NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra

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Performance Comparisons with Half-Life 2: Episode 1
Details: www.half-life2.com

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.  And thanks to an updated game engine, gorgeous visual, and intelligent weapong and level design, Half Life 2 became almost as popular.  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.


Half Life 2 Episode 1 @ 2560x1600

From this point forward, we'll have two graphs and an image on every page that contains 3D performance data. The graphs are split between standard, more common 4:3 resolutions and more taxing XHD, 16:10 resolutions. The images at the top of the page are simply to illustrate just how massive a 2560x1600 screen resolution is. As you'll see throughout this article, NVIDIA's high-end SLI configuraitons (and even single cards in some tests) are capable of perfectly playalke framerates at this high resolution, with anti-aliasing and high levels of anisotropic filtering enabled.

 

With a single GeForce 8800 GTX or Ultra installed, our custom Half Life 2: Episode 1 benchmark is effectively CPU bound until the resolution is increased to 2560x1600. And in the dual-card SLI configurations, the game is CPU boung regardless of resolution. Because of this, the Ultra and GTX put up similar scores, which are significantly higher than anything the Radeon can muster.


Tags:  Nvidia, GeForce, Ultra, force, ULT, id
Marco Chiappetta

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com

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