To anyone building or hoping to build a computer in the near future, HL2 is one of those games you might want to take into account when you decide what hardware to buy. This link shows how the top cards on the market stack up in the first legitimate test of HL2's engine.
With 4XAA and 8XAF enabled, nVidia cards perform better than ATI cards at 1024x768 and under, while ATI cards take the crown at the higher resolutions. The performance differences are minimal, though, and shouldn't really sway your decision either way. I'd steer clear of the 128MB Geforce 6800 card. The rest give great Source performance at the highest resolutions and quality settings.
The fact that the results are so similar hints that the benchmark is CPU limited. That means even lower end cards should get similar results at lower resolutions. No reason to sell the farm to get a 256MB card unless you REALLY want to. Like me.
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Yeah, looks like you can't go wrong either way with these next gen cards. I chose to go with nVidia this round simply because they're offering more of a technological advance than ATI seems to be doing. But then again, benchmarks aren't everything now, are they?
Edit: Just looked at the IQ of each card, looks like NV40 isn't doing so hot with AA. Every other card appears to be rendering that gun well except for NV40.
Edit: Just looked at the IQ of each card, looks like NV40 isn't doing so hot with AA. Every other card appears to be rendering that gun well except for NV40.
Actually, AA doesn't look that great on either next-gen card. The 6800 has more jaggies on the right end of the gun, but the X800 has more jaggies underneath the gun. Is it just me, or does the 5950 get the best IQ of all of them?
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