Half Life 2: Episode 2

Publisher: Valve

As one part of our game of the year 2007, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 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 2 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.

Due to performance issues encountered whilst benchmarking, we have repeated many of the tests for Half Life 2 for previously tested cards.





The performance advantage of the HD 4850 TOXIC is clearest in Half Life 2: Episode 2, with frame rate increases of 7-8.5 percent in every single benchmark, and some particularly impressive frame rate advantages at lower resolutions.