Half Life 2 GPU Roundup Part 2 - Mainstream DX8/DX9 Battle
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2004 6:35 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Let’s go for a Drive
Our second demo comes from the d2_coast_05 level, which starts off with the Half Life 2 buggy. After hopping in the buggy we take a spirited drive down the high way, (poorly) avoiding enemies as well as abandoned cars. There is some exchange of fire towards the end of the demo, and overall the demo is fairly short.
This demo offers a good idea of general outdoor performance in Half Life 2 where elements such as water are not involved. There are a handful of explosions that take place while the buggy’s machine gun ignites a flammable barrel that also stress the GPU a bit. With the absence of water, the flashlight or any reflective surfaces, we find ourselves with a demo that is far less shader bound than our first benchmark, but just as important since not all areas of Half Life 2 are going to be incredibly shader bound.
The standings don’t really change that much in our at_coast_05 demo, those users who bought Radeon 9600XTs in anticipation of Half Life 2 a year ago made a very wise purchasing decision. Then again, those who bought Radeon 9700 Pros two years ago are still reaping the benefits of their investment today – hang on to that card!
The FX 5900XT continues to do horrendously in DX9 mode.
Running in DX8 mode things change dramatically, the 5900XT is now in the top three, performing almost as well as the 9600XT. The GeForce4 Ti 4600 continues to hide its age very well, even outperforming newer offerings.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
62 Comments
View All Comments
klah - Saturday, November 20, 2004 - link
"cant wait for CPU benches"Check out these:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half_life_2_cp...
KevinCQU - Saturday, November 20, 2004 - link
#17, I'm running the game on a regular GF3, AXP2500+ @2.2 and 512 ram. It runs smoothly at directx8 settings, I turned down the water quality though, havent tried turning it up yet, been busy playing the game ;) I'm impressed though....its definitely playable at 1024 and it looks pretty nice too-Kevin
ksherman - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
#17, im probably gonna try and run the game (GF2 TI200, but OCed to Ti400 speeds ;), so ill let you know if itll work...ksherman - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
dumbish question--> i i wanna play in DX7 or 8 mode, do i need to install different driers, or do i just use the ingmae settings? I dont actually own the game yet, so thats why i ask...kmmatney - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
I can't believe how much better DirectX looks compared to OpenGL. Seems like Id made the wrong choice...GonzoDaGr8 - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
Aaargh..Has anyone ran this game yet on a Geforce3(regular/Ti200/Ti500) based card yet? I'm curious as I have a Ti200 and could run this is DX8 mode..skiboysteve - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
#13 is exactly rightits not all OpenGL vs DX or nvidia optimization to ati optimization.
look back at anands article about the graphics pipeline on each of these cards. Doom3 was extremly texture intensive, doing allot of lookup to tables instead of doing the math.
nv30 and nv40 are very good at doing texture look ups, and only the nv40 is good at the math. nv30 had a very non math friendly pipeline.
the r300-r400 were better at math.
its all in the articles on this very website.
bupkus - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
I have a Ti4200 w/ 64MB ram and I changed from 1024x768 to 800x600 to fix some occasional stutter problems; it didn't help.Which res should I probably be able to run in. I have a 2500+ Barton OC'd to 2.2GHz with 2x256 OCZ PC3500 EL.
Just for fun, I went to 1280x1024 for my LCD just to see how it would look (without movement) and it was very nice.
skunkbuster - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
also, nvidia is known to be better at openGl games and weaker in games that use dx.the same as ati is known to be better at dx games, and weaker in openGl games.
doom3= open gl
Falloutboy - Friday, November 19, 2004 - link
#10 its because Doom 3 was very texture intensive based, which the 5xxx series of nvidia exceled at and HL2 is a very shader intensive engine wit hless emphasis on texutures, and as we all know by now the 5xxx series sucked in DX9 shaders