Half life 2 is no doubt the most anticipated pc game of all times. 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.

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 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.

In Half Life 2 VST, the highest framerate was generated by the X800 at a resolution of 800x600, while as the resolution increased, only the X850XT, 6800GT, X800 and 6600GT graphics cards managed to maintain adequate framerates which would guarantee the user a satisfying gaming experience.

Same performance when enabling Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic-Filtering. Notice that the low end graphics cards can barely hold on at the highest resolution.