Half Life 2: Episode 2

Publisher: Valve

As one part of our game of the year 2007, Half-Life 2: Episode Two set a new high in narrative and gameplay for the series. Using Valve's widely used, albeit not overly hardware intensive, Source engine that also features as a part of legendary games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, we were keen to feature its performance here too.

The Source engine is the most scalable engine we test. While it still supports only DirectX 9.0, it features effects like dynamic lighting with HDR effects, motion blur, advanced Havok Physics and high model details.

Episode Two took Half-Life outside into large open environments for the first time and we test with Gordon running through a large open level that combines forest and houses, with explosions and physics.

All in game detail settings are set to their highest levels, with HDR enabled, and for anti-aliasing MSAA was used where both settings were set from inside the game.








Half-Life 2: Episode Two shows that the BFG Tech GeForce GTX 260 OCX Maxcore is capable of some decent gains over the GeForce GTX 260, but at the settings where it matters most (at 2,560 x 1,600 8xAA where the frame rate is starting to drop), it's only marginally faster. It's generally faster than the Radeon HD 4870 across the board as well - the only time it gets exceedingly close is at 1,680 x 1,050 with 8xAA enabled.