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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  • God - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    pathetics humans... get a life before its too late
  • MM/XF - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    Hey,
    really unprofessional to post benchmark scores
    - of a benchmark you didn't do yourself
    - of a game/benchmark not available yet to the public
    - using drivers that are not yet and/or will never be published, let alone WHQL'ed
    - where competitioners are not doing the same workload (codepaths anyone?)
    - without verification of IQ
    - without even STATING THE GODDAMN source (not that it isn't pretty obvious)

    See, even without having to use the words "cheat" or "optimisation" this is unacceptable, even as a "first look" or whatever.

    The big hardware sites really ARE dead.

  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    Um... where did they come from then?
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    I know where these numbers came from. Anand forgot to mention that NVidia card was benched with 16-bit colour!
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    I know where these numbers came from. Anand forgot to mention that NVidia card was benched with 16-bit colour!
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    WOW!!!

    So when you run Nvidias card at crappy IQ and DX 8.1 with inserted clip planes and cheats to even enhance screenshots it is almost as fast as an ATI card running full precision full blown DX9 with all the bells and whistles on.

    Absolutely amazing!!!!

    I guess I'll run right out and get an Nvidia card!!!

    Oh wait, I can buy a $200 ATI card that spanks the crap out of Nvidia's best $500 card.. Um ... maybe not....

    Let me guess the source of the benchmarks.... Nvidia.

    Pathetic, really pathetic.
  • Shalmanese - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    Oh, for chrissakes, these aren't HIS numbers. HE didn't do any benchmarking. They were give to him so any comments about not doing IQ diffs is ridiculous. Just have some patience and wait for the official benchmarks/Part II of the 9800XT review to come out before commenting.
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    Yes those nvidiot fanboys are hillarius!
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    Jesus the fanboys are getting worse and worse these days.
  • Anonymous - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link

    i better not start see the way they're meant to be surfed, anandtech.com ads all over this website soon. fishy indeed

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