Asus EN8800GTS 320MB
Half Life 2: Episode 1
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;) Half Life 2: Episode 1 |
Thanks to the dedication of hardcore PC gamers and a huge mod-community, the original Half-Life became one of the most successful first person shooters of all time. So, when Valve announced Half-Life 2 was close to completion in mid-2003, gamers the world over sat in eager anticipation. Unfortunately, thanks to a compromised internal network, the theft of a portion of the game's source code, and a tumultuous relationship with the game's distributor, Vivendi Universal, we all had to wait quite a while to get our hands on HL2. Armed with the latest episodic update to HL2, Episode 1, we benchmarked the game with a long, custom-recorded timedemo that takes us through both outdoor and indoor environments. These tests were run at resolutions of 1,280 x 1,024 through 2,560 x 1,600 with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently, and with color correction and HDR rendering enabled in the game engine as well. |
From this point forward in this article, we tested all of the cards are standard and XHD resolutions. As you can see, the increased demands put on the EN8800GTS, resulted in a somewhat different performance trend. At the lower resolutions, it fell in-line with our previous tests, but once the resolution was increased above 1920x1200, the card's smaller frame buffer held it back, and its performance suffered because of it.
