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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tonrav - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
ERROR: demo network protocol 11 outdated, engine version if 14.Google reveals little of what this means except that Valve possibly rev'd something in EP2 without putting backwards compatibility in the code. Anybody know a way to play these demo's or convert them?
NullSubroutine - Thursday, October 18, 2007 - link
Did you use Super Sampling or Multi-Sampling on ATI cards?Powered by AMD - Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - link
i downloaded the dem files, but where do i have to put them and what do i have to type in the console to get it working?thanks in advance.
Zaitsev - Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - link
Thanks for taking the time to bench some older cards. It's crazy that a x1900xtx = hd 2900xt with antialiasing on. o.0zero2dash - Monday, October 15, 2007 - link
FSB O/C that E2160 to 3 gig on air and then benchmark it.Who runs the E21x0's at stock? Seriously??
I know you're trying to equal things across the board, but at least throw in an O/C number in there *somewhere*.
-Just a thought.- =)
Radeon 1950 FTW
Looks like the best card below the 8800GTS line especially at the $150 price point...nice.
NARC4457 - Monday, October 15, 2007 - link
I'm just sad that my GPU/CPU are even older than this list. That said, Ep2 is running great at 1280x1040 with most settings at medium and 2xAA.
bojaka - Monday, October 15, 2007 - link
First of I have no idea how much shortcuts they have taken when trying to get Motionblur and good shadows to work since they are both awful!The motionblur is just strange and the shadows looks good, but they don't seem to be calcylated correctly from the flashlight. Try standing in front of something with your flashlight turned on so the shadow falls on a wall in front of you and turn from left to right and you should see the shadow move in a very unrealistic manner.
How ever... It's a beautiful and fun to play game that really shouls have been benchmarked indoors and outdoors with full shadows and the flashlight turned on. Then you should have seen some different framrates! =( So disappointed at the performance (1280x1024 4xAA, 8xAniso end everything on highest on my C2D E6600 (800Mhz FSB), 2GB RAM, 8800GTS 640MB)
New benchmarks wanted!!! Flashlight on and shadows on!!!
DerekWilson - Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - link
all the graphics options were turned all the way up -- shadows were on. I played with the flash light but didn't see any significant difference in framerate.tonjohn - Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - link
Derek,You need to fix the part of the article that says that the new build of the Source engine only supports two threads. Mike Durand of Valve has confirmed that the latest build of the Source engine defaults to three threads for EP2 and Portal and two threads for TF2.
jeffrey - Sunday, October 14, 2007 - link
The article states that the GPU wasn't the limiting factor and that's fine, however I would still like to know what card/driver was used in the CPU test rig.