How does it run on your rig?

[DEATHMASTER]

I think the engine got a bit worse though, I was expecting flawless at full everything at 1440x900 but get it at 1280x800. I'd turn of more than desired to run it at 1680x1050 (basically full everything of HL2 but those settings are different).

 

[Tyguy]

I think the engine got a bit worse though, I was expecting flawless at full everything at 1440x900 but get it at 1280x800.

Its not the completely same engine. There are a number of additions that would affect your performance. :bounce:

 

[DEATHMASTER]

I know, hopefully there's more updates that tweak it up

 

[Sudano]

Right now, I can play HL2 and DM all maxed on 1280x1024 with perfect fps, 75 with the vsinc option on. I dont have E2 yet, but will I be able to play it well too, or are the graphics increased a lot more. The sounds of a Extra High Option are making me excited lol.


I have amd 4400+, 2gb Ram, 300gb HD, and a radeon x1800 xl

 

[Tyguy]

Right now, I can play HL2 and DM all maxed on 1280x1024 with perfect fps, 75 with the vsinc option on. I dont have E2 yet, but will I be able to play it well too, or are the graphics increased a lot more. The sounds of a Extra High Option are making me excited lol.


I have amd 4400+, 2gb Ram, 300gb HD, and a radeon x1800 xl

You're fine, although Id upgrade sometime soon

 

[Dynasty]

Everything on max at 1024 res (havent tried anything higher yet though)

Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33ghz
2 x 8600GT 512mb SLI
2gb DDR2

60 fps + 100% of the time

 

[AciD]

8x6
Run pretty well
AMD 64 3000+ @2000ghz
Radeon 9550[actually it is a 9600]128 MB
512 Ram

Setting med/med Msaax2 Trineal and no hdr

HM about 30 fps

 

[dogboy73]

It's running like a dog on my current system (see signature). HL2 & EP1 ran fine. Even Lost Coast wasn't to bad (though not with full HDR. only bloom). But EP2, TF2 & even Portal are running like dogs. I've been playing them lower res in windows, rather than full screen, with the settings turned quite low to get a good frame rate & things still go mental in EP2 when I turn that flash light on ..........







........ so yesterday I ordered this lot to help sort the problem out

 

[Crazy_killer]

My game loses a lot of FPS when turning on the flashlight.

 

[Stigmata]

My game loses a lot of FPS when turning on the flashlight.

Same here. It's because of the dynamic shadowing that it does now, it's no longer just a simple pixel shader.

My FPS drops like a rock whenever I look across a level filled with trees and bushes and so on. I also noticed that a lot of the foliage doesn't get anti-aliased, specifically the trees. It's a bit of an eyesore when everything is nice and anti-aliased, and then the trees are all jaggy.

 

[Xendance]

Mine lags at cutscenes, but it works fine other than that.

 

[Barney Fife]

Great. Everything maxed out.
1680x1050 (16:10) wide-screen ratio.
Antialiasing = 16xQ CSAA.
Anisotropic Filtering = 16x.
Vertical Syn = off.
High Dynamic lightning = full.
Motion Blur = on.

Smooth all the way through, not a single hiccup.

Then again; Valve does come up with great engines.

 

[Slime]

1680x1050 (16:10) wide-screen ratio.
Antialiasing = 16xQ CSAA.
Anisotropic Filtering = 16x.
Vertical Syn = off.
High Dynamic lightning = full.
Motion Blur = on.

I use all the same settings. Running perfect with hardware such as 8800 GTS 320MB, Dual-core 2.4 MHz processor (Intel) and 2 GB of RAM. Damn I love Source, especially with Episode 2's enhancements it has to be my favourite engine of this century so far. Great performance with great visuals, Valve definately has something right there. I just built this new rig, and man is it great to play new games with full settings again with perfect performance (the new widescreen LCD helps too :upstare: )

 

[Ennui]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+, 2GB DDR2 PC6400 RAM, 7,200 WD HDD and a slightly overclocked 256mb Geforce 7900GS.

Runs on max settings at 1280x1024 flawlessly with smooth framerate.

 

[Ravioli]

specs in sig. Everything maxed out, 1280x1024. 100+fps

 

[FRESCO_SUPREME]

Hopefully this isn't off-topic even though it isn't answering the question, instead posting one in reply:

My computer's an Athlon64 3200+, 1GB RAM and a GeForce 7600GS.

Does anyone have a rig similar to mine on which the Orange Box is working well? Trying to decide whether:
(a) it'll work as is (I don't mind lowering the resolution to 800x600)
(b) will require a new graphics card
(c) will require a new CPU.

Is a 3200+ enough? Is there a big difference between 1GB RAM and 2GB?

