Inquirer article about upgrading for HL2

[CombineHarvester]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19405

Apologies if this should be in a different forum.The article above discusses various systems and whether upgrades would be required. I'd take it with a pinch of salt as it uses the CS:S video stress test to establish it's conclusions.

I've already bought 1 Gb of memory and upgraded from a 128MB M9700 to a 256MB M9800 should I should hopefully be ok.

 

[Admin_Winnuting]

Is the Stress Test downloadable, Or do I need CS:S?

 

[CombineHarvester]

Is the Stress Test downloadable, Or do I need CS:S?

I've only seen it as part of CS:S, I'm afraid.

 

[Przemek]

What? No water refractions in DirectX 8? Maybe I'm seeing things, but water refractions look beautiful on my Radeon 9000!
Also, the comparison screenshot is odd... DX8 looks like low detail settings and the DX7... well, they need to update their graphic drivers

edit - there's also something wrong with the stress test results. I have ~43fps on my AthlonXP 1500+ and Radeon 9000 (1024x768, 4x af, everything 'high' except models 'medium') and they only got 52fps on 1800+ with R9800? Something's terribly wrong with this article.

 

[Kirkburn]

I'd take it with a pinch of salt as it uses the CS:S video stress test to establish it's conclusions.

The stress test has almost nothing to do with CS:S, except that they are bundled together. So that's no reason to doubt its validity. It is, in fact, the Half Life 2 Stress Test.
Also, some results are CPU, etc, limited, so not entirely valid.
Then again, how the hell did you get 43 fps with a R9000!? That's amazing ... I don't get half that with a R9600

 

[Sideswiped]

What? No water refractions in DirectX 8? Maybe I'm seeing things, but water refractions look beautiful on my Radeon 9000!
Also, the comparison screenshot is odd... DX8 looks like low detail settings and the DX7... well, they need to update their graphic drivers

edit - there's also something wrong with the stress test results. I have ~43fps on my AthlonXP 1500+ and Radeon 9000 (1024x768, 4x af, everything 'high' except models 'medium') and they only got 52fps on 1800+ with R9800? Something's terribly wrong with this article.

they have AA set to 4X and models on high. I would imagine the processor is holding back the 9800pro.

 

[silverstealth89]

thanks i appreciate the link i couldnt find a place that was legit and told me what i needed

 

[flupke]

Of course! This article is a bit misleading (from what the pictures show). Whatever card you have, with that CPU (celeron 1.2) you're not going to get great framerates. Even with the 'better' one (amd xp 1800+), it doesn't get much better.