Half-Life 2: Episode One Performance

Half-Life 2: Episode One is the most recent episode of Valve's continuation of the Half-Life 2 storyline. This saga stands out to us as having the most interesting storyline of just about any game, and also having the most interesting characters (with possibly the best voice acting of any game). Not only does Episode One expand on Half-Life 2 with more original gameplay elements, but the developers also gave the game a graphical upgrade with this installment. HDR and bloom effects were added that give the engine a needed face-lift, while keeping the subtlety of the Source engine. We're very anxiously awaiting the release of Episode Two to see what direction Valve takes this game next.

To test this game, we use the built in timedemo feature. Our test consists of a section of the game during a rocket launcher battle against a Combine gunship, with lots of explosions and boards exploding into shards, making good use of Half-Life 2's Havok physics engine. We test this game with the quality settings to "high" when possible, with "reflect all" chosen which usually isn't on by default. We also set anisotropic filtering to 8x. We look for an average frame rate of about 30 or higher in order to get an enjoyable experience.

Half-Life 2: Episode One


The original Half-Life 2 engine broke a lot of ground in its design, and it still shapes the way games are made today. One of the great things about the Half-Life 2 engine was that even though it looked great, it still got very good frame rates across a very wide range of cards, even on the lower end. The newer features of the Episode One engine have given the game a bit more of a performance hit, but it still gets better frame rates than many competing games.

F.E.A.R. Performance Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Performance
Comments Locked

33 Comments

View All Comments

  • LuxFestinus - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    One nice thing about the X1650 XT is that is doesn't require an external power connection. The second "is" should be "it" please. Thank you.
  • Josh Venning - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    It's been fixed. Thanks
  • trabpukcip - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    quote:

    One nice thing about the X1650 XT is that is doesn't require an external power connection. This makes it a good choice for those with limited connections on their power supplies. However, the 7900 GS also doesn't need an external power connection, so our data might persuade those who are very concerned about power consumption to look into this card instead of the X1650 XT.


    I think they meant the 7600GT doesn't require an external power connector.

    I sure remember hooking up the power connector for my little brother's 7900GS less than five metres from me, being derived from a crippled 7900GT and all.

    And as for you you American dotted underline spellchecker. I spell it metres NOT meters where I come from ;). (It even underlined "spellchecker", the irony).

  • bldckstark - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    What colour was the underline?
  • DerekWilson - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    lol
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    Back to the original comment, this has been corrected. Unless Josh knows something I don't, all of the 7900 GS cards I can find require a PCIe power connector. 7600 GT does not, however. Odd, considering power draws are about the same.
  • BigLan - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    What's the avivo performance of the x1650xt? Can it handle acceleration of 1080i/p stuff, or is it limited to 720p like it's predecessor? If it can only do 720p it's taking a huge hit against the 7600gt which has full purevideo compatibility (and is the current darling of the htpc crowd.)

    Also, I haven't heard anything about gpu accelerated transcoding in a while. Any chance of getting an anandtech article about it using non-beta versions?
  • blckgrffn - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    An incomplete specifications table, assertions like "it has twice the pixel pipelines, 12 to 24 which will fix the performance issues" when really the x16xx family was plagued by a fill rate comparable to a 9600XT.

    Don't take this personal Josh - but Anandtech is supposed to have the definitive review, not simply an adequate one.

    Nat
  • DerekWilson - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link

    We had trouble tracking down the # of vertex and color/z pipes -- we didn't want to comment on any fill rate differences until we could confirm our suspicions -- raster pipes have doubled, and this definitely helps at higher resolutions and with AA or stencil shadows, etc...

    But doubling the pixel pipes does allow them to get a big boost in performance without upping the clock speed in more modern games (like oblivion) where fill rate wasnt as large an issue.

    Sorry for the gap in the article -- it has been updated and a paragraph has been added after our charts to explain the impact of raster pipes. In the future, we'll be sure to get ahold of the data we need in a more timely fashion.

    Derek Wilson
  • blckgrffn - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link

    Thanks!

    Anandtech is my homepage, and will continue to be for some time. Really, I think we all just want to see this site be the best that it can be.

    Nat

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now