XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB & 8800 GTX XXX Editions
Half Life 2: Episode 1
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;) Half Life 2: Episode 1 |
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 quite a while to get our hands on HL2. Armed with the latest episodic update to HL2, Episode 1, we benchmarked the game with a long, custom-recorded timedemo that takes us through both outdoor and indoor environments. These tests were run at resolutions of 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,600 x 1,200 with 4X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently, and with color correction and HDR rendering enabled in the game engine as well. |
There are a few things to look at in the graph above. Here you should key in on the performance of the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition in comparison to a stock GTX. Also, take a look at the performance of the new XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB XXX Edition versus the reference 320MB card, and the new 320MB GTS cards' performance in comparison to the original 640MB model.
As you can see, the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX is clearly the top dog thanks to its higher clock speeds. It outpaced the stock GTX by a couple of frames per second at both resolutions. Interestingly enough the XFX 320MB GTS XXX is also faster than the 640MB card, due to its higher clocks and the fact that EP1 doesn't utilize all of the frame buffer memory at these resolutions.
