08 - Half life 2

Half life 2 is no doubt the most anticipated pc game of all time. Gamers keeping the excellence of Half Life 1 in their mind as well as the remarkable E3 demo preview, have been anxiously waiting for the much delayed release of HL2.

Regarding the storyline, the player again picks up the crowbar of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth being picked to the bone, its resources depleted, its populace dwindling. Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed back at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him.

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 changed the resolutions from 800x600 to 1600x1200.

The average frame rate in the HL2 Video stress test probably won't represent actual half life 2 gameplay, but still our X300 performed satisfactorily in the test. What you can't see here is that below 1024x768, the minimum fps we got was 21 when passing through the rotating glass mirrors.

Enabling the AA and AF quality options, we got a very small drop in performance. Even though you shouldn't expect the X300 to render half life 2 well, it managed to keep the framerate above 25 even at 1024x768. Don't forget, the x300 is here to replace the 9200 which didn't even support DirectX 9 effects.