UPDATED Half-Life 2: Episode 2 CPU and Graphics Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 12, 2007 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
With the low cost of CPUs these days and with many affordable GPUs on the market, building a system capable of playing Half Life 2: Episode Two just isn't that difficult.
On the CPU side we were caught off guard by exactly how much cache size impacted performance in Episode Two, rendering the Core 2 Duo E4000 and Pentium E2000 series processors much slower than their competition.
AMD was also far more competitive than expected, most likely as a result of the Source engine's dependence on low latency memory accesses. While Intel continues to hold the performance crown, in the $133 and lower price points AMD actually ends up being the better processor to have. If and when Phenom can get to those price points, AMD could actually end up being significantly more competitive than it has been since the launch of Core 2.
Given the performance impact we've seen from faster FSBs and larger caches however, Intel's Penryn core should do a good job of fixing lower end performance once Intel's 45nm core makes its way down to lower price points as well. It also remains to be seen how much of the cache sensitivity we saw here today will translate into other up and coming games, such as today's Unreal Engine 3 based UT3 demo.
While NVIDIA is the only solutions for those who wish to run Episode 2 with all the features enabled at 2560x1600 with 4xAA enabled, the 2900 XT does outperform the 8800 GTS at the $400 price point. The 8800 GTS 320MB is once again a huge value for the money as it performs almost identically to the 8800 GTS 640MB part (with the exception of anything above 1920x1200 with 4xAA which handicaps the lower memory card).
As we mentioned, almost anything can play Episode 2, but if you want high quality at 1280x1024, you'll at least need the equivalent performance of a modern $100+ graphics card. Serious (and even casual) PC gamers will very likely already have something that meets this requirement. Clearly this is no Crysis, but at the same time we applaud Valve's efforts to keep its engine up to date.
With the low cost of CPUs these days and with many affordable GPUs on the market, building a system capable of playing Half Life 2: Episode Two just isn't that difficult.
On the CPU side we were caught off guard by exactly how much cache size impacted performance in Episode Two, rendering the Core 2 Duo E4000 and Pentium E2000 series processors much slower than their competition.
AMD was also far more competitive than expected, most likely as a result of the Source engine's dependence on low latency memory accesses. While Intel continues to hold the performance crown, in the $133 and lower price points AMD actually ends up being the better processor to have. If and when Phenom can get to those price points, AMD could actually end up being significantly more competitive than it has been since the launch of Core 2.
Given the performance impact we've seen from faster FSBs and larger caches however, Intel's Penryn core should do a good job of fixing lower end performance once Intel's 45nm core makes its way down to lower price points as well. It also remains to be seen how much of the cache sensitivity we saw here today will translate into other up and coming games, such as today's Unreal Engine 3 based UT3 demo.
While NVIDIA is the only solutions for those who wish to run Episode 2 with all the features enabled at 2560x1600 with 4xAA enabled, the 2900 XT does outperform the 8800 GTS at the $400 price point. The 8800 GTS 320MB is once again a huge value for the money as it performs almost identically to the 8800 GTS 640MB part (with the exception of anything above 1920x1200 with 4xAA which handicaps the lower memory card).
As we mentioned, almost anything can play Episode 2, but if you want high quality at 1280x1024, you'll at least need the equivalent performance of a modern $100+ graphics card. Serious (and even casual) PC gamers will very likely already have something that meets this requirement. Clearly this is no Crysis, but at the same time we applaud Valve's efforts to keep its engine up to date.
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retrospooty - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - link
I have never had an issue with steam, using it since HL2 first came out. Not sure what your issues are, but you might want to look into them.RamarC - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
what a twit. hundreds of thousands of satisfied users, but he can't get it to work so it must be a piece of crap. go play your ds... even six year olds can handle those.cmdrdredd - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
You're just a moron then. Steam works fine, the game is fine, Valve did a good job.Everyone knows that the HD2900XT does pretty poorly at high resolutions with AA. Every game is like this. To be surprised means you weren't paying attention
redfirebird15 - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
Can you post screenshots comparing the AA enabled to the non-AA enabled tests? Just wondering if the increase image quality compares with the impact on performance. Thanks!Oh and could you post results for a 1900xtx? It may be older but the cost of upgrading hasn't been justified yet.
shabby - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
Wow that 2900xt just tanks when you enable aa, bummer.Spartan Niner - Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - link
Last time I checked, the 2900XT doesn't scale as nicely with AA as 8800 series cards do. Also, the resolutions tested and the cards used in this comparison are far from what mainstream gamers use... the CPU comparisons are also nice but shouldn't be the main focus. The results basically tell us more expensive CPUs give better stock performance...At the very least, a test utilizing more common resolutions 1600x1200, 1280x1024, 1024x768 for 4:3 and resolutions such as 1680x1050 and 1440x900 for the widescreen crowd combined with the usage of X1xxx-series ATI cards and 7xxx nVidia cards would be more realistic.
For reference, I use a E2140 @ 2.4GHz and an X850 XT video card and run CS/DOD Source at max everything, 4xAA. At least for my needs it seems like any video card short of a 8800 series card or a 2900 series card is not a cost-effective upgrade when mid-range cards don't offer that much of a performance boost over my X850...