Halflife 2 Performance Revealed

[$pazmatazz]

I scanned through the topics on the first and second pages and didn't see any threads that looked to be about this. If one has been made already, then as always, delete this thread before I get flammed please.

Anyways, as taken from www.anandtech.com.

You'll see my own numbers tomorrow night at midnight, but we've been given the go ahead to reveal a bit of information about Half-Life 2. I'll keep it brief and to the point and will explain it in greater detail tomorrow night:

- Valve is pissed at all of the benchmarking "optimizations" they've seen in the hardware community;
- Half-Life 2 has a special NV3x codepath that was necessary to make NVIDIA's architecture perform reasonably under the game;
- Valve recommends running geforce fx 5200 and 5600 cards in dx8 mode in order to get playable frame rates.
- even with the special NV3x codepath, ATI is the clear performance leader under Half-Life 2 with the Radeon 9800 Pro hitting around 60 fps at 10x7. The 5900 ultra is noticeably slower with the special codepath and is horrendously slower under the default dx9 codepath;
- the Radeon 9600 Pro performs very well - it is a good competitor of the 5900 ultra;
- ATI didn't need these special optimizations to perform well and Valve insists that they have not optimized the game specifically for any vendor.

 

[Tork]

the Radeon 9600 Pro performs very well - it is a good competitor of the 5900 ultra;
:cheese:

 

[TrueWeltall]

hehe

 

[another-user]

thank god im getting a 9800 pro w/ 256

 

[Feath]

Where did he get this information from? Who is the author?

What does he mean by "his own numbers"? He has the benchmark?

 

[Doobz]

he posted a link

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1862

 

[Jerjerod]

look at the link its from www.anandtech.com a very reputable hardware site. It wouldnt surprise me if valve did give them the bench mark.

 

[TripleDES]

Wondering myself because I don't think Valve would want to risk a leak by handing out evals to companies.

 

[d8cam]

I got the 9800 non pro...I hope I will be ok.

 

[Feath]

Originally posted by Doobz
he posted a link

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1862

I was referring to the Author on the site. I've read the page.

They weren't accusing questions, I was just wondering.

 

[Feath]

Originally posted by d8cam
I got the 9800 non pro...I hope I will be ok.

Please be joking.

PLEASE.

 

[FAK3R]

This is pretty sad but I won't trust it until the game is released..
I feel bad about owning a FX5200
oh well, guess I should have gone for an ATi
All and all I still dont trust this info unless it comes from a better source..

I know its true that ATi is ripping nVidia a new one in this race of GPU's
But until I have an actual copy and am able to test it on my system, then I won't be satisfied with this info..
my PC SPECS:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
512mb DDR pc2100
Geforce FX5200
WinXP Pro SP1

 

[Siirolon]

Thank god I have like 2490813 Radeon 9800s wif teh überamount oph 256 MEGABYTES of teh dubble deta FRAM. w00t w00t. I R 1337.

...

This is nice info, thanks for the heads up. We'll see some figures tomorrow then.

 

[FoB_Ed]

seeing how well the demo ran on valve's PC, I'm not too worried.

I have a
P4 2.4 ghz
512mb of RAM (might upgrade to 1 gig)
Radeon 9700 pro 128

 

[koopa]

I guess this means that those of us with 4200/4400 cards are going to get pretty average performance. I didn't expect the ATI cards to be quite so dominant :/

 

[d8cam]

Originally posted by Feath
Please be joking.

PLEASE.

Yes I am joking.

 

[kelisis]

Haha, a Radeon 9600 Pro is good competion for an 5900 Ultra, lmao! Wow, ATI kicks arse! I'm getting a Radeon 9800-XT :cheers:

 

[nw909]

Pfft, XT is a no-no for me, 700 bux I do not have.

 

[Jerjerod]

It would be good news for me but my 9700pros broken and iv sent it back to gigabyte so im currently running a 7200, do ya think itll still beat a 5900ultra? lol

 

[shapeshifter]

I guess the benchemark is coming out tommorw or the next day then.

 

[Yatta]

Originally posted by FoB_Ed
seeing how well the demo ran on valve's PC, I'm not too worried.

