XFX 8800 GT 256MB XXX Alpha Dog Edition

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

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 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x 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 only result that was surprising at 1280x1024 was the No AA / No AF score of the Radeon HD 3850. At that setting, it smoked the 8800 GT 256MB XXX Alpha Dog Edition, along with all the other cards. On the other hand, once 4x AA / 8x AF and HDR were turned on, the 8800 GT 256MB XXX Alpha Dog Edition surged back and beat the Radeon HD 3850 in addition to the 8800 GT 256MB by a respectable margin. At 1600x1200 4x AA / 8x AF / HDR, the 8800 GT 256MB XXX Alpha Dog Edition decided to beat down the Radeon HD 3850 and 8800 GT 256MB a little bit more. At either resolution, though, the 8800 GT 256MB XXX Alpha Dog Edition can't quite keep up with the 8800 GT 512MB.