What gets lost with poorer hardware?

FictiousWill

FictiousWill

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I don't want to know if the game will run or not on my geforce4 ti4400, I know that it will to some extent. What I am interested in though, is what gets cut first in the graphics department? i.e. does anyone know what effects won't appear as you move seadily down in hardware capability?

I would imagine that effects such as water would go first, followed by geometric detail distance, etc - but does anyone know for sure or have a good idea?
 
Originally posted by FictiousWill
I don't want to know if the game will run or not on my geforce4 ti4400, I know that it will to some extent. What I am interested in though, is what gets cut first in the graphics department? i.e. does anyone know what effects won't appear as you move seadily down in hardware capability?

I would imagine that effects such as water would go first, followed by geometric detail distance, etc - but does anyone know for sure or have a good idea?
Click to expand...

With your GeForce 4 being a DirectX 8 card, you'll get..

- Shadows with hard edges as opposed to soft ones you'd get with a DX9 card
- Bump-mapping
- Textures appearing in their proper resolution (512x512). You'd get 256x256 with DX6 & 7 cards.
- Detailed props
- Fresnal reflections (where water will appear reflective at one angle and transparent at another)

Not all the goodies, but most of them.
 
Honestly I think Geforce 4 cards will run Half-Life 2 pretty close to how DX9 cards will run it. It depends on just how much DX9 Valve has actually added to the Source engine after the E3 build (which really didn't have much), but Gary and Gabe e-mailed me saying that there will be a lot more DX9 than the E3 build... so actually, perhaps I am wrong.

Bottom line is it depends on exactly how much DX9 will be in the final game.... we'll wait and see.

But also, DX9 or not, the DX9 cards will run the game with better performance because they are not only capable of nicer graphical features, but they area also of course faster.
 
I know my lovely ATI Radeon 9500 will play it :p, which i'm gettin soon
 
Originally posted by Lifthz
Honestly I think Geforce 4 cards will run Half-Life 2 pretty close to how DX9 cards will run it..
Click to expand...

Except for a Geforce 4 MX card.

I think they will run HL2 like crap.

They cant even run BF1942 good.
 
Originally posted by simmo2k3
I know my lovely ATI Radeon 9500 will play it :p, which i'm gettin soon
Click to expand...

9500np or 9500pro?

The pros have been discontinued.

The non pro is a damn good card if you get lucky.

I have one and its a softmodded to a 9700np and OCed to 9700pro speeds.
 
I've got a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X and 128MB RAM. Is that the best Geforce 4 gfx card and is it DX8 or 9?
 
I think the Ti4600 is a bit better than the 4200, and they are both dx8 cards
 
I'm fairly sure that all of the Geforce 4 cards are directX 8 and only Geforce FX and latest ATI cards are directX 9.

Except for a Geforce 4 MX card.
Click to expand...

This is because the Geforce 4 MX cards are the cheap equivelent of the Geforce 4 and do not have the same power are the more expensive Geforce 4 cards i'm not sure but i think they still have many of the same features and are both still directX 8. Luckily for anyone with these cards HL2 should be able to scale itself so that it will run at a decent framerate but with few features.
 
The 9500pro is a directx9 card, and will probably run HL2 very well if you have the processor to support it.
 
AMD Athlon 2700XP+
512MB CRUCIAL 2700
120GB SATA150
ATI Radeon 9500Pro

And that Nforce mobo that i can ever mind the name of :D

And my crown and glory "Black Cheifteck casey" dam its sexy with its blue glow ;)

EDIT:: Just adding my thanks to you guys that replied so prompty and without a flame, cheers dudes
 
Originally posted by AH_Viper
AMD Athlon 2700XP+
512MB CRUCIAL 2700
120GB SATA150
ATI Radeon 9500Pro

And that Nforce mobo that i can ever mind the name of :D

And my crown and glory "Black Cheifteck casey" dam its sexy with its blue glow ;)

EDIT:: Just adding my thanks to you guys that replied so prompty and without a flame, cheers dudes
Click to expand...

me:

Athlon barton 3000+
2 512mb corsair xms PC3200
Asus a7n8x Deluxe
9500np softmod 9700np @9700pro speeds
120gb hdd for the hell of it.

I hope I can run this game with low settings at 640*480. IM HOPING...

Oh, and I also have a black Cheiftec case.....with 2 blue cathodes...and blue lcd fan monitor.....beautiful....
 
WAY, thats my mobo as well, i recognise it when i see it.

