Official requirements from the man himself...

[brink's]

From what valve has told us no Nvidia card below the 6800 will run HL2 at decent frame rates.

If your poor you might want to consider picking up a 9600xt.

 

[dangerousdarrin]

6800?!?! Isn't that one of the best Nvidia cards?

 

[brink's]

It is the best.

 

[SubKamran]

6800?!?! Isn't that one of the best Nvidia cards?

Yes, because it took that long for them to make a decent card

Just get a 9600XT, they are only $130 and will run it perfectly. newegg.com No sense spending $400.

 

[SLH]

From what valve has told us no Nvidia card below the 6800 will run HL2 at decent frame rates.

....decent frame rates with max details.

 

[dangerousdarrin]

A lot of people need max details, but I don't. It'd be nice, but I can play it without max...

 

[SLH]

Ok.
I was just pointing out that brink's post could be a little mis-leading.

 

[brink's]

I saw some old benchmarks with max details turned off and the 5900 barely got 30fps though. But I prolly just read it wrong.

 

[ACLeroK212]

I saw some old benchmarks with max details turned off and the 5900 barely got 30fps though.

i'm sure that's with old drivers though

you can't really put any credit into old benchmarks when since then nvidia has updated their drivers

 

[Warbie]

^ very true dangerousdarrin.

If the gfx settings in a game can make the difference between enjoying it and not, then it isn't a very good game.

If HL2 is as good as we hope, it'll be just as fun in medium, or even low, details (just as HL is still fun to play now. Great gfx only impress for a few months, it won't be long before HL2 looks crap in comparison to other games - it'll still be great tho )

 

[Impulse147]

you guys should've know there was no way that HL2 could've run on a 700 MHz processor with 256mb of ram. besides who has a pc like that anymore, most would've crapped out on ya by now.

 

[Tinneth]

When it says 2.4Ghz Processor, does that mean a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ would work great on it, or because that the actual speed runs at about 2.2ghz, it wouldnt work as good?. Which one does it mean?

 

[SubKamran]

When it says 2.4Ghz Processor, does that mean a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ would work great on it, or because that the actual speed runs at about 2.2ghz, it wouldnt work as good?. Which one does it mean?

Probably 2400+ and up.

 

[Paintballer]

About the comments on buying a 9600Pro/XT over an NVidia 5900ish card... the 5900 series will blow the 9600 series out of the water. I am positive that I will be running HL2 at full settings at 1024x768 at the VERY minimum of ~45FPS at all times. I have a 5900 128mb, those old benchmarks were true, but OLD.

Lets just say I am expecting to play at 1024x768 with 4xAA/4xAF, full detail, at 45+fps. Just call it a hunch The 9600 series will not be as good as the 5900 series...

 

[ShadowFox]

Probably 2400+ and up.

You are correct sir.

Funny thing is, Intel is moving to even more confusing model numbers, so soon everybody will be in the dark.

 

[SubKamran]

About the comments on buying a 9600Pro/XT over an NVidia 5900ish card... the 5900 series will blow the 9600 series out of the water. I am positive that I will be running HL2 at full settings at 1024x768 at the VERY minimum of ~45FPS at all times. I have a 5900 128mb, those old benchmarks were true, but OLD.

Lets just say I am expecting to play at 1024x768 with 4xAA/4xAF, full detail, at 45+fps. Just call it a hunch The 9600 series will not be as good as the 5900 series...

9600 = Best bang for your buck. $130 for a card that will run any game so far w/ DX9. And if someone wanted to buy a 5900 for $260, then buy a 9800 Pro for $230, a card that is guaranteed to run it at max settings if you have a fast processor.

Plus, 9600 users will get true DX9 effects while you will have to live with DX8. (Didn't Valve say that? The older nvidia cards will have to be toned down).

EDIT: I may be wrong; Gabe said people in the office work with 9600+ and 5000 series+.

 

[SubKamran]

Currently the minimum system requirement for HL2 are looking to be: 1Ghz
Proc, 256RAM, Dx7 level GPU.

That's what Gabe said 30-04-2004 in the Valve thread, so it hasn't risen by much.

 

[Gajdycz]

thank u for quoting me in ur sig

 

[Citizen 1150421]

woooo my comp is gonna blow this game out of the water..

3 gigs cpu power
1 gig ram
9600 pro (my god was this the best buy ever )

far cry runs like a dream on high settings.. hl 2 will work like liquid cause they know how to code..

booooya

realease HALF LIFE 2 FIRST youz valve peoplez i have been playing cs for years.. I DON"T CARE FOR THE SOURCE VERSION. until i finish HALF LIFE 2

RELEASE THE BLOODY GAME :thumbs:

 

[Pitbul]

that's a little harsh

not everyone has the luxary of being able to upgrade or buy new everytime their equipment starts to become outdated.





i'm sure that's with old drivers though

you can't really put any credit into old benchmarks when since then nvidia has updated their drivers

First Part Of Your Post: a 700MHz CPU started to become outdated 3 or 4 years ago, dont give me that bullsh!t answer.

