Half life 2 is without doubt the most anticipated PC game of all times.

Characters - Advanced facial animation system delivers the most sophisticated in-game characters ever seen. With 40 distinct facial "muscles," human characters convey the full array of human emotion, and respond to the player with fluidity and intelligence.

Physics - From pebbles to water to 2-ton trucks respond as expected, as they obey the laws of mass, friction, gravity, and buoyancy.

Graphics - Source's shader-based renderer, like the one used at Pixar to create movies such as Toy Story® and Monster's, Inc.®, creates the most beautiful and realistic environments ever seen in a video game.

AI - Neither friends nor enemies charge blindly into the fray. They can assess threats, navigate tricky terrain, and fashion weapons from whatever is at hand.

To measure performance we used the Video Stress Test(VST) that is available in the CounterStrike:Source beta available through Steam. We set all the details to the highest level and each time changed the resolution from 800x600 up to 1600x1200.

Since the game is very CPU dependent, the results at 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions don't really test the graphics cards. The true value of a VGA card is best seen at the higher resolutions with HL2. That is, at 1280x1024 and at 1600x1200 gaming resolutions. The results from the 3D Mark03,01 and codecreatures benchmarks are confirmed here, with the EAX1600XT reporting slightly higher fps than the N6600GT. In this game, the XFX 6800GS had significantly higher framerates at all resolutions.

Enabling AA and AF, the performance drops to around half at the higher resolutions, although the game remains playable with the EAX1600XT even at 1600x1200. However, the XFX 6800GS is the best card again.