Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Gaming System
HL2 Episode 2
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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. 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 a resolution of 1920 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.
The Edge Z55 put in a very respectable showing of 100.82 fps on our Half-Life 2: Episode 2 test at 1920x1200 with 4X AA and 16 AF. However, as expected, it didn't fare so well when compared to higher-end configurations, such as the single-card-based 9800 GX2 system that scored almost 30 fps faster. The single-card 9800 GTX-based system, however, scored 19 fps less than the Edge Z55. The takeaway here is that while you're not going to get the fastest gaming performance from the Edge Z55, it is still very fast and capable of pleasing the vast majorty of gamers. Also keep in mind that the dual-9800 GTXs in our Edge Z55 rig, just happen to be the way our unit was configured. Velocity Micro offers plenty of graphics card options for the Edge Z55, going as high-end as a pair of GeForce GTX 280s in SLI mode for an additional $1,080.
