ATI Catalyst 7.1 for Vista – Software improvement and Crossfire!
Vote: Thumbs Down or Thumbs Up
Half Life 2 – Episode 1
Version and / or Patch Used: Latest through Steam
Timedemo or Level Used: Custom Timedemo
Developer Homepage: http://www.valvesoftware.com
Product Homepage: http://ep1.half-life2.com
Episode 1 or EP1 for short is one of the latest additions to the Half Life 2 series and is much more intensive than the regular game including more impressive visuals using features such as High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting and so on.
We benchmark Half Life 2 with our own custom timedemos as to avoid possible driver optimizations using the “record demo_name” command and loading the timedemo with the “timedemo demo_name” command - For a full list of the commands, click here.
Under the more intensive EP1, we see that once again the new Cat 7.1 drivers for Vista improve performance by a small margin and Crossfire is able to show its power of dual graphics again showing that it is working well.
Page 9 of 11
