Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X800 XL
Half Life 2
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;) Half Life 2 |
Thanks to the dedication of millions of 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 began chomping at the bit. Unfortunately, thanks to a compromised internal network; the theft of a portion of the game's source code; a couple of missed deadlines; 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 gem. We benchmarked Half-Life 2 with a long, custom- recorded timedemo that takes us along a cliff and through a few dilapidated shacks, battling the enemy throughout. These tests were run at resolutions of 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,600 x 1,200 without any AA or aniso and with 4X anti-aliasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. |
Sapphire's Hybrid Radeon X800 XL returned to its winning ways in our custom Half Life 2 benchmark. Here, the Sapphire card outperformed both the GeForce 6800 GT and GeForce 6800 Ultra, regardless of the resolution or test configuration. At 1024x768 without anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, the Sapphire Hybrid Radeon X800 XL was 8.7% faster than the GT, and with AA and aniso enabled the X800 XL extended its lead to over 29%. The same trend held true at 1600x1200, where the Sapphire Radeon X800 XL was roughly 15% (no aa) and 12% (4XAA / 8X Aniso) faster.
