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[Lil' Dice]

Because the game ships on my Birthday, and i'm thinking of asking my g/f for a video card as my B-day present. I don't want to spend too much $$$, $200 is my limit (most likely hers too). i also read that HL2 is easily adjusted to make the most of whatever gfx card you run.

I'm currently running a measly GeForce4 MX-440 on an Athlon XP 2100+ with 1Gig of Ram.
Will the ATI Radeon 9800 do the trick for me?

 

[Error Macro]

Yes.

 

[Wario64]

Hell, the game will run on a Geforce, apparantly

 

[Slo]

I have a 2100+, 1GB of Ram, and a 9800 Pro, so essentially you'd have my exact system if you got the 9800 Pro. You will be able to play HL2, Doom 3 and Far Cry just fine at decent resolutions.

3DMark01: 13000
3DMark03: 5300
3DMark05: 2400

 

[Teknopathetic]

I'm pretty sure HL2 will run just fine on most machines. Valve is a VERY capable team. Half-life 1's Software mode ran near on par with the 3D accelerated version.

 

[Burger]

Hey, if you tell us your birthday, then we might know the shipping date. Seeing as how Valve/VU hasn't announced it yet.

 

[teh_pwn]

"I have a 2100+, 1GB of Ram, and a 9800 Pro, so essentially you'd have my exact system if you got the 9800 Pro. You will be able to play HL2, Doom 3 and Far Cry just fine at decent resolutions.

3DMark01: 13000
3DMark03: 5300
3DMark05: 2400"

I don't like 3Dmark05

My P4 at 3.4 GHz is beaten by a XP 2000+. I dunno why.

I also have a 9800 Pro

3DMark01: 18000
3DMark03: 5600
3DMark05: 1300


I think it'll handle it. But if you're going to get a new $200 video card, wait a month for X700 XT. I think an AGP version comes out.

 

[Slo]

Make sure your processor isn't underclocked. What's does it give as a mhz reading when the machine boots up?

 

[DaCocoBrova]

^^

Your CPU is quite the bottleneck...

 

[Slo]

Yeah, I'm looking into a 3400+, but I may just wait until next year since I can easily play Doom 3 and FarCry.

 

[DaCocoBrova]

Good point. I don't get into the whole dick-size contest thing w/ PC specs. All I want is to play good games at good frame rates.

 

[Naked Snake]

Asking your girlfriend for a $200 birthday gift is lame.

 

[pestul]

I have a 2100+, 1GB of Ram, and a 9800 Pro, so essentially you'd have my exact system if you got the 9800 Pro. You will be able to play HL2, Doom 3 and Far Cry just fine at decent resolutions.

3DMark01: 13000
3DMark03: 5300
3DMark05: 2400

Hmm.. is your R9800 Pro overclocked?

I can only manage 2275 in 3DMark05.. but I get 5700 in 03 with.

R9800 Pro
XP2700+ @ 2.36GHz
768mb

 

[DaCocoBrova]

^^

Same specs as me, although I have my CPU @ 2.17 and 1GB of PC3200.

 

[Slo]

Nope, stock speeds. Unless Saphire overclocks out of the box. I have both DirectX and OpenGL set to "Balanced", and I'm not forcing AA/AF.

 

[AeroGod]

I have a 2.3 Ghz P4, 1 gb of ram, and a 9600XT 128mb(a 150 dollar card) and I got 55 FPS on the HL2 benchmark with pretty high settings.

 

[Lil' Dice]

Asking your girlfriend for a $200 birthday gift is lame.

I guess not lame enough for her to have spent the last 9 years with me.

Oh, and in 1997 she spent $500 on a DVD player as my Xmas present.....Hater, begone!

*Edit* My CPU reads 1.7GHZ with Fuzzy Logic. Maybe i should buy myself a new MoBo/CPU first.

 

[Slo]

That is standard speed for a AMD 2100+. Don't put too much weight in Megahertz, even the 3800+ chips run in the lower 2 Ghz range.

 

[Lil' Dice]

I figure i'll try just a new gfx card and see how it runs then.

BTW, didn't they announce that HL2 had gone gold a few days ago?
EB has it shipping on 11/01 (my B-day)

 

[epmode]

BTW, didn't they announce that HL2 had gone gold a few days ago?

nope. eb doesn't know anything we don't.

valve is in some kind of legal mess with vivendi, so who knows when i'll be released. with the recent steam news in mind, it might be soon, but it's all up to vivendi.

 

[teh_pwn]

"Make sure your processor isn't underclocked. What's does it give as a mhz reading when the machine boots up?"

It can't be the processor. After reading that the video bench limits the cpu bench, I'm convinced it's the video card (Sapphire built, so it's entirely possible), or some sort of bug in the program. This is the first build after all.

It's a P4 3.0 Northwood 800 FSB OCed to 3.45 GHz (FSB around 230).

Here's Sisoft Sandra benches with the OC, it's no slacker:

Sandra:
CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
Dhrystone ALU 10761 MIPS
Whetstone FPU 4404 MFLOPS
Whetstone iSSE2 7755 MFLOPS

CPU Multimedia benchmark
Integer x8 iSSE2 27049 it/s
Float x4 iSSE2 38615 it/s

Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
RAM Bandwidth Int Buff'd iSSE2 5566 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buff'd iSSE2 5561 MB/s



That's the performance that an intel P4 3.8-4.0 GHz LGA Prescott gets at stock speeds.



Hell, the 3Dmark05 crashes sometimes on the 2nd bench with "out of video memory" errors.

It's not the drivers, I have 8.07 beta.

 

[teepo]

I'm pretty sure HL2 will run just fine on most machines. Valve is a VERY capable team. Half-life 1's Software mode ran near on par with the 3D accelerated version.

so not true.

 

[RaymondCarver]

Asking your girlfriend for a $200 birthday gift is lame.

I had a girlfriend buy me a Dremcast once. I think it was a year after launch, which is usually when I get a console. She had it in Wal-Mart layway, and it's probably the first thing she sorta financed, other than saving a copy of SuperSmash Bros. 64 for my birthday the year before that. I hope she knows how happy she made me. Buying me a Dreamcast just really blew me away at the time. She's got my vote for coolest girlfriend so far.




Hmm. HL2... that's going to be the upgrade point for me from my 4200 Geforce4. Until then, not even Doom3 has me as excited as HL2. I have faith that the game will be scalable to run even on my GF4, 4200 +512MB PC3200 + AMD 2200.

 

[Bristow]

Here are the minimum specs for Vampire: Bloodlines which runs on the Source engine. I'm sure HL2's will be around the same.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

3D hardware accelerator card required - 100% DirectX® 9.0c-compatible 64MB video card and drivers
1.2 GHz Athlon(tm) or 1.2 GHz Pentium® III processor or higher
384MB of RAM (512MB of RAM recommended)
Microsoft® Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP
Quad-Speed CD-ROM drive (600 K/sec sustained transfer rate) and drivers
3.3 GB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files and saved games (plus 1.4 GB for Windows® swap file)
100% DirectX® 9.0-compatible 16-bit sound card and drivers
100% Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP-compatible mouse, keyboard, and drivers
DirectX® 9.0c (Included)

Supported Chipsets for 98/ME/2000/XP

All ATI® Radeon® Chipsets
All NVIDIA® GeForce(tm) Chipsets
Matrox® Parhelia(tm) Chipset

 

[teh_pwn]

To follow up on my machine's lag, it was not Sapphire, but my Intel Chipset Drivers.

The drivers that came with the mobo did not work with Ati's Smart Gart service, and that killed performance.

 

[Mrbob]

Yes but I think you should upgrade your CPU as well.