Also, because you dont mention your case, and because you beat me on every other spec, im going to take off my gloves and comment on your lack of manhood my good sir and BET a zillion of your earth pounds that my case glows blue'er (if thats a word) than yours :D

hehe

Hum.. an after thought... you do seem to like overclocking stuff..... i sure are hell hope you aint one of those avid modders that does infact have a sexier case than I :s

EDIT:: Also i regret buying the 9500Pro because you cant mod it as much as the NP... meh, you cant win them all ;)

EDIT-2:: GAWD DAMIT!!! i never read the bottom of your post :D
hehe ok, sorry for being slow. Good show to you sir, you obviously have taste.
 
Gforce 4 TI4xxx are DX 8, Ive heard in a magazine that GF4 MX doesnt even have that so I guess its DX 7 based but not sure. What I know though is that its not very much better than GF2 mx 420 lol. The Gforce FX series all have DX9 support but none of them impress with their performance (maybe a bit FX5900 but that depends how u look at it)

ATI 9500 - 9800 are DX9.

I myself have a ti4600 so I should be ok with HL2 Im looking to sell it though so I can get a 9800pro or newer but Im gonna wait with that till sept. It depends on the prices I can get/have to give. :)
 
Gforce 4 TI4xxx are DX 8, Ive heard in a magazine that GF4 MX doesnt even have that so I guess its DX 7 based but not sure. What I know though is that its not very much better than GF2 mx 420 lol. The Gforce FX series all have DX9 support but none of them impress with their performance (maybe a bit FX5900 but that depends how u look at it)
Click to expand...
The G4MX is a G2 generation chip, slightly tuned... It is definetly not DX8, it doesnt even HAVE shader support.

And actually, only 5900 is fully DX9 compliant, the rest arent, at least not in theory :)

At any rate, if there is anyone with an FX wanting to try a few DX9 pixel shaders, run this: http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/
I only know of one FX tested, the 5900 Ultra got between 5-10 fps while my 9700 Pro get 30 fps with 4xFSAA/16xAF :D
 
The Geforce4 MX's are just bad ripoff's of the Geforce2's.. They really can't do anything good :).

Geforce FX5900 - Geforce4 TI4600 - Geforce3 Ti500 - Geforce4 MX - Geforce2/TNT2 - Geforce/TNT

High - low in the Nvidia series 'course..
 
what do you guys think of ati and nvidias third party cards these days

there still the same thing with slight tweaks

like a non radeon ati9800
 
for your card G4 will run only shadows, some simple light effect. But for the maximum setting 100% effects you need ATI 9800 or FX5900, but FX having problems now and they won't get these bugs fixed becuase its DX9 in the hardware.
 
yeah, but you guys make it sound like that HL2 will look bad on his vidcard.. Trust me, i have a Geforce3 Ti200 and it will look amazing on this card, not to talk about your Geforce4!! Think back to the times when a TNT2 was a complete new technology.. You can't imagine what a hype there was when the geforce3 technology was published, and now you have an even better card!

Trust me, HL2 will look amazing on your card, no doubt.
 
Yes true say. But did u see the water effects in the demo, or the number of frrames per sec, and the effects of weather or damynamic shadows, all this are full in ATI9800 or maybe FX5900.
 
Thank you all very much, I am releived that my card will be able to play hl2 well, and I found the chart of effects very interesting. It gives and idea not only of processing power required for effects but also their relative age/newness. Thanks again.

Will
 
Originally posted by AH_Viper
WAY, thats my mobo as well, i recognise it when i see it.

Also, because you dont mention your case, and because you beat me on every other spec, im going to take off my gloves and comment on your lack of manhood my good sir and BET a zillion of your earth pounds that my case glows blue'er (if thats a word) than yours :D

hehe

Hum.. an after thought... you do seem to like overclocking stuff..... i sure are hell hope you aint one of those avid modders that does infact have a sexier case than I :s

EDIT:: Also i regret buying the 9500Pro because you cant mod it as much as the NP... meh, you cant win them all ;)

EDIT-2:: GAWD DAMIT!!! i never read the bottom of your post :D
hehe ok, sorry for being slow. Good show to you sir, you obviously have taste.
Click to expand...

eh, its all good. You still got a killer system.
 
Originally posted by DeXtRoMeThOrFaN
Except for a Geforce 4 MX card.

I think they will run HL2 like crap.

