Half life 2 is no 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, we can almost ignore results taken at resolutions of 800x600 and 1024x768. The true value of a VGA card is best seen at the highest resolutions with HL2. That is, at 1280x1024 and at 1600x1200 gaming resolutions.

The X1900 GT reported similar framerates to the XFX 7800 GTX at all tested resolutions, while the 7800 GTX TOP continues to provide the highest performance.

However, when AA and AF are enabled, the PowerColor card just doesn't have the horsepower to keep up and falls behind the XFX 7800 GTX at the higher resolutions.