HL2 question Thread

How well does Half Life 2 run on its recommended specs?

i apologise i didnt see "how well" before the answer is, smoothly

Thanks embers.

I don't think there is a real answer to this question. Really, Half-Life 2 was built to look great on whatever specs you have on your computer. When it's Recommended, however, everything really pours out from the environments and catches your eye.

Sure, the graphics aren't as good as Doom 3's, but Half-Life 2 is a grand technical achievement at best.

hl2 played suprisenly good on a 64 megabyte card. it plays decent with a minimum 64 megabyte graphic card.

If you let HL2 get on with it's job of setting its own video detail, it works fine. It's when you ramp it up to full then go "OMG HL2 LUKZ CRAP ON M3H KYRO 1 WIF 4X ANTIALIS!" that people get pissed off.

hl2 runs kick ass on my geforce2 and athlon 950mhz, so

I pull 70 frames on AA4, Trilinear, 1280x960, high settings, reflect all, no v-sync, and that is average including combat sequences, which can fall at about 50 frames for larger battles with lots going on.

Running AMD XP 2200, Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb, 512 3700, on an a7n8x-x, though I hate the motherboard it is good when it works.

hrmm my old laptop P4-m 1.7ghz, radeon 7500 mobility 16mb ran hl2 at 40fps average...

My x800 pro 256mb + P4 3.4Ghz + 1gb dual channel ram runs it at 90-100fps 16x anistrophic, 8x AA, Reflect all, 1024x768, all other options on HIGH...

Half-Life 2 was built to look great on whatever specs you have on your computer.

1.7 ghz p4, geforce 3 ti200 (64 mbs of ram), 1024 mb sdram. 30 - 10 fps average, and it doesn't look too nice on medium/low details.

Well, the thing about Half-Life 2 is, it's not really focused on the graphics card. It's all about your processor, mostly. So, if you have a really good processor, you shouldn't have to worry about how things look if you also have a decent video card. However, if you have a really good video card but crappy processor, you'll have nice visuals, but you'll have long loading times, slow movements, etc. This is from the results of research done into the issue.

Processor = mathematical calculations (physics engine, gameplay mechanics)
^ i see no problems in here, the game doesn't slow down when i'm playing with the physics

GFX card = graphics rendering and different effects (pixel/vertex shaders, my gf3 has 1.1)
^i see no problems here too, look at the low map polycounts and small textures (at least on medium details)

I know that my comp IS bad, but it can run doom3 at stable 20-30 fps (512 textures, 768 mb's of cache and medium details, 1024x768), while hl2 usually goes like shit on medium/low details and 800x600.

And also tell me: which game looks better?

It's not really how well a game plays, but how long it's going to stay on your computer. Half-Life 2 definitely dominates in that department. Sure, you can say you're going to have Doom 3 on your computer, but are you really up to playing the game over and over? Add that with the fact that the modding community is considerably smaller than HL2's, and then you know the answer.

I thought Half-Life 2 played a lot better than Doom 3. I'm not going to let graphics get in the way of how I judge a game, honestly.

Let's just say we haven't seen the Source engine at its finest yet, when it can be brought out by a mod team without deadlines.

Just a heads up it will run really slow on an Emachines with 126 Mb/RAM and choppy. I definitly need more RAM

BartNowciu wrote: 30 - 10 fps average, and it doesn't look too nice on medium/low details.

wtf, i have a higher average fps than that, and I play at maximum and I have half of that system

Karuto wrote: It's not really how well a game plays, but how long it's going to stay on your computer. Half-Life 2 definitely dominates in that department. Sure, you can say you're going to have Doom 3 on your computer, but are you really up to playing the game over and over? Add that with the fact that the modding community is considerably smaller than HL2's, and then you know the answer.

Since when did hl2's popularity have to do with system performance, Karuto? Do you KNOW what you are talking about, rather than repeating the hype already stated?

Edited by (in order): leilei, leilei

Bart said Half-Life 2 looked like shit, and then followed that by saying which game looked better. I countered that with the fact that Half-Life 2 is a better game overall because of its modding community. Doom 3 is just as popular as Half-Life 2, but didn't do as well, obviously