 diff.THAT makes the 6600GT the better buy. Esp when you consider that the market this card is aimed at is not the same market that will softmod their cards to unlock pipes. Either way you go you will get great performance.
I digress off topic.... sorry.
nserra - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
You didn’t use overclocked nvidia cards like hardocp did. That Kyle has the shame to say he used stock clock, those BFG OC are overclocked from factory. Just 25Mhz but its something.Very good review!!! Better then the NVIDIA's GeForce 6600GT AGP review where something was missing.