Half Life 2 – Episode 1

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 is the first in a series of games that chronicle events after the end of Half-Life 2. The game engine is Valves “Source” however unlike the original Half-Life 2, Valve have added HDR lighting which works well with the existing engine to produce some great visuals.

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Half-Life 2: Episode 1 allows us to see how the X1950XTX performs for the first time and the results are reasonably promising. At 1600x1200 with 4xAA and 16xAF we see that the increased clocks of the X1950XTX allow the card to open up a 6fps performance advantage over the older X1900XT. Performance comparisons with the 7900 GTX show that the average performance is on par between the two cards although the minimum fps are slightly lower on the 7900GTX. Nvdias GX2 is a significant margin ahead of the other cards as expected however this performance difference does come at a price.

Moving on to 1920x1200 we see the gap between the X1900XT and X1950XTX close however the performance difference between the X1950XTX and 7900GTX increases. The GX2 remains well ahead of all other cards.