Second Post: new drivers dont magically added 30 FPS, the only way your gonna get the 5x00 series nVidia GPU's to run HL2 good is if you use DX8.

its nice that to look for moronic post all i have to do it look for the multi-colored text in your sig.

 

[Dsty2001]

First Part Of Your Post: a 700MHz CPU started to become outdated 3 or 4 years ago, dont give me that bullsh!t answer.

Second Post: new drivers dont magically added 30 FPS, the only way your gonna get the 5x00 series nVidia GPU's to run HL2 good is if you use DX8.

its nice that to look for moronic post all i have to do it look for the multi-colored text in your sig.

I'm sorry, but your post is the moronic one. Not everybody can afford to upgrade *gasp* Yes I know you can build your own computer for around $600, but that still doesn't mean everybody is going to be able to upgrade every time their machine is outdated. Yes the 700MHz P3 was outdated 4 years ago, but unfortuneatly (me) like alot of people don't have the money to spare to buy a new computer or a new motherboard or a new proccesor.

 

[Crusader]

It's not just that not everybody can afford to upgrade, it's also that other people have more important things to spend money on in their lives.

I have a PC that exceeds HL2s recommended specs, and even I can see that. Just because we are sad asses who pay good money for top spec PCs doesn't mean that the average PC user doesn't have better things to spend money on.

 

[Someone]

I'm sorry, but your post is the moronic one. Not everybody can afford to upgrade *gasp* Yes I know you can build your own computer for around $600, but that still doesn't mean everybody is going to be able to upgrade every time their machine is outdated. Yes the 700MHz P3 was outdated 4 years ago, but unfortuneatly (me) like alot of people don't have the money to spare to buy a new computer or a new motherboard or a new proccesor.

Pretty much sums up my situation, too.

I just upgraded this year after using a Duron 700 for the last like 4 years. I just didn't have the cash and I'm not really someone who wants to upgrade just for a computer game or two. This year was the year I decided to upgrade and HL2 and Doom3 and all the other games are just gravy and had nothing to do with my decision to upgrade at all. And even then, I couldn't upgrade to top of the line stuff...more the second tier stuff for me (like a Radeon 9500pro...great card..but many cards are better at this point).

 

[ShadowFox]

9500 Pro is an excellent card. I have it running at 9700 Pro spec right now.

Besides, it doesn't take 600 dollars for a new comp. You could get a new motherboard, a mid range AMD and some ram for around 200.

 

[ACLeroK212]

First Part Of Your Post: a 700MHz CPU started to become outdated 3 or 4 years ago, dont give me that bullsh!t answer.

no shit. where in any of my posts did i say that it wasn't outdated? just because it's outdated doesn't mean people still don't use them. according to the steam survey there's still nearly 43,000 people that still use a 700MHz CPU or less (and that's just the people that have already used steam at some point). some people just plain can't afford a new cpu. i don't see how that makes me a "moron" for pointing that out.

Second Post: new drivers dont magically added 30 FPS, the only way your gonna get the 5x00 series nVidia GPU's to run HL2 good is if you use DX8.

where in the hell did i ever say new drivers would add 30 FPS?! all i was pointing out is that you can't base an arguement on benchmarks that are outdated.

either way, let us know how that whole "being an asshole" thing works out for ya. sure seems to be accomplishing a lot here.

 

[Someone]

9500 Pro is an excellent card. I have it running at 9700 Pro spec right now.

Besides, it doesn't take 600 dollars for a new comp. You could get a new motherboard, a mid range AMD and some ram for around 200.

Same here Got to love the OC community and the work they put in to getting the best out of you gear without spending a fortune on a top of the line card. Great card and very over clock friendly.

I spent about $400 for motherboard, cpu, and ram at newegg and got pretty much what I wanted. The 9500pro I bought earlier this year for around $170 or so (obviously wish I had waited a few months since 9800pro can be had for around $200 now...but oh well). But I had some extra money and bought the best I could for the money I could afford to spend. You can certainly get decent stuff for $200-400 though.

I think the thing I get confused with are the people who upgrade an already great system. I mean I can see someone like me going from a Duron 700 to an Athlon xp 3200+ because that's an obvious huge leap. Just seems like such a waste to constantly upgrade...especially just because of a game or two.

In another 4 -5 years I will upgrade again lol

 

[Some_God]

What will RAM be responsible for in HL2... because I only have 256mb and want to knw what would imporve if I get 512.


