Half-Life 2 on 6800?

[NightFalcon]

So I'm getting so sick of hunting down for a decent deal on 6800 GT (or just finding one that's in stock for that matter) that I thought it maybe a good idea to go down a level and get 6800. Especially since XFX has a dual-dvi version which I would really like. My problem is how well will HL2 run on a 6800? Bellow is my current setup which won't be changing for a while:

Intel P4 3.0C
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Mobo
Corsair PC3200 512x2 MB Ram in dual-channel.

With those specs, do you guys think that a 6800 will be a bottleneck, or will the CPU be a bottleneck if I get 6800 GT? Don't want to make the same mistake as when I had a PIII 1GHz and a GF4 Ti4400, that was a big waste of money. My LCD has a resolution of 1280x1024 and I'd obviously like to play with full anti-aliasing and full anisotropic filtering. Give that, what's your bet? 6800 or 6800GT?

 

[Childs]

HL2 is supposed to be playable on a wide variety of hardware, especially since lots of their user base stills uses TNT2 class cards. You don't need D3 class hardware for HL2.

 

[NightFalcon]

That's not what I'd say judging by the videos they've released. I've been playing Counter-Strike for a number of years now, and once the Source is out I'd definitely want to play it on best quality. I guess my question should have been phrased differently.

Which card is more appropriate for my CPU? 6800 will probably be behind in some cases, and 6800 GT will probably be in front. I just want to know which difference is the lesser of the 2 and if $100 more is worth for the GT?

 

[Childs]

Since you have the time why not wait. The 6600GT looks to be the best card for the money, and it looks to be out the same time as HL2.

If you look at the Firing Squad HL2 benches done awhile ago, the benches show the 9800 Pro cleaning up. Now the NV40 based cards have improved quite a bit, so figure at the minimum whatever the 9800Pro does in a comparable game (Farcry) the vanilla 6800 will do but better.

 

[Insomniak]

I'd say if you can run Doom 3, odds are Half-Life 2 won't give you too much trouble at the same settings. A slightly more powerful processor might help because of all the physics calculations, but I don't think a graphics card upgrade would really be worth it if you're packing a 9800/5900 or higher.

 

[NightFalcon]

Right I should've mentioned that my current card is the same GF4 Ti4400. That thing can't run anything lately

 

[NightFalcon]

So anyway, I'm look at this card right now: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-150-068&depa=0

Again, the dual-dvi, thought not needed at the moment (have an LCD and a CRT right now) may be a useful feature if I get a second LCD in the near future. Also I wanted to ask, is there any 2D difference between a regular VGA port and a DVI to VGA adapter?

That card above certainly doesn't look quiet as nice as the GT versions, but it's in stock and at $286.00 final price I'm thinking it may be a better buy right now. I still haven?t even played FarCry because Ti4400 just can't pull it. Not even fps-wise, but some of the DirectX 9 features just don't work. What do you guys think, will it be a major bottleneck for my system, or are we taking about a difference of maybe 10 fps between this one and the GT? And as far as fps go, as long as I can play on high quality and get 40 fps or more I'm happy.

[EDIT]
Damn, just looked at the description and it's 128MB, not 256 Is that something significant or not at this point?

 

[klah]

There are always digit-life's benchmarks using the stolen HL2 for whatever that's worth:

http://www.digit-life.com/...hl2-wxp-1600.html

http://www.digit-life.com/...hl2-wxp-aaa-1024.html

 

[NightFalcon]

Don?t know how much I want to trust benchmarks of a beta =/

 

[shimsham]

if you want to buy now, just buy the eVGA version, and if you decide you want the power, you can just trade up through the eVGA program within 90 days. check their site for the details.

thats my plan, anyway.

oh, and dont trust those clock speeds on the xfx. check ainstein00's review. the card is clocked at 325.

 

[Creig]

If you're buying a card specifically for when HL2 comes out, why not wait until it actually goes gold? Cards will most likely be more available and hopefully a bit cheaper.

 

[NightFalcon]

Originally posted by: Creig
If you're buying a card specifically for when HL2 comes out, why not wait until it actually goes gold? Cards will most likely be more available and hopefully a bit cheaper.

Because like I said there's still FarCry and Doom III . All of which I haven't played because they all run like crap

As far as eVGA, I'm not liking the reports of their 2D quality.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: NightFalcon
Right I should've mentioned that my current card is the same GF4 Ti4400. That thing can't run anything lately

Then you need to clean up your system, because my rig:

AMD Athlon XP 1900+
512MB PC2100
GeForce 4 Ti 4400

Runs Doom 3 at 800x600, Medium Detail, and 2xAA plenty fast. mid 30s framerate, dips to high 20s during firefights, but still quite playable.


EDIT: Oh, and a do get a slight frame drop going through smoke with AA on, simply because massive overdraw with AA is hell on memory bandwidth - as if the card isn't trying to push enough texture information around already.

 

[NightFalcon]

My system is fine, but I pick quality over fps, tried running Doom 3 on 800x600, 2xQ Antialiasing, 2x Anisotropic. About 20 fps during the intro.

This is most definitely a video card issue. For example, I play CS on 1280x1024 with the same settings and get a steady 60 fps most of the times. I have vsync on and my LCD refreshes at 60Hz, so that's exactly the frame rate I expect. On the other hand, as you mentioned, when going through smoke my fps drops to 20s. That's on a game that's many years old and otherwise runs great on this card. That and as I've also mentioned GF4 just doesn?t support a lot of features. Shadows, for example, are all screwed up. And that's not just on Doom 3, Splinter Cell was the same thing, and many other DirectX 9 games.

 

[ku]

If you're looking for a card for JUST hl2, the 6800NU should be fine. However, if you do plan on playing D3 or any of those games, consider the 6800GT