New Computer For Half-Life 2

[Greenwood]

Hi,

I'm thinking about buying a new computer so that I can use it to make a single-player episode for Half-Life 2. I know that there have been some visual enhancements made to Half-Life 2 in Episode 1 and 2, so I'm basically wondering if someone could tell me if a computer I'm thinking of buying will let me run those episodes ok.

I just want to be able to edit/ play them at a reasonable frame-rate, so that I can add in plenty of cool, up to date stuff in the maps.

Right now I'm thinking about buying a PC like the cheaper one of these:


http://novatech.co.uk/novatech/range.html?t=pc&c=home&r=REA

Thanks.

 

[JFry]

The cheap one should be plenty to play at max settings. As far as editing you should be fine too, only thing I might recommend is more ram as hammer tends to eat it up.

 

[Krynn72]

Would you consider building one yourself? You can get a great computer for very little cash if you build it yourself, and its not too hard to do.

 

[Greenwood]

Would you consider building one yourself? You can get a great computer for very little cash if you build it yourself, and its not too hard to do.

Thanks for the advice but I'm not that tech savvy.

 

[giant384]

they sure do put slow ram in those pcs, either pc will do fine for hl2 and its episodes. hammer will perform flawlessly.

 

[kupocake]

Honestly, I can barely notice the difference in the Episodes having upgraded from a five year old PC with a Radeon 9800 Pro at its core to a Radeon HD 4850-based PC last summer (HDR lighting is more subtle than I thought it would be, it's smoother in general).

Any decent PC built in the last four years will devour the games. Same for any low-end PC in the here and now. The only issue is whether it'll all still look great in Episode Three...

 

[Acepilotf14]

Nowadays, low-end pcs can run Crysis.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

from the Pegasus galaxy perhaps.

 

[Greenwood]

I've been advised to get one of these barebones things:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-E522K

If I stuck a Geforce 9600GT in it, would the PC be fast enough to make the card give any significant performance increase over a cheaper card?

Thanks.

 

[giant384]

yes it will be very fast, much better pc then the first choice. though i wouldn't trust that low of a psu with a 9600gt

 

[Greenwood]

Thanks man. What about a 512MB ATI HD 4670? Someone suggested one of those and said it would give similar performance but be more reliable due to lower power consumption. Does that make sense?

Actually I've been told I should probably get a better power supply/ fan to go with the barebones unit. I think the people who sell the barebones will be willing to stick the PSU/ fan in for me when I get it. Any advice on what fan/ PSU to go for? Cheers.