Half-Life 2: Episode One Performance
Episode One of the new Half-Life 2 series makes use of recent Source engine updates to include Valve's HDR technology. While some people have done HDR that won't allow antialiasing (even on ATI cards), Valve put a high value on building an HDR implementation that everyone can use with whatever settings they want. Consistency of experience is usually not important enough to developers who care about pushing the bleeding edge of technology, so we are very happy to see Valve going down this path.
We use the built-in timedemo feature to benchmark the game. Our timedemo consists of a protracted rocket launcher fight and features much debris and pyrotechnics. The source engine timedemo feature is more like the nettimedemo of Id's Doom 3 engine, in that it plays back more than just the graphics. In fact, Valve includes some fairly intensive diagnostic tools that will reveal almost everything about every object in a scene. We haven't found a good use for this in the context of reviewing computer hardware, but our options are always open.
The highest visual quality settings possible were used including the "reflect all" setting which is normally not enabled by default. Antialiasing was left disabled for this test, and anisotropic filtering was set at 8x. While the Source engine is notorious for giving great framerates for almost any hardware setup, we find the game isn't as enjoyable if it isn't running at at least 30fps. This is very attainable even at the highest resolution we tested on most cards, and thus our target framerate is a little higher in this game than others.
All current generation midrange cards except the X1600 XT are capable of running Half-Life 2: Episode One with all the eye candy enabled at 1920x1440. This is good news for people with the upper end of large affordable wide format display panels who like to play Half-Life 2 based games. Those with the older generation cards (or displays that max out at a lower resolution) may need to run at a lower resolution in order to enjoy their HL2:Ep1 experience.
Looking at lower resolutions, the X1900 XT is running into a CPU bound situation at 800x600 with the Core 2 Extreme, but at 250fps we don't really feel the loss that hard. Every card we tested is essentially playable at 1600x1200 under this game, but those with cards on the lower end of the spectrum may prefer to drop resolution a little more and use the reflect world rather than reflect all setting to avoid hiccups. The X1900 GT is the most bang for the buck solution once again, though we'll have to reserve some judgement for the overclocked 7900 GT when we take a look at it. Not even Valve's traditionally ATI friendly engine can make the X1600 XT look like a good buy though.
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Gigahertz19 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I can't stand people who always have to correct every damn thing they read, who cares if the authors of these articles make little mistakes? As long as these articles are readable and understandable who gives a shit. I don't think anybody has the right to complain for something that is free for us to read...now if we were paying to read this material it would be a different story.I can understand correcting big mistakes like correcting the author when he uses the incorrect name for something or is wrong about a fact then that should be corrected but little grammatical errors and sentence structure should be left alone unless it's completely butchered. If you're so interested in these small mistakes go teach high school English.
And yes I know some ass on here will find an error in my above comments and correct it, go for it :).
yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
Actually, the authors generally appreciate it and fix it, at least in my experience. It makes for a more professional site to have solid grammar in articles. As for "who gives a s#!t", generally adults do.Netopia - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
And to support his position, take a look at the sentence now... they fixed it!Joe
JarredWalton - Friday, August 11, 2006 - link
Yup.Derek was working on this late at night and so I went and made my typical corrections after the fact. There were plenty of other minor typos, and we do our best to correct them whether we spot them or someone else does. We certainly don't mind people pointing them out, as long as it's not the "OMFG you misspelled two words on the first page so I stopped reading - you guys are teh lamez0rz!?1!" type of comment. ;)
CKDragon - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I have my 7900GT voltmodded & overclocked to 640/820. I know you didn't show voltmod overclocked benchmarks, but seeing that just a core bump up to 580 brings it close to or better than the X1900XT at stock is a nice reference mark to have.Frackal - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I doubt that considering a 7900GTX with higher core/memory clocks than that usually gets beaten by an X1900XT at stock. (Not to mention to make that fair they'd have to OC the x1900xt too)This review was relevantly incomplete IMO because it did not show the huge difference between an x1900xt and 7900gt with AA/AF on
yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
Nor the huge difference in audible noise levels, for that matter. My 7900GT is practically silent except when in 3D games, and even then it's not a jet engine.yacoub - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I recently upgraded from an X800XL to a 7900GT (eVGA N584 model - hsf is copper and covers the RAM chips). I run the 91.33 drivers.I am extremely pleased with this upgrade choice. The card is actually quieter than my Sapphire X800XL Ultra was (it had the Zalman hsf on it stock but the fan was ball-bearing and made a bit of noise).
My rig:
3200+ Venice
1GB DDR RAM dual-channel
A8N-SLI Premium
Games:
CS:Source
Homeworld 2
Haven't reinstalled other games yet but considering the great improvement I noticed in CS:S, I imagine FEAR, NFSMW, and the other games I own but don't currently have installed would also see a large jump in performance. Not only did I gain fps and eliminate the big dips I experienced in busy scenes with the X800XL, I'm also at max graphical settings (everything High) and anywhere from 2xAA and 4xAF up to 4xS AA and 8xAF, and this is at 1680x1050 (20" widescreen).
Very satisfied with the purchase. This cost me less than the X800XL did nine months ago and performs probably 40-60% better, if not more considering the improved graphical settings on top of the fps gain.
vailr - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
When are the DX 10.0 cards going to available?And, what new assortment of ATI or nVidia GPU's will be on the DX 10.0 cards?
Will there be cheap [<$150] DX 10.0 cards?
Warder45 - Thursday, August 10, 2006 - link
I don't see the 7600GT OC 600/750 listed in the charts on the page talking about the 7600GT OC. Lots of 7900GT models though.