Half Life 2 Performance

by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 1, 2003 11:48 PM EST
So of course the one thing everyone asked for was something I couldn't deliver for the first part of the Fall 2003 Video Card roundup - Half Life 2 performance. Of course there were requests for Doom3 performance and believe me, if we had the benchmarks we would definitely have included them. As you can guess, Valve has not released the Half Life 2 benchmark as originally expected and thus we don't have updated Half Life 2 numbers for you. The conclusion of the recent article did reference Doom3 and Half Life 2 performance however, and believe me I wasn't just pulling numbers and thoughts out of the air - I've got some basis for what I've said.

Here are some Half Life 2 numbers for you to look at; they were provided by a reliable source, but I could not verify anything myself so take them with a grain of salt. ATI was running in their DX9 codepath and the mixed mode codepath was used for NVIDIA. No AA/AF was enabled and we're looking at 1024x768 scores:

Half Life 2 Demo
Radeon 9800XT
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
e3_bugbait
71.4
73.9
e3_c17_01
57.6
57.5
e3_c17_02
49.9
49.3
e3_phystown
74.5
77.2
e3_seafloor
53.9
53.3
e3_techdemo_5
83.5
64.5
e3_techdemo_6
76.9
71.7
e3_under_02
77.3
71.1

If those numbers hold true then things definitely look better than from Half Life 2 day, but we'll reserve judgement until we get the benchmark in house. I just thought you'd like to see what we're seeing, I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on this data yet, just wanted to share :)

Tomorrow is my 8AM day again, and maybe I'll get those tests back that I took on Monday (hopefully not...I'd like tomorrow to be a good day :)...). I'm off to sleep, have a good night everyone. Derek and I will be back to work on Part II tomorrow; I'll update you as soon as I can.

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  • DustbusterII - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    Whats better for DOOM 3? GEFORCE FX 5950 or RADEON 9800XT?
  • anbot - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link

    It's easier for NV to cheat on HL2 now that they have the source code.
  • StormGFX - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link

    Cheating emm.. I don't care how they fix it.. just as long as the fix it.. They could use duck tape and chicken wire for all I care I just want my FPS up to playable. :-P

  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Stupid nvidia is back cheating again.:(
    When their GeForceFX's cards suck in DX9 they ofcourse try to minimize their reputation damage by cheating.
    And some newbies believe nvidia honest...
  • Keith - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    I wonder how well my ati radoen 9700 pro on a 2.00ghz sys and 512 ddr 400 computer run hl2?
  • StormGFX - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    I think it was a smart move for ATI to get other people to use their chip to make ATI video cards.
    ATI has been assed up in the production of their cards. Maybe once ASUS puts out a ATI video card it will lower the return rate of ATI video cards.
    Go to any best buy or Ccity and ask them about the high return rate of the ATI products. When I returned mine they didn't even ask me what happen they just said "Oh another bad ati card." I wanted to run an ATI video card but it just didn't work. And I don't think Nvidia cards are toys. ATI cards are great for games and porn. But try running a 5k 3d app on a ATI card it runs like crap. ATI is working hard on that problem that you guys seem to forget about. Not everone uses a 2000 dollar computer to play games on. I really don't think ATI or Nvidia has the best of anything. It's just all we have to pick from at the moment. Lets not fight each other about it. lets fight Nvidia and ATI about it. Whould I would like to know is why a 2k card like the wildcat video card with 512 megs of ram can't even run quake3?
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Well, ATI´s cards are still the best. Nvidia makes just toycards, ATI cards are great in multimedia and they have better picture quality.
    I have Radeon9700 Pro and i have to say that this is the best card i have ever had in my machine. And i haven´t got any problems with the drivers and they are getting better all the time.
    Before this i had GF2Ti and GF256.

    And its great to see that companies like ASUS have started making ATI cards instead of nvidia toys.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    Funny how company after company is leaving nvidias "quality products" and start making ATI "crap" I guess that Gigabyte, Hercules and ASUS are all idiots, or? Next in line are Gainward, Chaintec and MSI. Who will make nvidias "quality products" then?
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    lol, years of crap ATI cards and lame fanboys.. now it's just ATI's card being better on the few DX9 games, and they're 10x bader than the worst Nvidia fanoboy:)

    to me, it's just years of quality agains years of crap product for idiots... enjoy you (temporary) small victory.. ATIDIOTS :)

    Really enjoying...

    ebe
  • StormGFX - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    To #76

    Good drivers can make all the difference when it comes to how hardware works... Thats why they call them driver. It's not magic but I'm sure there are some tricks going on that we can't see.

    Nvidia and ATI use little tricks to get the most out of their drivers. Nvidia pulled a "cheat/trick" out of their ass and some how got the fps up to a playable level. And the driver is still in beta. Maybe with more hard work they can get more fps out of the drivers and make the Nvidia user happy about playing dx9 games. I think Nvidia was more geared to Opengl becasue I can run quake3 at 1600x1200 with 8x AA and 8x Anso @ 125 fps constantly no mater how complex the level gets. And on a 23" tft display it looks nice. Why did everyone jump on the MS DX9 bandwagon? Doesn't that mean that other OS's will not beable to run DX9 games? I thought it was better to use Opengl so that it could be ported to different systems. Is unreal 2004 a DX9 game or a OpenGL game? And why does dx9 run so slow on both ATI and Nvidia hardware.. If you ask me Half Life on a ATI or nvidia card should run at more than 125 fps at 1024x768. And plz don't start that all you need is 30 fps BS... I may not beable to see over 30 fps, but I can damn sure feel it. And to #78 I come in here to better understand what I spent 300 bucks on. Thats not to pathetic is it? :-P

    Oh yeah! I think it would have been better if valve put in both a pure Opengl and DX9 mode.

    Thats my last 2cents.

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