NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT: XFX Style

Performance Comparisons with Half-Life 2 Details: http://www.half-life2.com/

Half Life 2

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 2004 to get our hands on this classic. We benchmarked Half-Life 2 with a long, custom-recorded timedemo in the "Canals" map, that takes us through both outdoor and indoor environments. These tests were run at resolutions of 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,600 x 1,200 without any anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering and with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently.

Our custom Half Life 2 benchmark hardly taxes any of the card(s) we tested, even with a beefy CPU like an FX-55 powering the system. At a resolution of 1280x1024, all of the cards posted excellent frame rates, with the GeForce 7 cards and the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition finishing in a virtual dead heat. With the resolution cranked up to 1600x1200 though, the pack began to separate a bit. At the higher resolution, depending on whether or not the GeForce 7800 GT was clocked at NVIDIA's reference specs or XFX's higher speeds, determined if the GeForce 7800 GT was able to outpace the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition.