Gigabyte and Palit GeForce 9800 GT Face Off
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
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Thanks to the dedication of hardcore PC gamers and a huge mod-community, the original Half-Life was one of the most successful first person shooters of all time. And courtesy of an updated game engine, gorgeous visuals, and intelligent weapon and level designs, Half Life 2 became just as popular. Episode 2 - the most recent addition to the franchise - offers a number of visual enhancements including better looking transparent texture anti-aliasing. These tests were run at resolutions of 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200 with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. Color correction and HDR rendering were also enabled in the game engine as well. We used a custom recorded timedemo to benchmark all cards for these tests. |
When it comes to Half-Life 2, there's really no comparison between the Radeon HD 38xx cards and a GeForce 8800 or 9800. The deltas between the two sets of cards is huge, with the GeForce obviously being the card of choice - when playing DX9-based games at least. The faster clock speeds on the 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512 keep the two just a few fps above the two 9800 GTs, with Gigabyte edging out Palit by a frame or so during each run.