They cant even run BF1942 good.
Click to expand...



my poor card :-( **** it i gots to get a 9800 pro
 
A quick and dirty guide:

DX6 Cards (very poor at HL2)
Riva TNT
VooDoo 5

DX7 Cards (poor to passable at HL2)
GeForce 1,2, 4MX
Early Radeons

DX 8 Cards (OK at HL2, most gfx fireworks kick in)
GeForce 3 Ti, 4 Ti
Radeons 8000 series
SiS Xabre
Matrox Parelia

DX 9 Cards (good to excellent at HL2, all gfx fireworks)
GeForce FX line
Radeon 9000 series
 
If my brain is correct, the Radeon 900 and 9200 are not DX 9 compliant
 
hmm, im worried

I have a AMD 1800+

about 2300MB RAM

and Im goin get a ATi 9800 128MB

is my processor ok?

I heard the e3 demo was runnin on a 2ghz machine with a GeForce4

anyways, will it run on my machine bells and shit?
 
Originally posted by Ender01
anyways, will it run on my machine...?
Click to expand...
The engine is scalable so you should get acceptable to good performance from the minimum specs all the way up to a top of the line system. Valve's target framerate is 60FPS, and the Source engine will enable and disable graphics effects on the fly to maintain an optimal framerate (you can disable this feature, if you so desire).

Half-Life 2 will also ship with a small benchmark utility that will test your system and automatically set-up Half-Life 2 for optimal performance. So my guess is, you'll get good performance though varying degrees of visual quality on a wide range of systems.
 
well yah, i know that, but i mean will the 9800 make up for the fairly average processor? But then again, no one really knows....
 
We'll not know until we try it with the game, but the gfx card can have an amazing impact on gameplay. I currently have a 500mhz processor (i've just bought a new motherboard/ram/athlon xp3000 online) but even with the slow processor my computer just dumps all gfx on my geforce4 and I can run gta3 lag free. From what i've read and from all the helpful replies here I think:

A superb cpu + superb gfx card = best
A superb cpu + okay gfx card = good
An okay cpu + superb gfx card = good
An okay cpu + okay gfx card = not so good

ie they make up for eachother a bit.

(I could be entirely wrong! I know software, but not much about hardware. Hence this thread!)
 
Im confused though.............. I have a GForce 4 Ti 4200.......and i understand that its a DX8 card.....but I have DX9 on it now.(got it from Star Wars Galaxies) does that mean that it'll try doing some DX9 things but that it isnt compleatly compatable???
 
i sure hope by the time HL2 come out 1800+ processor and 9800 128mb card is still "up to standards"

Im sure getting sick of up grading every 6 months...
<edit> I know its "scalable", but i want to see it in its full glory</edit>
 
Originally posted by Fender357
Im confused though.............. I have a GForce 4 Ti 4200.......and i understand that its a DX8 card.....but I have DX9 on it now.(got it from Star Wars Galaxies) does that mean that it'll try doing some DX9 things but that it isnt compleatly compatable???
Click to expand...

Cards are not DX9 compatible, they are DX9 compliant, there's a difference.

A card with DX9 compliance can render certain effects which are embedded into the hardware. Developers unlock these effects by talking to the hardware using the API. DX is an API which Microsoft uses to unify all hardware under it, so it's easy to write software for their platform. Before DX or any other API for that matter you had to write a separate layer code for every peice of hardware and combination you'd want. Thanks to DX you can access sound, video, input and output devices, all without worrying about getting too deep.

When you downloaded DirectX9, what you're doing is downloading a sort of emulator (really a system component like any other in your OS) to allow a DX9 game to be seemlessly compatible with your video card. DX9 is backwards compatible with all other DX revisions, so you can play anything designed for any previous API revision.
 
Originally posted by Ender01
i sure hope by the time HL2 come out 1800+ processor and 9800 128mb card is still "up to standards"

Im sure getting sick of up grading every 6 months...
<edit> I know its "scalable", but i want to see it in its full glory</edit>
Click to expand...

Unless you're planning to mod(compiling, rendering, that kind of stuff), your CPU is fine. You need a fast CPU to be able to see the physics in all it's glory, and as I see it you're ok. You may want to upgrade to a higher Thoroughbred or even a Barton down the road... or get a 64-bit CPU once they're within your budget, but for the initial life of HL2 you're ok.

I'd be more worried about mods, the Source is capable of so much, yet HL2 only uses a fraction of that power. Mods will appear with even higher system requirements to see them in their full glory down the road. (Like Day of Defeat looks sooooo much better than Half-Life, but runs terribly on my PC that could run CS and HL at @30fps at 800x600.)
 
yes thank you, im very reassured, your answere makes alot of sense to me, thank you!
 
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