Halo is a popular game and still played by hordes of gamers, its not personally one of my favourites as I think they could have spent a little more time optimising the engine for those on slower systems, nonetheless its still an enjoyable experience and one of the more playable console ports of recent times.

So what have we learned from these results above? For one it shows just how intensive this game still is with only the X800XTs and PRO boards capable of sustaining playable rates at the very maximum settings of 1600x1200 with 4AA and 16AF enabled. On the other end of the scale the PCIe X300 is barely capable of running this game at 800x600 with no eye candy at all - quite disappointing. Older boards like the 9700 AGP deliver playable rates until 1280x1024 when they start to run out of horsepower. The 9800XT is capable of comfortably running this game at up to 1280x1024 with 4AA and 16AF enabled, whereas the smaller piped 9600 and X600XT struggle at higher resolutions.

If you want to play this game your old 9700 should deliver the goods unless you have a larger monitor and want to crank the resolution to 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, time to start looking for a good deal on the 9800XT or if your pockets are a little deeper a brand new shiny "X" board.