I have the same apart from the processor, which is a dual core 4200+ . The graphics card which was my main worry can handle it fine with everything on high apart from textures which are on medium and a resolution of 1024 x 768. I really doubt you'll have to upgrade, I'm not sure how CPU intensive source games are but I'm prepared to take a punt and say the graphics card is more important, and a 7600GS can handle it pretty damn well.

 

[Hamsocks]

Runs great on mine. Beautiful frame rate. On top of all the other obvious reasons to love Half-life, the series has always run slicker than oil on my computers (even though Steam doesn't always...). It seems like in the modern age of gaming, developers use massive amounts of textures and other effects that bog down computers and cause can-of-worms-scale compatibility issues. Getting Bioshock and Lost Planet to play on my PC was absolute hell. I'm dreading installing Crysis just as much as I'm anticipating playing it. I love the fact that Valve makes it's games beautiful and very playable with the minimum amount of data while other game makers just throw shit loads of textures and things at you. The developer commentary for Episode 2 exemplifies this perfectly at the very beginning while you're watching the portal over the ruined citadel. They tried using multiple textures and techniques, but realized they could achieve what the wanted with only one level and some shaders. I wish more developers worked that way.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

AMD 3500+
1 gb RAM
ATI Radeon x800 256 mb

Running high texture, high models, medium shadows, 2xAA and 1152x768.

Runs all but flawlessely, barely noticed any FPS-drops at all.

 

[SPARTACVS]

Custom ATI unified shader edition X19xx
3 Core PowerPC 3.2ghz
512mb unified memory
10mb eDRAM

BUTTERY smooth framerate plus motion blur, 1280x720, all settings on high including self-shadowing, HDR, and reflect all water, 2xAA. No horizontal tearing, 45fps+motion blur for zero chop. Not even a single hiccup even during cinematic physics sequences or places where it might hitch no matter what the power of your rig because of rigorous specialization to hardware by VALVe. It's beautiful.

 

[dogboy73]

LOL. It cracks me up - People are saying things are sweet on their rigs with settings maxed out. Then you look at there rigs spec & it's like 3GHZ CPU, 8800GT, 2GB 800MHZ RAM etc ... What do you expect with those rigs? You could run a small country with those rigs!!

 

[Drkpwn3r]

AMD Sempron 3400+ (2.0GHz, Socket AM2)
1GB PC6400
ATi All-in-Wonder x1800XL (256MB, GDDR3)

All of the Orange Box games run VERY smooth at highest (minus the fact I had texture detail at high instead of very high due to memory) @ 1024x768 (85Hz) for me.

 

[dogboy73]

AMD Sempron 3400+ (2.0GHz, Socket AM2)
1GB PC6400
ATi All-in-Wonder x1800XL (256MB, GDDR3)

All of the Orange Box games run VERY smooth at highest (minus the fact I had texture detail at high instead of very high due to memory) @ 1024x768 (85Hz) for me.

Cool. My new set-up should eat the Orange box games for breakfast in that case

 

[Saturos]

2.4 GHz AMD64 3800+, 2 gigs of RAM( Corsair,two sticks low-latency and at 800MHz), Audigy 4 SoundBlaster, dual SLI GeForce7600 gfx cards (256MB), K9N Platinum Series motherboard nforce5, 160GB WD HD 7200rpms, Pioneer DVD+RW x16 x48.

I think I can run it, but I'm currently trying to troubleshoot some artifacting errors in HL2 before I move on to OB.I have no trouble with said artifacting in Episode One, oddly. BTW: The first two games I can run almost flawlessly at around 50-60fps at maximum settings. Except for AA which is at 2xQ.(For those who don't know, and have an NVIDIA card, Forceware's Quincunx makes rope objects like powerlines look more realistic than the in-game AA controls) Resolution is at 1280x1024.(See my post under "Help and Support" forum)

 

[Freeman85]

XP Home SP2 - MSI P35 Platinum - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.44Ghz - XFX Geforce 8800GTS XXX 320MB - 2x1GB Crucial DDR2 PC2-6400 800Mhz - Maxtor 250GB SATA HDD - OCZ StealthXtreme 600w PSU

It chews through EP2 at 1280x1024 on Very High, 16x Q CSAA, 16x AF, full HDR with bloom, motion blur, no vertical sync, but for some reason on the same settings EP1 has moments of really low fps, down to 15 sometimes, in the darker areas of the Citadel and in that flooded room you fall into in the hospital. Can't understand why it powers through the whole of EP2 but some areas of EP1 get a bit slow....

