ATI Radeon 3870

Author:	Michael Lynch
Date:	2008.04.07
Topic:	Video
Provider:	ATI
Manufacturer:	ATI

ATI Radeon HD 3870

Half Life 2 Episode 2

About Half Life 2 Episode Two:

Half Life 2 Episode 2 is the sequel to valves original Half Life 2. With the ending of episode one of Gordon Freedman leaving City 17, we find the ourselves in the country side with a vast surrounding environment. Once escaped from City 17, Gordon finds himself carrying important information that contains the location of the combine home world and information on how to stop the combine from opening the super portal and receiving a greater combine invasion.

Playing in such a lush environment we find the need for a higher performing hardware.

Benchmarking Half Life 2 Episode Two:

For benchmarking Half Life 2 Episode Two we will be using a combination of FRAPS and the built in timedemo. Similar to Doom 3, to run the timedemo you must first open the console and tell the game to run the time demo. Unfortunately Half Life 2 Episode Two doesn't include a built in timedemo as Doom 3 did, so we decided make a recording where we felt the game stressed the graphics card the most. To open the console you simply press "~" and type "timedemo <Demo_Name>" to run the timedemo.

Benchmark Results:

Half Life 2: Episode Two
High Settings, with Anti-Aliasing : 1600 x 1200
Min FPS	Max FPS	Avg. FPS	Model Detail: High Texture Detail: High Shader Detail: High Water Detail: Refect World Shadow Detail: High Color Correction: Enabled Antialiasing: MSAA 8x Filtering Mode: Antistrophic 16x Wait for VSync: Disabled High Dynamic Range: Full Motion Blur: Disabled
41	106	65.383
Built-in Benchmark: Time Demo Results 6146 Frames rendered in 93.467 Seconds 65.76 FPS

Half Life 2: Episode Two
High Settings, with Anti-Aliasing : 1600 x 1200
Min FPS	Max FPS	Avg. FPS	Model Detail: High Texture Detail: Very High Shader Detail: High Water Detail: Refect All Shadow Detail: High Color Correction: Enabled Antialiasing: MSAA 8x Filtering Mode: Antistrophic 16x Wait for VSync: Enabled High Dynamic Range: Full Motion Blur: Enabled
28	61	45.474
Built-in Benchmark: Time Demo Results 6146 Frames rendered in 134.139 Seconds 45.82 FPS

We took the settings and cranked them up all the way to see if the ATI Radeon 3870 could handle it and with no suprise it sure did.Very similar to Doom 3, we were able to play Half Life 2 Episode Two on its highest available settings and received between 28-61 frames per second. Averaging 45 frames per second is well beyond what I would consider 'playable' gaming.

Unlike Doom 3, the BFG 8800GT takes the lead here by only a few frames per second.

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