1st time through ... advice, thanks!

[AstroCat]

Ok, playing through HL2 for the first time! Yeah, that’s right I never got around to it till now.

Any way I have:

AMD 64 4000+
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Motherboard
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS
BFGtech Geforce 7800GTX OC PCI 256

Currently using the 78.05 drivers with these settings:

High Quality (all optimizations off)
Trilinear Filtering on
Triple Buffering on
Gamma AA on
TA: MSAA
Clamp on

All in game settings at max with Vsync on at 1280x960 res.

Questions:

1. What kind of performance should I be getting with these settings? Should I change something or is this ok?

2. Any mods or tweaks I should do or get before I get started?

Thanks a bunch for the help! I’m looking forward to having a good time with this game.

 

[The_Wookie]

Only enable fast weapon switching in the keyboard advanced options.

Helps when some of the mobs chuck themselves at you at high velocity and you run outta bullets........

 

[AstroCat]

Some things I've noticed in the first 5 min of the game...

Alt for slow walk and Shift for Spring don't seem to be doing anything.

Lot's of flickering and shimmering of textures in the distance. Is this normal?

Thanks for the help.

 

[jondy]

Some things I've noticed in the first 5 min of the game...

Alt for slow walk and Shift for Spring don't seem to be doing anything.

Lot's of flickering and shimmering of textures. Is this normal?

Thanks for the help.

No, not normal.

At that resolution, you should be able to enable 4xtransparency AA as well, which should clean up fences and vegetation somewhat

 

[AstroCat]

Yeah, it's odd, its like the shadows and texture lines in the distance seem to flicker.

 

[AstroCat]

This is more like textures flickering between white and normal further in the distance. As I move forward or backwards the textures will jump between white and normal on certain textures only.

It's pretty distracting.

 

[J_Tweedy]

Could just be the drivers, tried an older driver?
What temperatures you running (load and idle) on that gfx card?

 

[AstroCat]

Here's a quick video of it:

http://www.astrocat.net/images/temp/hl2flicker2.rar

As you can see the textures in the distance seem to "flicker"

Is this normal for HL2? I've seen this in other games, of course through the years.

I've tried 78.05 and 81.84 drivers, everything on HQ all around.

 

[Lahire149]

use 8x aniso-filtering

 

[AstroCat]

I am using 8x aniso filtering, tried 16x as well, no difference. I've checked over at Nvnews and there are others with the same issue.

I think it is the drivers... but then again it could be something in the game as well. Either way I think it is this way all around and not something wrong with our systems.

 

[AstroCat]

Ok, it's totally AA related!

With 1600x1200 AND 8xs it's like 95% gone. I wouldn't have ever cared.

Unfortunately I have my fps dip down to around 30 at times.

At 1280x960 and 8xs they stay at at better rate and the issue is still a lot better.

Thanks...

 

[Solver]

Hmm, sorry, what's the problem with FPS dipping down to around 30? The human eye can not see any significant difference between 30 FPS and 50 FPS. Movies are 24 FPS!

 

[AJ Rimmer]

On your other thing: Alt is uselss, correct, but Shift only works as sprint once you get the HEV suit.

 

[AstroCat]

@Solver
Your right but there is better "feeling" of movement when above 30 fps. The control is much more fluid closer to 60 fps.

@AJ Rimmer
Thanks for the info.