Half Life 2 GPU Roundup Part 1 - DirectX 9 Shootout

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• araczynski - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  yawn, i'm too busy enjoy the game (6800gt) to read the article and/or care which card is better :) i'm playing at 1600x1200 0AA/4AF (2.4@3.3/1GB) and have absolutely no complaints, other then knowing that the game will eventually end :(

• Jeff7181 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  #57... poorly :)

• blckgrffn - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  I would also like to to see how the 9200/9000 series Radeons perform too, and if you have extra time, the 8500/9100.
  
  Again, Thanks!

• Jeff7181 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  #16... that's correct, although the only REAL observation that needs to be made is that Half Life 2 makes heavy use of pixel shaders which is very GPU dependant, and GPU's are just now growing the required testicles to process those shaders :)

• blckgrffn - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  Anand -
  
  I would like to see how the 6600 performs. As an 8 pipe card, it should perform better than the 9600xt and a little under a 9700 Pro, but it would be interesting to see if that is true. It is a great budget PCIe card along with the x700.
  
  Thanks!
  Nat

• eva2000 - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  nice review downloaded your demos to run on AMD64 3700+ @ 12x 222 = 2664mhz with 1GB BH-5 @ 222mhz 2-2-2-6 1T and Powercolor X800XT PE @ 520/560 and all demo results were within 3-4fps of the reviews :)

• Live - Thursday, November 18, 2004 - link

  Good reading as always. Would like to see minimum FPS tough. I find it very important to see how low the cards drop when stressed. You can't see that with only average FPS.

• housecat - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

  So... wheres the Nvidia SLI versus ATI results??
  
  Muwahahaha.

• Avalon - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

  Hey Anand, I have an interesting request. Could you try Rivatuner on your 6800, unlock its pipes, and then bench it again? :P
  Just kidding. Actually, I'm glad you've confirmed what I've been thinking...that AF hasn't been doing much for me. Since I'm running on a lowly 9700, I think I'll just turn it off now, and enjoy a nice speed boost.

• PrinceGaz - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

  How about throwing a GF 5600 and maybe even a GF 5200 in as well for part 2, as an awful lot of people have them. Ultra versions of either if you prefer.
  
  I don't have one of them myself as I'm still using a Ti4200, but it would be interesting to see how they stacked up in the DX8 codepath against the Ti4600 you are planning to test. And it should be worth a giggle to see just how "fast" the 5600 or 5200 can manage the DX9 codepath :)
  
  Thanks to the resolution scaling-graphs this review included and how the fastest cards were generally CPU limited with that A64 4000+ when the resolution was dropped to 1024x768, I'm not sure how much a CPU scaling article for part 3 will show that can't already be quite accurately guesstimated from how different CPUs generally tend to perform in games. But a comparison of the Athlon 64 4000+, against an Athlon XP, a Prescott, a Northwood, and if time permits a fast P3, Duron and Celeron also, would be great.