Half Life 2 GPU Roundup Part 1 - DirectX 9 Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2004 11:22 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
When Valve and ATI came together to show us the first inklings of Half Life 2 performance last year, it did not look pretty for NVIDIA. NVIDIA’s highest end card at the time, the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, could not even outperform a Radeon 9600 Pro in most tests – much less anything from ATI at its price point. Even though we haven’t shown it here (that’s coming in Part II), the situation has not changed for NVIDIA’s NV3x line of GPUs – they still must be treated as DirectX 8 hardware, otherwise they suffer extreme performance penalties when running Half Life 2 using the DirectX 9 codepath. To give you a little preview of what is to come, in DirectX 9 mode, the GeForce 5900 Ultra offers about 1/3 of the performance of the slowest card in this test. If you’re unfortunate enough to have purchased a NV3x based graphics card, you’re out of luck with running Half Life 2 using the DX9 codepath (at any reasonable frame rates).
What we were missing from looking at Half Life 2 performance a year ago was the release of NVIDIA’s NV4x line of GPUs, which have effectively “saved” NVIDIA from delivering embarrassing performance under Half Life 2. In fact, NVIDIA’s GeForce 6 line of GPUs actually runs Half Life 2 extremely well, even when pitted up against equivalently priced competition from ATI.
Our final Head to Head comparisons revealed a few interesting things:
The GeForce 6800 Ultra performs very similarly to the X800 XT as long as antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled. With those two features enabled, the X800 XT begins to show a performance advantage that is truly seen at 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA enabled. If you are running with AA disabled, the two GPUs perform very similar to each other. It is only at 1600 x 1200 that the performance becomes somewhat noticeable between the two, as the X800 XT averaged 8% faster than the 6800 Ultra. However, turning on antialiasing and anisotropic filtering gave the X800 XT between a 4 – 20% advantage depending on resolution, which definitely isn’t shabby.
At the $400 price point, the X800 Pro and the GeForce 6800GT are basically equal performers in all of the resolutions we tested (regardless of whether or not AA/aniso was enabled). So the recommendation here goes either way, look at the performance of the cards in some of the other games you play to determine which one is right for you.
If you’re spending $200 - $300 you’ve got three choices for PCI Express graphics cards, and one for AGP. The NVIDIA GeForce 6800 is 12-pipe underclocked version of the 6800GT/Ultra and currently sells for close to $300, however in Half Life 2 the performance of the regular 6800 is not any better than the cheaper 6600GT, thus making our NVIDIA recommendation clear. But how does the 6600GT stack up to the X700 XT? The two GPUs are basically equal performers under Half Life 2, although the X700 XT is faster with AA enabled. If you need an AGP card however, then the 6600GT AGP is your only option (and far from a bad one at that).
We’ve left a number of questions unanswered here today involving older/slower hardware, so be sure to check back for part II of our Half Life GPU comparison to find out how well older hardware performs under Valve’s amazing game. Thanks for taking a break from playing Half Life 2 to read this, now get back to it…
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nthexwn - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
In reply to Jeff7181 (#14):I have a Radeon 9700 pro with the 4.11 drivers and I'm having the same problems with my LCD (Samsung Syncmaster 710T @ 1280x1024)! Refresh rate is set to 70hz and with vsync I either get 35 (Interleaving frames to every other) or 70 fps (Matching frames to refresh rate)... Since our cards are from different companies I'm guessing it's a problem with the game itself...
I've tried both triple buffering and alternating the DVI frequency (don't know if that would even help) and it doesn't solve the problem...
It's rather irritating because I actually PLAY my games instead of just gawking over the benchmark scores (I'm one of those lucky people that has some free time!), and the screen looks like a Freddy Kruger job without vsync on! :*(
Also, when the game switches between 70 and 35 there is a bit of a stall, which, even though 35fps is still playable can ruin online play in CS:S! Especially since player models running onto the screen tend to temporarily stress the card enough to make it hitch up on me, in which time said player usually caps me in the head and moves on! :*(
I suppose we could type "fps_max 35" or "fps_max 42.5" (assuming it accepts floating values. You could just set your monitor to 80hz and set fps_max to 40) in the console (don't use the "s), but limiting the framerate to those values isn't what I'd call an ideal solution...
Oh well...
GREAT GAME! GREAT HARDWARE! GREAT WEBSITE!
smn198 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
I'v got a 9800SE 128MB (256bit) card. Would like to know how that compares. I fried my 9500Pro making it into a 9700Pro so that won't do 3D no more (Artifacts then crashes) :(What graphics card which will be tested would have similar performance to a 9800SE (256bit RAM)?
ElMoIsEviL - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
"The one issue I'm struggling with right now is the fact that the X700 XT is still not available in retail, while the X700 Pro (256MB) is. If I have the time I may go back and run some X700 Pro numbers to make this a more realistic present-day comparison."I should post you a picture.. the x700XT is available at futurshop in Canada and has been for about a week now.. :)
Althought not my cup of tea they are selling quite well I'm told.
But then again ATi cards always sell well in Canada.. so well ATi usually cannot fill the demand (with the USA taking soo many of the chips lol).
ElMoIsEviL - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Well... for one thing the numbers are not even close to what other sites are showing and secondly where's the x800XT PE?It's the card I own (albeit mine is clocked at 650/625).
It's good to see ATi in the lead by such significant margins and that the game can be easilly played at 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF with an x800XT PE. Also great to see that the game runs well without the final HL2 drivers from ATi (yeah the 4.12's are only interim, the full 4.12's are going to be fully optimised).
The biggest surprise is how well the 6600GT performed although losing convinsingly against the x700XT it still put on a good showing.
BTW, other sites are showing the x800 Pro beating the 6800 Ultra with the same drivers albeit using an AthlonFX-55.
Meh,
Looks like ATi can probably offer even greater performance at lower resolutions according to the 1600x1200 results being soo close to the lower resolutions.
SMT - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Anand,My flashlight worked throughout Nova Prospekt. Are you sure yours wasn't available?
abravo01 - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Was the 6800GT used on the test 128 or 256MB? Huge price difference around here: if it was the 128MB, than it's definitely the best buy.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
The AA benchmarks actually used 8X Aniso as well.Take care,
Anand
OriginalReaper - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
on page 8 and 9 you discuss AA and AF, yet on page 10, 11, 12, and 13, you only list 4xAA being used. Did you forget to put 8xAF in the results or did the benchmark only do 4xAA?Thanks.
CU - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
I think an investigative article that shows when what hardware becomes a bottleneck for HL2 would be great. I look forward to it."Any other requests?
Take care,
Anand"
Can you send me all the hardware when you are done testing HL2. :-)
Cybercat - Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - link
Nice, I wanted to know how the 9550 performed, mostly to see how it compares with the FX 5200. Is that 128 bit memory or 64 bit memory interface version? I'm pretty excited about the 6200 as well, since this is finally a budget card that performs better than the Ti4200. The performance leap this gen is spectacular.Overall, I think you left the other guys in the dust with this one.
And on the subject of the X700 Pro, it's kind of an odd card, because with its price range (the 128MB version at about $180, 256MB at $200), it's unclear what card it's competing with. It acts like a fifth wheel in this way. People would much rather buy a X700XT or 6600GT instead since they're in the same general price range. Only thing is, like you said the X700XT isn't widely available yet, making the X700 Pro a stopgap for now, and giving NVIDIA the clear win in the mainstream market until ATI can start shipping out the more competitive card. That's the only thing saving the X700 Pro right now from being completely pointless.