X-bit labs

Half-Life 2 Performance Preview: The Graphics Hardware Squeezer (page 10)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko , Anton Shilov

[ 11/18/2004 | 02:15 PM ]

d1_town_01, Pure Mode

The Town 01 demo may be considered as a kind of artificial, because the hero of the game blasts some gas balloons, causing much fire. While this demo is interesting from the technological standpoint, it is absolutely unnecessary to burn everything that is on your way when you’re actually playing.

On the other hand, this demo uses a flashlight, a very helpful device in some scenes of the game, adding load on visual processing units and also heavily activates gravity gun, which adds pressure on the central processing unit.

In the lowest resolution nearly all the graphics cards of the new generation, save for the GeForce 6800, have similar results, with a minor advantage on the part of the RADEON X800 XT PE/X800 XT. This advantage grows up in the higher resolutions, but the GeForce 6800 Ultra looks anyway better than on the Canals 09 level, while the GeForce 6800 GT performs in line with the RADEON X800 PRO. The RADEON 9800 XT and the AGP version of the GeForce 6600 GT share the top place in the mainstream sector with the RADEON 9800 PRO lagging only a bit behind.

Mainstream graphics cards, also belonging to the new generation, namely the GeForce 6600 GT and the RADEON X700 XT, have similar speeds.

The graphics cards with the obsolete 4-pipelined architecture, and the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra with the RADEON X600 XT, only allow for a comfortable play in 1024x768. Once again we should state that Half-Life 2 is a new-generation game with the appropriate hardware requirements.