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
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 fact that there’s basically no performance difference between the top four cards in this test indicates that even at 1280 x 1024, the fastest GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA still find themselves CPU bound in some Half Life 2 scenarios.
The relatively flat resolution scaling curves of some of the GPUs indicates that we are still fairly CPU bound here, which, interestingly enough, happens quite often in Half Life 2.
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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.