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Half-Life 2: Episode 1 Specs Revealed


CompSci

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System Requirements

 

Min:

2.4 GHz Processor

256MB RAM

DirectX 7 level graphics card

Windows 2000/XP/ME/98

Mouse

Keyboard

Internet Connection

 

Preferred:

1.2 GHz Processor

512 MB RAM

DirectX 9 level graphics card

Windows 2000/XP

Mouse

Keyboard

Internet Connection

 

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=64516&boardid=1&id=&view=flatnew&start=20

 

lol i do not know if its a typo, but they prefer a 1.2ghz CPU to a 2.4ghz CPU

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Do a google for "Half Life 2 requirements" and the first page you come to will be exactly the same as CompSci originally posted, except with the CPU's the other way round. This is obviously just a mistake. It makes good sense that the specs are the same for HL2 and HL2:E1

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Well it was when i really needed a defrag.

I got 30-90fps with everything maxed out apart from FFAA which was on 2X.

My x800 really doesn't like HDR. On CS Source HDR maps my FPS drops like a brick, but thats probably due to all the character models.

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Well it was when i really needed a defrag.

I got 30-90fps with everything maxed out apart from FFAA which was on 2X.

My x800 really doesn't like HDR. On CS Source HDR maps my FPS drops like a brick, but thats probably due to all the character models.

no... that's because currently only Nvidia supports HDR by hardware... So the diference in ATi cards with HDR on and off is abismal.

 

the HDR mode in lost coast is made from ground for the shaders, so what is possible on a X8xx is also possible on a old NV4x. But... only in Shader Model 3.0 you can have the real floating point-HDR (OpenEXR). the newer ATi X18xx models support FP, but not OpenEXR (Industrial Light & Magic).

 

this... Industrial Light & Magic (from George Lucas) allows a better precision (hence quality).

-> http://www.openexr.com/

 

More precision means that in time aliasing will be obsolete, if OpenEXR's maintains it's evolution (antiAliasing, or AA, for short) will really be obsolete, because they will no longer be needed. HDR is not just a "Bloom" effect for lightning.

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Oh jeeze, i went over this with someone on another forum.

You DON'T need SM3 to do propper HDR. HDR is a developer tool, not something which is directly built into the hardware like FFAA or anisotropic filtering.

 

The only difference between SM3 and SM2 is that SM3 can calculate things faster so it doesn't damage your frame rate as much.

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Oh jeeze, i went over this with someone on another forum.

You DON'T need SM3 to do propper HDR. HDR is a developer tool, not something which is directly built into the hardware like FFAA or anisotropic filtering.

 

The only difference between SM3 and SM2 is that SM3 can calculate things faster so it doesn't damage your frame rate as much.

I agree, that's most of it anyway, so it doesn't really make a diference in most actual games. But will do in the future, and HDR is a thing for the future, not for the past hardware.

 

Shaders allow you to pretty much do everything even if there are no enhancements from ground-up. but still... ATi cards don't support real HDR OpenEXR... that's a feature in hardware... really, and Nvidia has specific libraries for it and optimizations already. It's not like ATi drivers aren't optimized, it's just that... that's what the GPU can handle in HDR...

 

let's see, not looking much:

Support for 16-bit floating-point, 32-bit floating-point, and 32-bit integer pixels. The 16-bit floating-point format, called "half", is compatible with the half data type in NVIDIA's Cg graphics language and is supported natively on their new GeForce FX and Quadro FX 3D graphics solutions.
Source: http://www.openexr.com/

 

Of course Geforce FX were crap in HDR... but Nvidia was already working on the libraries and how to implement them, that's why Geforce 6 and 7 series are, and will always be superior in this matter, till ATi counters with another GPU.

 

The 3D shooter Far Cry long remained the only game to support OpenEXR and even this game suffered a tremendous performance hit in the HDR mode. Resolutions above 1024x768 were absolutely unplayable. Moreover, the specifics of the implementation of HDR in NVIDIA’s graphics architecture made it impossible to use full-screen antialiasing in this mode (on the other hand, FSAA would just result in an even bigger performance hit). The later released GeForce 7800 GTX, however, had enough speed to allow using OpenEXR with some comfort, but it still didn’t permit to combine it with FSAA.
yet... Nvidia does it with optimizations on hardware... thus the real OpenEXR, while ATi is stuck at pixel shaders, it's not like it can't do the work, or if you do something from ground it won't look good, but it won't be real OpenEXR (with small hit at least), look at PS2 it has heavy problems with aliasing, so they currently use the Floating point workaround of bluring each frame slightly, it still looks good, if not as good as the real one.

 

And I'm not fanboy in this matter, I switch between these two brands everytime....

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