HIS Radeon X1650 XT IceQ Turbo and Radeon X1650 XT iSilence II
Half Life 2: Lost Coast
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| 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 until November '04 to get our hands on this classic. A new addition to the HL family, we benchmarked the add-on 'Lost Coast' at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 using the built-in video stress test. |
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The extra bump of the core and memory speeds on the X1650 XT IceQ Turbo provide little improvement over the standard clock speeds of the iSilence II in the Half Life 2 benchmarks. In fact, there's actually little difference between these two cards and the more powerful X1950 Pro at both resolutions, but only without AA and Aniso. The X1950 Pro gets to flex its muscles there with minimal performance loss, whereas the two X1650 XTs wound up dropping from 25 to 30 frames each but still edging out the GeForce 7600 GT easily.
