- Half Life 2 Episode 1

The world of Half-Life 2 has amazed everyone with its great story, graphics and Valve's great support. Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first in a series of new adventures created by Valve that extend the Half-Life 2 single player experience. It details the aftermath of Half Life 2 and launches a journey beyond City 17.

Stepping into the hazard suit of Dr. Gordon Freeman, you face the immediate repercussions of your actions in City 17 and the Citadel. Rejoin Alyx Vance and her robot, Dog, to once again aid the human resistance in their desperate battle against the totalitarian alien menace of the Combine.

Episode One exposes Alyx's combat skills and knowledge of City 17. Battle side-by-side with her through Valve's first episodic game, a four-to-six hour adventure of greater density and detail than non-episodic releases.

We recorded a timedemo and used console to run each card with different visual quality settings. For all tests we enabled 1280x1024 with HDR shadows fully enabled. Unfortunaly, SLI results are not displayed, since HL2 refused to work under SLI mode, despite the build-in profiles and our efforts...

At 1280x1024, both 7900GS showed very good performance with 84FPS average performance.

Enabling AA/AF with HDR does have an effect on performance. With the highest possible visual quality settings, 7900GS keeps slight above 30FPS, so maybe its a good idea to lower to 4xAA.