XFX GeForce 6600 256MB DDR2
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;) Half Life 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. So, when Valve announced Half-Life 2 was close to completion in mid-2003, gamers the world over sat in eager anticipation. Unfortunately, thanks to a compromised internal network, the theft of a portion of the game's source code, 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 classic. We benchmarked Half-Life 2 with a long, custom-recorded timedemo in the "Canals" map, that takes us through both outdoor and indoor environments. These tests were run at resolutions of 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 without any anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering and with 4X anti-aliasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. |
To enjoy the adventures of Gordon Freeman in all it's graphical glory, you need something a little more powerful than the cards we have on the table today. However, the cards we do have allow you to run the game at 1024x768 with AA and AF at excellent speeds, and also allow you to raise the resolution while keeping acceptable frame rates. ATI's Radeon X1300 Pro continues to fall behind the XFX GeForce 6600 DDR2 here. But the X700 Pro, on the other hand, manages to out run the XFX 6600 DDR2 when using 4xAA and 8xAF at a resolution of 1280x1024.
