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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  • 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.
  • Morten - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    To all the guys who are screaming about how nVidia is using a mixed codepath for HL2... everyone knows this. And to say nVidia is cheating, isn't exactly correct. That they are to blame? Probably. But, nVidia didn't make the mixed mode in HL2. Valve did. That's right. So before you go bashing nVidia about them cheating, remember that Valve, MADE the codepath. They could've chosen to only have DX8, DX8.1 and DX9 code paths.. no mixedmode... but they didn't. Now, why did they make this mixedmode? Cuz they want to sell more games. Understandable. But, I think it's wrong to get so upset at nVidia. They have inferior hardware. Don't buy it if you don't like it. Stop whining about it. If you bought ATI, be glad you'll get to appreciate HL2 "How it was meant to be played™" ;)

    Also, I'd like everyone to remember who started this whole cheating business in the first place, by going back to fall 2001. When a certain graphics card was released. I seem to remember someone having drivers that detected that a game (quake3.exe) was started, and doctored IQ accordingly to increase speed (and I guess the same could be said about 3dfx with their minigl driver)...

    I have a Radeon9700Pro. I'm very happy with it. Before that I had a GeForce3Ti200. Also, I was very happy with that at the time. And the next card I buy, depends on who -I-, not anyone else, think is the better (R420 or NV40). Stop following what hardware sites say blindly. I take everything with a grain of salt. I read as many reviews about a product I'm curious about, as possible. Then I make up my own opinion. Anandtech is a damn good hardware site. Still I don't trust it blindly. However, if two hardware sites have different results, I tend to lean towards AT's conclusions, untill I get more sources to base my opinion on.And just cuz he posted a few benchmarks from an unknown source, IN HIS P E R S O N A L weblog, DOES NOT make him a sellout.

    Stop bashing Anand. I wouldn't be surprised if he stopped updating his weblog on account on the comments from this post alone :/
  • Luagsch - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    LOL, chill guys... when anand hs he's own benchmarks he'll tell us. right now i'm rather waiting for the iq-tests from anand and derek. and we don't know what will happen to half life 2 after some of the source was leaked...
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    #78, HAHA, isn't it pathetic? I think ATI trolls are now probably the #1 most hated bunch of dolts in the hardware community. For that matter, anyone who posts all day about NVIDIA or ATI (these two ATI trolls named Digitalwanderer and Hellbinder) is usually just a loser with nothing better to do with their time.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    heh ... its funny so many ppl are saying that AT is biased towards NV ... AT recommended ATi cards all the way in their most recent article, and these numbers are in ATi's favor as well...

    Some of you ppl don't make sense.
  • Anonymous - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    http://www.halflife2.net/ 2nd news posting


    If this is true, why botheer comparing benchmarks from HL 2 at this at all?

    Better yet, lets wait for the damn game to come out and other next gen titles and compare performance and iq with those before getting into a worthless and useless debate.
  • Blackie - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link

    WOHAAAAAAA
    Nvidia cards MAGICLY double the frame rate!!!!

    Who make the detonators?
    Harry Potter or Arsenio Lupin?????

    ROTFL
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    #71: I posted #54 exactly once. Someone else (or other people) took it from there and reposted.
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    #71: I posted #54 exactly once. Someone else (or other people) took it from there and reposted.
  • StormGFX - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    Halflife source code leaked.

    Here comes another delay. Next 1/2Life 2 will be a NIN64 game only..

    This is so sad.. Now they well have to redo alot of the code to keep the cheaters out. Even the steam source code was taken. I don't know about you but I'm not typing in my Ccard number into anything that has to do with Valve.

    Maybe now the nvidia guys can look at the scorce code and make some better drivers. :-P

    Anyway.. I'm sorry to hear that Valve lost 5 years of work. I'm sure this will only delay the game for just a few more months.

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