Half Life 2

[Damnyankee]

Hi guys I got a computer with 2.8 pent. 4 processor, 1 gig of ram and an all around good computer, will half life 2 play it good, or should i wait for the xbox launch in 300 years

 

[kcwong]

You haven't described your video card yet... one of the major components to play games these days.

OTOH, I am playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines... it's using the same engine (Valve's Source) as HL2. It's running great on my P42.8MHz, 768Mb DDR RAM, Asus GeForce Ti 4400, using latest NVidia's ref. driver.

I'm running it at all options pushed to max, 1024x768x32. Soft shadows, max paticles, light and details, bump mapping and anti-alias.

It slows down when I am in the sewer (the amazing water effects)... so I reduced resolution to 800x600. Not much difference on video quality felt... and runs very smooth.

The haunted mansion quest freaks me out though. I yelped and jumped a lot during the mission... and had to paused a few times to catch a breath too.

 

[Jeratain]

Yeah, you need to post your video card since that is probably the most important piece of hardware to run the game.

The rest of your specs are fine. In fact, you can check out the forums at www.steampowered.com for people who have ridiculously crappy systems, yet are able to run the game at decent framerates/speeds.

You may experience a lag in loading times, and depending on your video card, you might not get the highest textures available, but it should run just fine. (Assuming you don't get the memory error or the stuttering that so many others have gotten - a patch should fix that right up.)

 

[Thrawn]

From what I've heard, the engine for hl2 is very forgiving to lower end systems. Which is a good thing for the people who have them.

And from the sounds of it, as long as your video card is decent, it'll run just fine.

 

[citizen001]

It will still run well even if you have a Geforce 4 MX

 

[Comraddict]

maybe he has integrated graphics. that would SUCK!

 

[Damnyankee]

I used to have integrated graphics with my old pc, lol but with this one i have a ATI Radeon 9600XT AIO 128 MB. Thinking about upgrading to 9800. And by the way this is a stupid question, i'm upgrading my ram and right now i got 2 sticksof 512 ram from OCZ. I want to buy another two sticks of 512 from kingston. Will they work together if each are dualed with there brand seperatly? EX. the two OCZ together and the two kingstons together?

 

[Jeratain]

I used to have integrated graphics with my old pc, lol but with this one i have a ATI Radeon 9600XT AIO 128 MB. Thinking about upgrading to 9800.

The 9600 XT will run just fine. I don't think it's worthwhile to upgrade to a 9800, but you will see some performance gain if you did - just probably not much. If you were going to upgrade, I'd say go for the 6600 GT AGP model, which beats the 9800 in just about every benchmark.

 

[Comraddict]

that would be waste of money too, considering there are cards capable of 200% 9600 XT performance ( 6800 NU, GT, Ultra)

 

[Damnyankee]

how about the new graphics card ATI put out, the X800, its like $350 now so i will wait a half year or so, should i just jump to that, i think it works with AGP 8X, i mean i assume express is not that mainstream yet , oh and i am upgrading my harddrive, a Maxtor 60gb hd, obviously i need more space, which one do you guys recommen, don't say western digital, had a very bad experiance with the last computer i built that had a western digital HD(Overheated, corrupted, just stoped working ) all my po....... Videogames.

 

[Jeratain]

Well, if you money you can just throw away, then you can upgrade your video card to an X800 Pro or something, if that's what you want. Many will recommend the nVidia 6800 Ultra for the best performing card right now.

While the 9800 Pro used to hold the title for the best bang-for-the-buck card, that title now belongs to the 6600 GT, which has been released in AGP form just recently.

As for hard drives, well frankly, I would recommend a WD over anything else. That or one of the high-end Seagate SATA drives.

A WD Raptor is still one of the best drives performance-wise.

 

[Damnyankee]

Well, if you money you can just throw away, then you can upgrade your video card to an X800 Pro or something, if that's what you want. Many will recommend the nVidia 6800 Ultra for the best performing card right now.

While the 9800 Pro used to hold the title for the best bang-for-the-buck card, that title now belongs to the 6600 GT, which has been released in AGP form just recently.

As for hard drives, well frankly, I would recommend a WD over anything else. That or one of the high-end Seagate SATA drives.

A WD Raptor is still one of the best drives performance-wise.

I don't have the money to "throw away" just yet so i will wait for price drops. And the 6800 Ultra has been getting better reviews then the X800? Any benchmarks for everyones viewing eyes.

 

[Jeratain]

I don't have the money to "throw away" just yet so i will wait for price drops. And the 6800 Ultra has been getting better reviews then the X800? Any benchmarks for everyones viewing eyes.

If you want to buy an X800 XT, then by all means, do. That card perfroms better than the 6800 Ultra in many benchmarks, but not all. The 6800 Ultra does beat out the X800 Pro and other models, however. For either card, you're looking at spending above $500. You really should read some of the articles at the sites listed below to understand what each card is capable of and which cards implement which technology.

For benchmarks and conclusions, feel free to read up at www.tomshardware.com and www.anandtech.com