I have a
P4 2.4 ghz
512mb of RAM (might upgrade to 1 gig)
Radeon 9700 pro 128

What was Valve PC? The sys specs i mean.

 

[sayam]

i hope so ...

 

[nw909]

Originally posted by Yatta
What was Valve PC? The sys specs i mean.

Some dell dreammachine

it had a 9800 pro though.

 

[Tek]

i think the valve system was

p4 3.0ghz (coulda been 2.8)
512mb DDR ram
and a radeon 9800 pro


if my memory serves me right.

 

[nw909]

Well its in the valve thread, feel free to dig.

 

[Yatta]

Originally posted by Tek
i think the valve system was

p4 3.0ghz (coulda been 2.8)
512mb DDR ram
and a radeon 9800 pro


if my memory serves me right.

Thanks. I actually remember it was a Dell DreamMachine but I had forgotten the specs.

 

[Tork]

I hope the benchmark is out soon. All this Microsoft Praising the benchmark and now this. It seems like the benchmark will be out soon , maybe even when steam goes live again. I HOPE :\

 

[Chris D]

That sounds about right Tek.

What do people recommend for me. I have currently:

* GeForce4 ti4200 AGPx8 128mb
* 256mb RAM (PC2700 333MHz)
* P4 2.66GHz

Should I:
a) Get a Radeon 9800Pro 128mb ad leave the RAM as it is
or
b) Get a Radeon 9600Pro 128 and get another 512mb RAM
or
c) Radeon 9700Pro 128 and get another 256mb RAM?

 

[Yatta]

Originally posted by Tork
I hope the benchmark is out soon. All this Microsoft Praising the benchmark and now this. It seems like the benchmark will be out soon , maybe even when steam goes live again. I HOPE :\

First of all, what was the "Microsoft Praising the Benchmark"?

 

[SuperFat]

Damn, I don't understand why they just can't get better support for nvidia cards, I mean I own one and I understand ati makes a better card, and I just got unlucky in which one I chose, but still I'm sure at least 50% of gamers own nvidia cards, this could seriously lose some sales for hl2? I mean if people realize this and in fact don't buy hl2, based on this review written about nvidia cards, what's going to happen to all the people who own nvidia cards when hl2 is released?

 

[Northwood83]

Chris D it all comes down to your budget however I'd say get C.

 

[FoB_Ed]

a) Get a Radeon 9800Pro 128mb ad leave the RAM as it is
or
b) Get a Radeon 9600Pro 128 and get another 512mb RAM
or
c) Radeon 9700Pro 128 and get another 256mb RAM?

I would go with C. The 9700 Pro is an excellent card, it may be slightly slower than the 9800, but the extra 256 of RAM you get will more than make up for it

 

[Banana]

Chris,

I'd go with B or C. Having a lot of video memory is good but i think that the extra system memory will be better in the long run.

 

[Arnaldo42]

Damn! Looks like I'm selling my 5900 Ultra and going for a 9800XT.

 

[Chris D]

Northwood, each of those three options would probably cost exactly the same money. Roughly.

And SuperFat, they'll all update to ATI of course!

 

[Direwolf]

I'd go with C myself.
I'm currently running a 9700 myself, and am hoping to make up for its non-pro-ness a little with my current massive amount of RAM.
No buts about it, you need RAM no matter what, but your videocard's going to need some improvement for good quality too.

 

[SuperFat]

Well I mean I just got my card so I won't, but if you think logically about it a lot of people are getting ripped off. I have a ti4800 8x which is inbetween the 5200 and the 5600.

 

[Northwood83]

Well It looks like things worked out for me..My 5900U died after 3 days of owning it and I got a refund from Newegg. Depending on the numbers I see on sept 12th (midnight, on anandarticle) Ill make my choice on what to buy.

 

[Murray_H]

/me phones a friend

they said 'A', i'm going with 'C' Chris

/me puts on the most annoying voice in the world

join us again after the break* when we'll find out which is the correct answer

*cue annoyed groaning from the audience

 

[DigiQ8]

Dammit i got Geforce FX 5200

Edit : THIS IS WILL BE THE LAST TIME I BUY NIVIDA CARD !!!
ATI ALL THE WAY !