Official HardOCP HL2 benchmarks

[tranCendenZ]

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njky

"This article will not cover te quality of the gameplay experience, as is our usual fare. Instead, today’s preliminary tests are to find out who has the fastest video cards for playing Half Life 2 in apples to apples benchmarks. This will dispel many of the myths being rumored about Half Life 2 performance as we cut to the chase and see who has the fastest Half Life 2 AGP video card."

HardOCP used custom timedemos to simulate normal gameplay.

Benchies:
6800U and x800xtpe trade blows depending on map (6800U does better on canals, x800xtpe does better on coast)
6800GT beats x800pro across the board

Conclusion:
"As for calling one video card a “winner” over the other, it just does not seem feasible and would likely be irresponsible to do so. ATI’s X800 series has not thrashed NVIDIA’s 6800 series silicon as many expected. Half Life 2 simply plays great on video cards from both NVIDIA and ATI. So let’s make this clear. The ATI Radeon X800 series of video cards will deliver a stellar Half Life 2 gaming experience. Also… The NVIDIA GeForce 6800 and 6600 series of video cards will deliver a stellar Half Life 2 gaming experience. There are simply no losers to be found if you have recently upgraded your video card. You have likely all made good gaming investments."

 

[Maxi]

Wow, glad they got the NVIDIA issues fixed then!

First game to have both companies cards working equally Quite an achievement imo.

 

[Asuka]

Cool stuff.

 

[tranCendenZ]

Cool stuff.

Yeh I kinda suspected this would be the case when Valve released that VST benchmark instead of a real gameplay timedemo.

 

[webBear1000]

The ATI Radeon X800 series of video cards will deliver a stellar Half Life 2 gaming experience

I'll vouch for that

 

[tranCendenZ]

I'll vouch for that

Can't wait to see the game on my 6800GT but friggin walmart hasn't shipped my CE yet as far as I can tell (tho i did get it for $60)

 

[PvtRyan]

Wonder why the water is set to 'reflect world' instead of 'all'.
It makes a HUGE difference, since it's basically rendering the scene twice. And it's a lot more PS2.0 intensive, which was the major weakpoint of the Nvidia cards (to a far greater degree with the FX series, not as much with the 6xxx series).

 

[Silic0nJ3sus]

I'd like to note that they are using overclocked Nvidia cards and 3rd party drivers :thumbs:

Edit: One more thing...They're using AGP cards, no PCI Express which makes the entire article moot as far as I'm concerned...the X800 series was designed for PCI Express.

 

[tranCendenZ]

I'd like to note that they are using overclocked Nvidia cards

The 6800U "OC" is running at stock speeds for most Nvidia 6800U cardmakers - 425mhz GPU speed. eVGA, PNY, etc all run at this speed. BFG just has better marketing branding than the other companies.

and 3rd party drivers

No, he used the latest ATI 4.12 beta drivers and latest Nvidia 67.02 beta drivers, both released on each manufacturer's websites.

(nvidias for instance are on their "nZone" website and nvidia.com FTP:
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_winxp_2k_67.02.html)

Edit: One more thing...They're using AGP cards, no PCI Express which makes the entire article moot as far as I'm concerned...the X800 series was designed for PCI Express.

PCI-Express has shown no difference with AGP in every benchmark conducted to date with this generation's cards.