Radeon HD 3650 Showdown - ASUS vs. HIS
Half-Life 2: Episode 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. And thanks to an updated game engine, gorgeous visual, and intelligent weapon and level design, Half Life 2 became just as popular. Episode 2 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 file to benchmark all cards in this test. |
As our only game based on DirectX 9 technology, Half-Life 2 has a breakdown that is very much in line with what we saw with 3DMark06. Diamond's HD 3650 is overmatched by the rest of our testing suite including three HD 3650s from other manufacturers and a mid-range card from NVIDIA's camp. Additionally, the cards from ASUS, HIS, and Sapphire are operating on quite similar levels - only a frame per second or less separated them at either resolution. To make the comparison with 3DMark06 complete, the 8600 GTS takes a relatively big lead at 1280x1024, yet falls back into the pack at 1600x1200.
