Asus Extreme Radeon AX800XL/2DTV
Half Life 2 testing
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;) Half Life 2 |
Thanks to the dedication of millions of 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 began chomping at the bit. Unfortunately, thanks to a compromised internal network; the theft of a portion of the game's source code; a couple of missed deadlines; and a tumultuous relationship with the game's distributor, Vivendi Universal, we all had to wait until November 2004 to get our hands on this gem. We benchmarked Half-Life 2 with a long, custom- recorded timedemo that takes us along a cliff and through a few dilapidated shacks, battling the enemy throughout. These tests were run at resolutions of 1,024 x 768 and 1,600 x 1,200 without any AA or aniso and with 4X anti-aliasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. |
In a complete reversal of what he had been seeing so far, the Asus Extreme X800XL led in almost every test this time around. It usually came out a frame or less faster than the ATi X800XL, only once slipping behind that card at 1600x1200. Although the performance levels were steady in initial testing, the GeForce 6800GT started to slip a bit at higher resolutions, especially with samples of AA and Aniso enabled. We were quite impressed to be getting close to 90+ frame rates at 1600x1200 in such a graphically impressive game - a testament not only to the hardware but to Valve's programmers as well.
