Hardware help for HL2

[[A3D]Thre3fan]

Hello,

I searched the forums but had trouble finding what I was looking for. I wanted to get some ideas about how well Half-Life 2 would run on my PC. I know I need a couple upgrades for sure but what do you experts think. Here's my PC.

AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (not overclocked)
Epox EP-8KHAL
256 MB PC2100 RAM (buying a stick of 512 to get 768MB total)
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 RPM
Soundbalster Audigy X-Gamer
GeForce III Ti 200 ( buying ATI Radeon 9700 Pro)
19" Monitor

Will it run HL2 with most of the eye candy on......I built this PC a little more than a year ago and I really don't want to build a completely new one if I don't have to. Looking to get in the area of 70- 80 frames/sec. Thanks for any replies.

[blubomber]

I would guess that you might be able to get some good fps from that setup. Once you get your 9700 Pro, try running 3DMark 2003 to test your DirectX 9 performance. The only other consideration might be faster processor. You could probably get that 1900+ up to 2200+ or more. Remeber though, all you need is 40fps in the graphicaly intense areas to not see any jumping. Higher fps is only for bragging rights.

But, nobody will really know how good it will performe until HL2 is finished and hits the stores. I personaly am going to wait a little bit before buying my next video card so that ATI and Nvidia can tweak their drivers to work out any kinks. Same goes with the HL2 people. They may produce some patches and things.

[tony_j15]

We wont know for a month or so, but my guess is the games minimum requirement will be like 700-1ghz, 256mb ram, over 1gb free disk space, DX9(duh), any DX6 or newer vid card. To get full glory, you need DX9 vid card, like a 9700.

[nukes]

Right, the chances are that HL2/Doom 4 would run abysmaly on that setup. Why?
Games are NOT designed for current hardware, they are designed for what will be out in 2/3 years time. Seeing as HL2 isn't likely to make an appearance till the end of this year at the earliest, it will probably require some fairly beefy hardware. It is the same with almost ALL 3d games. When they first come out, only the people with real top-of-the-line systems will be able to run it at all. Let alone with eyecandy and 60-70 FPS. I mean, get real. When Half-life came out, and the best video card on the market was a Voodoo2, (or two of them in SLI mode) do you think people were getting framerates like that? What about Quake3? When the Voodoo3 still hadn't come out?
Please at least try and be realistic. If you want a machine to play it at those framerates and with the eyecandy and high resolution, buy it about 18 months after the game comes out. Pixel shading is a whole hog of data to be processed. Assuming you have 640x480 screen, its 307200 pixels, If you run it at 1280x1024 is goes up to 1310720, considering each of these must be shaded in accordance with the lighting at that point and the 24bit colour (more likely 32 due to the alpha chanels) then it won't be happening too soon at those speeds.

[tony_j15]

Right, the chances are that HL2/Doom 4 would run abysmaly on that setup.

I think you mean Doom3, lol. I never said it would run greta on that setup, those are IMO, minimum system requirements. I agree, most games are made to push the limits of the current hardware. But with HL2, I got a feeling it might be a bit different.

[eagle1]

Well, if you want to really know how well your current video card will do with HL2, you can buy the new MaximumPC magazine which talks about what you are wondering exactly. They talk about the technology used in the game and with a table they show what will the old and new cards will be able to run (in terms of technology).
You should get that magazine if you really want to know. But yes, after you buy that Radeon 9700, everything will run smooth (it will depend on the resolution you will run the game and whether or not you'll activate FSAA and Ansiotropic Filtering, etc.).

[nukes]

Yeah, typo. Doom3 I meant.
What I was saying there was not:

most games are made to push the limits of the current hardware

Most games are made to push the limits of hardware that will be around 6 months after its release, otherwise they end up looking dated by the time they come out.
I would think that system above, with a RAdeon 9700pro would run these games. Just not like you posted with 70 fps and the eyecandy enabled. Not gonna happen.
Like I said, how many of you ran HL when it first came out on your P233MMXes and 2x12mb Voodoo2s? A few admittedly, but how many of you ran it at 1280x1024 with 24 bit colour? (Well, I did for a short while, but it was shoppy as hell)

[rastorize]

All-

Pick up the latest issue of Maximum PC ...they talk about the technology behind HL2 and what video cards will be supported...supposedly they've designed HL2 to run on cards as lowly as GF2's...albeit without any of the fancy visuals, but it will run. They classify the video cards by listing the card classes (DX7 cards, DX8 cards, DX9 cards, etc), and what features will and will not be able to be used in HL2. Check out the mag...great article.

[eagle1]

Yeah rastorize! I'm faster!!! lol

[nukes]

Actually, you all you pixel-shading enthusiasts out there, you may want to look at this:
http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/
Its the site for Tenebrae, a modifacation of the Quake 1 source code to take advantage of pixel-shading. Looks very impressive, especially when combined with the redrawn textures from q1e1m1.