Another HL2 question.

[Darth Revan]

Will HL2 run fine (i.e no jumping/skipping) with 512mb PC3200 ram. The ram will be on Asus P4P800 SE mobo with AIW 9800 Pro and either a P4 w/ht 2.8 or 3.0. I've had trouble with suugested Requirements and wanted some feed back from someone who has played it. Thanx

[kram 2.0]

Look at my system - 512MB RAM, P4 2.8C, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Runs fine all maxed out, though a small bit of lag on select times. Turning it down to medium-high settings should fix that. The extra gig of RAM really does help, but it will definately run fine enough.

kram

[Darth Revan]

Thanx kram, I was actually looking at your sig and noticed that it had 512mb and I knew you had HL2. Thanx

[Force Flow]

You may experience a little lag when entering new areas, but other than that, it should run smoothly.

[pillainp]

Hi,

Not to hijack your thread, Darth Revan, but I just wanted to know, how would it run on the system in my sig? The video card is a Gainward GeforceFX 5600 Ultra with 256 MB DDR.

NPP

[Force Flow]

It will run, but you will have to dial back the eye candy settings a bit to avoid lag. The 256MB alone hurts the game's performace. The FX card certainly cripples it significantly.

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by pillainp Hi, Not to hijack your thread, Darth Revan, but I just wanted to know, how would it run on the system in my sig? The video card is a Gainward GeforceFX 5600 Ultra with 256 MB DDR. NPP

As FF mentioned, the 256MB of DRAM is a rather big setback in performance. On top of that, the FX5600U, which is a DX8 card (technically DX9), will show graphics lineally lower than true DX9 cards.

kram

[Hi Ho]

The demo runs flawlessly on my system (in my signature) with all the settings maxxed out and AA on 6x and AAF on 8x. I am going to buy the game and I'll see if it slows down anywhere.

[VERCETTI]

yea lag in new areas, I have almost all detail up @1024

I have
AMD63 3400+ 1MB Cache
DFI Lanparty UT Nforce 3
512 MB Corsair XMS
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

[Darth Revan]

I don't mind hjx on this thread it is still HL2, it's fine by me.

[pillainp]

Kramm8806,

As FF mentioned, the 256MB of DRAM is a rather big setback in performance.

The 256 MB DDR refers to the memory on the AGP card itself. The full system RAM is 1024 MB PC3200 Dual Channel (512x2).

I am able to run DOOM 3 at high settings though.

NPP

[Force Flow]

Originally Posted by pillainp The 256 MB DDR refers to the memory on the AGP card itself. The full system RAM is 1024 MB PC3200 Dual Channel (512x2).

256MB of RAM on the video card is twice as much as you really need. The 5600FX is still somewhat crippled when it comes to playing high-end games.

[Hi Ho]

The FX cards aren't very good. The fact that your card has 256 MB of RAM actually might make it slower. Many 256 MB cards use slower memory than their 128 MB counterparts which causes a big hit in performance.

[suitcase]

It runs great on my system, though it does stutter a second or two when I save or right after loading. Play is smooth though and the graphics are great. Comparing screen shots of different systems, (read later systems) than mine, I'm satisfied without doing any upgrading. I've been busting PCs looking for the one posted about earlier, where we were trying to figure out the MOBO and PSU.

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by pillainp I am able to run DOOM 3 at high settings though. NPP

Doom 3 is a OpenGL based game, optimized for nVIDIA and generally their stronghold, while Half-Life 2 is a Direct3D based game. FX5600U, in Direct3D, is "technically" DX9 hardware card, but it defaults to DX8.1 on select games, among them being HL2. Why I mention this is that if you take a look at screen shots of DX9 images of HL2 and DX8.1 images of Half Life 2 side by side, you will see a noticible difference - among them being water reflection, rendering of the ground and creatures and others. FX5600U can handle DX9 but with a rather substantial performance dive.

kram

[Hi Ho]

Kram, do you have any links to DX8/9 comparisons in HL2? I'm curious to see what I'm missing.

EDIT: Nevermind I found a good article at Andantech. It's a good read. It has screenshot comparisons as well and it compares the DX9 performance loss with the GeForce FX cards. 65% difference! Just proves a point that has been repeated countless times on these forums. The FX series is not the way to go.

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by Hi Ho Kram, do you have any links to DX8/9 comparisons in HL2? I'm curious to see what I'm missing. EDIT: Nevermind I found a good article at Andantech. It's a good read. It has screenshot comparisons as well and it compares the DX9 performance loss with the GeForce FX cards. 65% difference! Just proves a point that has been repeated countless times on these forums. The FX series is not the way to go.

I actually was looking at the Maximum PC Janurary (?) issue - where they gave HL2 a 11 rating. It took DX9, DX8.1, and DX7 side by side. DX7 did little justice to the full potential of HL2 - it's blurry, the ground rendered very badly, it's as they say, the same engine that ran Half Life, which in its time, was very graphically advanced. That was five years ago.

DX8.1 is far better. However, the only full drawback I see in my eyes is the water rendering - the full reflection of a full hardware DX9 compliant graphics card shows its value. More specifically, look at the edge of the second image you have there Hi Ho - on DX8.1, the water just suddenly becomes the dam in a straight line.

kram

[Hi Ho]

Yeah the water is the biggest difference I see. Everything else looks almos the same. I'll have to get a DX9 card some day.

[LA22]

I only have a p4 2.4, ATI 9700, 256 mb of ram, and I play it fine. However I do have all my settings at the lowest. And its runs fine. It only lags when I first join a server

[Hi Ho]

Kram, I have some screenshots I've taken. See HERE. I can't really tell if the water is more DX8 like or DX9 like. When looking at the DX9 screenshots in the article they look very similar to mine.