 

[dogboy73]

Built my new rig last Thursday (see signature). EP2 (as well as TF2 & Portal) runs like a dream now. The recommended settings has everything pretty much on full apart from textures, which are recommended as 'high' rather than 'very high'. But according to the new 'Half Life 2 & Source engine' Tweak guide the difference between 'high' & 'very high' is difficult to notice anyway! It's a very good guide for anyone having trouble or wanting to tweak settings some more;


http://www.tweakguides.com/HL2_1.html

 

[comradpoplin1]

core 2 e2140 @2ghz
2gb ddr2 800 @830mhz
gigabyte ga-g33m-s2
and a 8800gts 320mb
vista 32bit

1280x1024 everything max'd with 16xmsqa and runs smooth as a freshly talk'd bototm. between 60 and 80fps solid.

 

[heer0]

Omg you're 'pathetic' with your powerful multicore machines, lol (just joking)

I just have a single core CPU with a 1 GB of RAM and a 7300GT GPU.
The whole sys is MANUALY overclocked to a STABLE level, cpu, ram, gpu, everything (even the cooling). I have a stable increase in performance of about ~ 31.56%. I like to squeeze out as much as i can from the available hardware.
7300GT has a full DX9 support, bumpmapping, HDR, dynamic lighting, you name it, not much of a power but helps me enjoy all the qualities of the game.

 

[dogboy73]

1280x1024 everything max'd with 16xmsqa and runs smooth as a freshly talk'd bototm. between 60 and 80fps solid.

I've not checked my frame rate. What's the name of that monitoring tool you can run from the console?

I'm expecting my FPS to be about the same as yours, comradpoplin1. On my previous rig I was getting about 55FPS average in the CSS stress test. My new rig gave 145FPS in the same test. Well pleased with that ..... even though the CSS stress test is not exactly the best benchmark these days. But a decent enough gauge of how much of an improvement I'm getting over my old rig.

 

[comradpoplin1]

hit the console and type net_graph 3 loads of little tid bits of infow for ya then

one thing i have noticed about the source engine is it scales extreamly wellwith hdr being the major factor between hardware, i used to enjoy half life 2 with decent fps(about 35 i think) and that was on a ati 9600pro athlon barton 2600+ and a gig of ddr400. i think if id have had a 9800pro i could have enjoyed hdr aswell when it was released but it still looked great and played fine. a testimant to how well the engine scales realy and its still going strong today soon to be taking full advantage of dual core technology scaling up tremendously.

 

[Chug a Bug]

I'm using a GeForce 7900 GTX (no DX10 here, not necessary yet IMO) with an E6600 Core2Duo 2 Gig's of Ram (PC6400 DDR2) and Win XP on a rig I built a year ago. Everythings working great here @ all settings maxed out 1600x1200 the maximum my monitor will allow.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

3.2 P4
1Gb Ram
Ati X740xl (128mb)
Getting 1-2 Fps don't know why but all of a sudden that's happen it's
quite fun playing in super slow motion. Oh yeah im also running on the lowest settings

You can also use cl_showfps 1 command that just tells you your frame rates at does'nt get in the way.

 

[Irksome]

My specs are bellow: And the game ran really well; I wasn't able to play it on high becuase of my video card though, which sucks.

 

[heer0]

It's all about system performance, which is not allways equall to the system power.

 

[comradpoplin1]

It's all about system performance, which is not allways equall to the system power.

seconded

 

[Mr Wendal]

I run my pc through my 1360x768 TV and to ensure i always stay above 20FPS i have to set everything to the lowest possible setting's.

AMD 3000+ (single core)
1 gig RAM
2x Nvidia 6600GT's SLI'd

 

[Przemek]

Pentium Dual Core E2180 2.0GHz
1GB RAM
Radeon X1950Pro 512MB

All settings high, with Textures set to Very High (didn't notice any improvements over high, though), antialiasing at 4x and aniso x16. Framerates never drop below 50, but I disable the fps meter.

edit - oh, and the resolution is 1024x768, my current 17" CRT monitor doesn't allow to go higher, unless I want to burn my eyes with 60Hz refresh rate

 

[heer0]

Yeah, 60 Hz is cool *sarcastic*, i know what you mean.
I bought my 19" Flatron a week after ep1 came out and after another playthrough of the episode, i can say the color difference is awesome (my CRT was burned very bad though). The experience is very different, and HDR looks much better, much much better.
I recommend for the people planning to upgrade their boxes, not to underestimate the need of a good monitor.

 

[soulslicer]

ran awesomely at 1024 by 768 at very high textures, all the rest high, with 4 aa 4 af..

(50 fps +)

 

[Kevin]

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 Ghz

Runs smoothly with everything maxed.

 

[Gordon07]

Vista Home
1.8 ghz intel core 2 duo
2 GB Ram
Nvidia Geforce 7300 LE

Runs excellent on high settings.