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.






XFX's GeForce 9600 GSO XXX Edition delivers a clean sweep across all resolutions and settings tested in Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The closest the gap between the XFX 9600 GSO and AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4670 gets is ten frames per second or nine percent at 1,280 x 1,024 0xAA.