And what Direct X card is the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200?

 

[Dr. Freeman]

Preferred:
2.4 GHz Processor
512MB RAM
DirectX 9 graphics card
Windows 2000/XP
Mouse
Keyboard

i was wondering about these preferred specs.
according to that.. all i need is a CPU upgrade..

 

[brink's]

What will RAM be responsible for in HL2... because I only have 256mb and want to knw what would imporve if I get 512.


And what Direct X card is the Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200?

its Direct x 8.1

 

[UltimaGecko]

It seems I'll be able to run it with my

All-knowing, phenomenally cosmic powered Radeon 9200 (at least it's 128mbs).

And: I'll have all of you know that I've got a computer upstairs that's bugged as hell, works very slowly and has an 8mb graphics card - but runs on a 500mhz Pentium 3 with Windows98...


...It was top of the line when we got it...6 years ago.

[There's also a 300mhz P2 sitting around here somewhere...in my closet; scrapped for its 20GB HDD...

Then there's a computer from 1993 with Windows 3.1, which has about 256kb of RAM and a 100mbs of hard drive space. Yea...it needed a bootdisk for SimCity 2000 (but I could install SimAnt, a SimCity, Colonization and stuff on it). Plus, it had a CD-ROM drive...can you imagine? A CD-ROM drive? You only find...like 2 of those at 48x in every computer now...

(woot, floppy disk drives; who has Mario Bros. on floppy?)


Completely unrelated table shown below:
Generally High specifications for time periods:
Component--------------1993---------1998-------2004

Processor----------------uh, yea------500mhz----3400mhz
RAM----------------------~512kb------128mb-----2.048gb
HDD----------------------100mb-------20gb-------400gb
Main Software device---floppy/zip---CD-ROM----CD-ROM switching to DVD-ROM
[edit]
Graphics------------------DOS based--8mb-------256mb

...funny how they all had the same price, huh?
(actually the 1998 computer cost about $2000 and has a kickass sound system - which still works (subwoofer included ), the 2004 one costs a bit more...all of them are pretty expensive for their time, at least )

 

[ShadowFox]

I think the thing I get confused with are the people who upgrade an already great system. I mean I can see someone like me going from a Duron 700 to an Athlon xp 3200+ because that's an obvious huge leap. Just seems like such a waste to constantly upgrade...especially just because of a game or two.

In another 4 -5 years I will upgrade again lol

No kidding. A while back I upgraded from a Athlon 1.3 to a Athlon XP 2500 and from a GF3 to my 9500 Pro. At the same time my friend went from a 9700 Pro to a 9800 Pro. Both were like 400 dollars and yet still now UT2k4 doesn't look much different on our computers.

 

[Big Fat Duck]

these aren't benchmarks, these are requirements

 

[Silent_night]

I cant believe u need a keyboard! this is bullsh|T!

 

[Sandler]

The only thing i need now is more ram since i only have 256mb.. but the rest of my machine is great

 

[63]

these aren't benchmarks, these are requirements

Fantastic observation

I think I'm going to add another 512 (so 1gig total)

 

[Striker]

damn it i don't have a mouse!!!1!one you know how expensive a mouse is?!?1?one might aswell sell my 2.8 ghz computer just to get a mouse wich i realy need to play hl2 LOL

 

[Jedi1641]

P4 2.4ghz
1gb ram
80gb hd
radeon 9700 pro 128mb-->what is the best overclocking resource site?
2.1 speakers
19" monitor

P.S. I'm not upgrading anything either

P.P.S. Far Cry is amazing. ^^^^I can run it at 1024*768 with all settings maxed and no AA/AF and still get FPS above 30 on all levels except volcano and some of the fog intensive/nite lvls

 

[Paintballer]

9600 = Best bang for your buck. $130 for a card that will run any game so far w/ DX9. And if someone wanted to buy a 5900 for $260, then buy a 9800 Pro for $230, a card that is guaranteed to run it at max settings if you have a fast processor.

Plus, 9600 users will get true DX9 effects while you will have to live with DX8. (Didn't Valve say that? The older nvidia cards will have to be toned down).

EDIT: I may be wrong; Gabe said people in the office work with 9600+ and 5000 series+.

BTW: You can get a 5900 for UNDER 200 bucks... got mine for $195 at XMas.

 

[x84D80Yx]

these aren't benchmarks, these are requirements

truer words were never spoken.

 

[Styloid]

2 things I wonder about:
What is performance like on those minimun requirements? Is it their targeted 60fps (which I think is really high) or is it <30 which would be barely playable.
Another thing is: could it be that they've added more physical objects to play with and that has upped the requirements and could the amount of physical objects be reduced for better performance if needed?