Breaking News: Halflife 2 Performance Revealed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 10, 2003 7:02 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
You'll see my own numbers tomorrow night at midnight, but we've been given the go ahead to reveal a bit of information about Half-Life 2. I'll keep it brief and to the point and will explain it in greater detail tomorrow night:
- Valve is pissed at all of the benchmarking "optimizations" they've seen in the hardware community;
- Half-Life 2 has a special NV3x codepath that was necessary to make NVIDIA's architecture perform reasonably under the game;
- Valve recommends running geforce fx 5200 and 5600 cards in dx8 mode in order to get playable frame rates.
- even with the special NV3x codepath, ATI is the clear performance leader under Half-Life 2 with the Radeon 9800 Pro hitting around 60 fps at 10x7. The 5900 ultra is noticeably slower with the special codepath and is horrendously slower under the default dx9 codepath;
- the Radeon 9600 Pro performs very well - it is a good competitor of the 5900 ultra;
- ATI didn't need these special optimizations to perform well and Valve insists that they have not optimized the game specifically for any vendor.
There you have it folks, there's much more coming tomorrow.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
It seems to me that, as a 9500 pro owner, nVidia's gotten themselves into fairly hot water. Absorbing 3dfx was not a smart move, as they really haven't brought anything to the table that nVidia did not already have either in the marketplace, or in development. They need to think "lean & mean", like they did in the old days, where they addressed the issue of the day (32 bit colour back then), rather than hedging around it, breaking benchmarks, and generally carrying on like a spoiled and over-indulged child.Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
ha ha hanvidia suckers crying now
enjoy your video card Nvidia owners
anyhow, nvidia fan boys can still play the
Half Life 1
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
FINALLY A WORD FROM ANAND. But why not just post it in one article Anand? Seems a waste of time since either Wesley or Evan will post yet another article today. :)Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
Let me see...ATI-only conference, ATI footing the bill, ATI is business partner of Valve, ATI wins! What a surprise! Of couse, it wouldn't be any different if it was an Nvidia-only conference, would it?BTW, I'll buy no game that won't run on the video card I have.
--Old Man Gamer
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
edit: of *not* taking the time...Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
Valve actually spent 5x more time on the NV30 path then they did on the default dx9 path, and the FX still got owned. So anyone accusing Valve of taking the time to code their game for the FX series needs to have their head checked.This is just the first DX9 game (well there was also tomb raider witch showed the same difference in performance) witch confirms what dmark03 (at the time when cheating at it wasnt allowed) showed us.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
ATI cards WANK WANK WANKAnonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
I'll wait until I see it run on my fx 5600. If UT2004 is optimized for NVidia, I'll take that trade-off.Love the 'my card is better than your card' crap though...... but remember NVidia owners laugh at you ATI guys all the time, so enjoy it while it lasts...
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
I think this is a marketing war - mainstream cards are the bulk of sales and whoever dominates that sector almost FORCES games producers to make products for THOSE cards - regardless of implementation..."What more, he [Newell] said, smaller developers are not likely to have the resources Valve was able to bring to bear on the problem. "
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 11, 2003 - link
I quote from Anand:"Half-Life 2 has a special NV3x codepath - even with the special NV3x codepath, ATI is the clear performance leader under Half-Life 2."
"ATI didn't need these special optimizations to perform well and Valve insists that they have not optimized the game specifically for any vendor."
What's with "Not optimized for any vendor" and "NV3x codepath"??? Valve is slapping themselves!!!
"The 5900 ultra is noticeably slower with the special codepath and is horrendously slower under the default dx9 codepath;"
"the Radeon 9600 Pro performs very well - it is a good competitor of the 5900 ultra"
Geez, pit the Radeon 9600 Pro vs 5900 Ultra in the current crop of games and we all know that's not true.
1) Valve's stories don't exactly gel very well, I suspect they built Half-Life 2 from the ground with ATi class hardware in mind as per the standard DirectX9 specifications. (Nvidia just gotta blame themselves cause they didn't follow the specifications.) So, in the end Valve have to extend the development time to include the NV3x codepath, which obviously isn't working well enough.
2) Valve and Ati are probably in bed together as shown with HL2 bundling with ATi Radeons. However, ATi did an exellent job with the 9700/9800 Pro, besting everything Nvidia can conjure up in every market segment not only in terms of performance but price too.
3) Nvidia stumbled big time with the GeforceFX, it's overpriced compared to any equivelent ATi card as of now. (The merging of 3DFX and Nvidia technologies just didn't make the cut.)
Conclusion:
1) Radeon 9xxx are the best buys as of now. They run the current crop of games and also HL2 very well.
2) GeforceFXs are over-priced, but still can't beat Radeons 9xxx convincingly. For people with GeforceFXs now, I guess you made wrong purcase decision in regards for this generation of GFX cards.
3) For the time being, ATi owners are doing the laughing, but not the final laugh as of yet though. Speaking as a consumer, I hope that the competition continues to heat up, for I will buy whichever has the best price/performance.