What will Half Life 2 look like on a minimum specifications system? (and other ?s)

My computer just barely excels the minimum specifications of Half Life 2: (1.2GHZ, 256MB, DX7.0 VS 1.8GHz, 384MB, DX8.1 32MB card)

What will Half Life 2 look like and how will it run? I'll skip it and wait for an Xbox version if it looks too bad or would run too shittily at a decent resolution. Does anyone have any idea?

Also, if I purchase the game retail, will I still have to go through the STEAM bullshit, and download hundreds of gigs just to play?
 
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-With a 32mb-era video card, doubt you'll get playable fps on the DX 8 path. What's the card, specifically?

-Buying retail is probably not the way to go. There's a safedisk cd check in ADDITION to the steam account login/auth stuff. Definitely suggest bronze or silver (best value) through steam, unless you're strapped for cash and can find a retail box very cheap (even then you're not getting nearly as much content as with silver). You won't need to download gigs of stuff if you buy retail, but you'll still need to decrypt the data and download automatic updates.
 
EviLore said:
-With a 32mb-era video card, doubt you'll get playable fps on the DX 8 path. What's the card, specifically?

-Buying retail is probably not the way to go. There's a safedisk cd check in ADDITION to the steam account login/auth stuff. Definitely suggest bronze or silver (best value) through steam, unless you're strapped for cash and can find a retail box very cheap (even then you're not getting nearly as much content as with silver). You won't need to download gigs of stuff if you buy retail, but you'll still need to decrypt the data and download automatic updates.
32MB ATi Rage Ultra

So how much MBs does this automatic update shit take?

Now I'm even more convinced I am not purchasing HL2 on PC. How the fuck did PC gaming become such a hassle? Now I'm reminded why I'm mostly console centric.
 
Rage is...tnt or tnt2 era? That can't be a dx 8.1 part. You'd be on the dx7 path, and the game looks pretty terrible like that.

The HL2 updates didn't take more than a couple minutes for me. Shouldn't be more than around 10 megs, probably less.
 
Great King Bowser said:
How would it run on my laptop?

1.7ghz Centrino M, 128 ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Turbo, 768mb RAM

Dunno but 3dmark 05 runs like shit on my moms P4 3.1Ghz, Mobile Raden 9700 128meg and 512 main RAM. Also a laptop.
 
EviLore said:
-Buying retail is probably not the way to go. There's a safedisk cd check in ADDITION to the steam account login/auth stuff. Definitely suggest bronze or silver (best value) through steam, unless you're strapped for cash and can find a retail box very cheap (even then you're not getting nearly as much content as with silver). You won't need to download gigs of stuff if you buy retail, but you'll still need to decrypt the data and download automatic updates.
CD check has been removed.
 
Shompola said:
Dunno but 3dmark 05 runs like shit on my moms P4 3.1Ghz, Mobile Raden 9700 128meg and 512 main RAM. Also a laptop.

3Dmark 05 runs like shit on every machine I've tried it on. :P

1.7ghz Centrino M, 128 ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Turbo, 768mb RAM

It will LOOK fine on that, but the framerate will be a bit chunky at times. The CPU heavy sections will run very poorly. I first played HL2 on a 2.4 GHz P4 and there were times during the strider fights where I was literally dropping to ~10 fps. Upgrading my CPU quadrupled that easily. So, I doubt a Centrino will be able to handle it well...
 
dark10x said:
It will LOOK fine on that, but the framerate will be a bit chunky at times. The CPU heavy sections will run very poorly. I first played HL2 on a 2.4 GHz P4 and there were times during the strider fights where I was literally dropping to ~10 fps. Upgrading my CPU quadrupled that easily. So, I doubt a Centrino will be able to handle it well...
A 1.7 Centrino is quite a bit faster than a 2.4 P4 I believe, so I don't think he'll have a problem.
 
You know that thread with the old gay men fucking and candles being shoved down penises, that’s what HL2 will look like on your computer
 
While it may not look as good as the DX8 and DX9 codepaths, the DirectX 7 support in Half Life 2 is nothing short of incredible. Older card owners should upgrade their CPUs as needed but needn't upgrade their graphics cards unless they want better image quality, in terms of speed, even something as slow as a GeForce4 MX will do just fine.

If you have the cash, first get a new CPU, then get a cheap Graphics card like the 9550
 
Should I buy Half-Life 2 now? Or wait until I get a better PC?

P4 2GHz
384MB RAM
NVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB
 
rs7k said:
Should I buy Half-Life 2 now? Or wait until I get a better PC?

P4 2GHz
384MB RAM
NVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB

Get it now, your pc can handle it just fine. As stated in the article HL2 runs just fine on below average gaming pc's.

and for the guys that need to know:

Recommended

* Supported OS: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP (only)
* Processor: AMD Athlon 2400-3000+ or Pentium 4 2-3 GHz
* RAM: 512-1024 MB
* Video Card: 128 MB GeForce 4 128 MB to GeForce FX 5950; ATI Radeon 9500-9800 XT
* Sound Card: Sound Blaster® Audigy® series
* DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0b (included on disc)
* DVD-ROM: 8x-16x DVD
* Hard Drive Space: 4 GB
* Multiplayer: Broadband with 64 Kbps upstream to play (512 Kbps upstream to host 8 players)

Minimum

* Supported OS: Windows® 98SE/ME/2000/XP (only)
* Processor: 1 GHz
* RAM: 256 MB
* Video Card: 64 MB DirectX® 9.0b-compatible graphics card
* Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0b-compatible PCI card
* DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0b (included on disc)
* DVD-ROM: 4x DVD
* Hard Drive Space: 4 GB
* Multiplayer: Broadband with 64 Kbps upstream to play (512 Kbps upstream to host 8 players)

NVIDIA® nForce(tm) or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby® Digital Interactive Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio
 
Sander said:
A 1.7 Centrino is quite a bit faster than a 2.4 P4 I believe, so I don't think he'll have a problem.

You sure about that? Centrino CPUs were designed to save battery life in mobile systems. In my experience, Centrinos run pretty poorly.
 
That link is gold, I have that exact card (GF 4 MX) and it *is* pretty amazing how decent they managed to make the game look. Runs smooth too even with all the textures and detail set to high, but the object fade-in takes some getting used to.
 
To be fair, that review is putting a Pentium-M chip in a destop system and using a X800XT with it.. I'm still impressed though.
 
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