In Jail, with Friends

Our Prison demo features a level that was a part of an older Half Life 2 showcase a year or so ago.  In this indoor level, a group of spider-like-creatures help our player fend off a large group of soldiers as well as automated gun turrets. 

There is a lot of gunfire in this level which makes this indoor level more GPU bound than it would have otherwise been.  Since Gordon doesn’t have a flashlight at this point in the game, we didn’t use it during our recording of the demo.  Despite the lack of flashlight and the fact that it’s an indoor level, we found that this demo was decently GPU bound. 


The firing effects of the turrets are just beautiful

Once again we have the X800 XT at the top of the charts, with a 5% performance advantage over NVIDIA’s 6800 Ultra.  The 6800GT holds a similar 5% advantage over the X800 Pro. 

In the $200 - $300 range we once again see basically no difference between the 6800, 6600GT and the X700 XT. 

Half Life 2 AT_prison_05 Demo

How about a walk on the beach? The Slowest Level in the Game
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  • alexlck - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    In map AT_coast_05.dem, GF6800U have no performance penalty with 4xAA@1024x768?
  • HardwareD00d - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    hey, #27, I was gonna say that ;)
  • jediknight - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    Well, it's obvious from the benchmarks. They don't lie.

    ATI RULZ NVIDIA SUXORZ!!

    (lol@#3)
  • bob661 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    Do you need HL2 to play CS: Source? Thanks.
  • wien - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    #24 There is.. It's called Counter-Strike: Source
  • bob661 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    Anyone know if there's multiplayer support in HL2? Thanks.
  • L1FE - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    Nice and thorough comparison. That 6600GT looks more and more enticing...
  • Rekonn - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    Great article, looking forward to reading the next one with slower cpus. Being cpu limited with an A64 4000+ is a little scary, I wonder what kind of fps an XP3200+ gets when paired with an AGP 6600GT. (still running an overclocked Barton 2500+)
  • Jalf - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    I'm surprised at how well NV stacks up... And good to see the 6800 GT beat the X800 Pro. Not because I'm an NV fan, but simply because it makes it easier to choose. When the 6800 GT wins over the equivalent ATI card, even in an ATI-optimized game, then it's kinda easy to choose what to buy... :D
    It's a lot harder with the other cards, where both companies scores some wins in different games.
  • Regs - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link

    Yeah, I'm hoping a CPU round up will come after part two! I can afford a 400 dollar video card but not paired with a 700 dollar AMD CPU.

    I did notice a lot of stuttering in my gaming experience with a A64 3000 + 6800 GT/1024 MB pC3200. I was playing at 1280x1024 with 4x/8x max details. So likely I would have to cut out the 8x Aniso to have smooth gameplay. I don't know if that was what Anand was mentioning about with the "Shimmering" of textures with the Manhatten calculations.

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