GeForce 7950 GX2 Retail Round-up

For gameplay evaluations on a 24" widescreen monitor, please head straight to our widescreen performance section.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

Publisher: Valve Software

Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first in a series of episodes that extends the Half-Life 2 story far beyond where the original left off. Valve has implemented its high-dynamic range rendering and used it to great effect in Half-Life 2: Episode One. There are new higher-resolution textures, new facial animations and some AI improvements made in the new game too.

Anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering were controlled from inside the game, and thus the drivers were left set to "Application Controlled". There are three options for the method of HDR used in this title. You can either disable HDR completely, make use of "Bloom" which is just what it says and less resource hungry in comparison to "Full" which, again is just what it says. It utilises a full dynamic range with the iris effect too.

We have written quite a bit about Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Day of Defeat: Source, Episode One and how Valve have implemented HDR in to the Source Engine. You can check out the articles listed below for more information on The Lost Coast & Day of Defeat: Source.

• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast HDR overview
  
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast hands on
  
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Benchmarks & Video
  
• Day of Defeat: Source
  
• Cinematic Effects in Source
  
• Liveblogging HL2: Episode One

We did a five minute manual run through from the Exit 17 level. It involves lots of HDR, lots of explosions and both indoor and outdoor scenes. The section we have used is typical of some of the more stressful areas in the game. Thankfully though, the game runs superbly on a wide range of hardware, while still looking absolutely stunning.

Who would have thought that you would be able to play Half-Life 2: Episode One at 1600x1200 with 8xAA enabled? Both GeForce 7950 GX2 speed grades were playable with 8xAA enabled, with the only gameplay advantage that the XFX 570M XXX Edition card having being the additional quality benefits from enabling transparency supersampling.

In order to attain a smooth frame rate on the lower clocked GeForce 7950 GX2's, we had to reduce the transparency anti-aliasing setting down to multisampling. This still provided a fantastic gaming experience, with incredibly smooth frame rates and superb image quality. Neither the Radeon X1900XTX or GeForce 7900 GTX OC were capable of challenging the performance and image quality delivered by the GeForce 7950 GX2's.

Apples to Apples - 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF

The XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 570M XXX Edition is slightly faster than the reference clocked GeForce 7950 GX2, as one would expect. The BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GTX OC edges slightly ahead of the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX at these settings.