- Half Life 2 Performance Benchmark Preview

AnandTech is one of the first websites to post a preview of Half Life 2 performance, one of the first real stressful DX9 games soon to become available.

We compared 8 GPUs in 3 levels under the first truly stressing DX9 game: Half-Life 2. ATI is an early king of the hill, learn about the controversy and some possible explanations as to why...

UPDATE - While writing this post, I got word from The Tech Report that they have also posted several benchmarks from Half Life 2, basically the same in which AnandTech posted.

- nVidia responds about Half Life 2

Matt over at 3DGPU has posted the official response from Brian at nVidia regarding yesterday's claims about Half Life 2 and nVidia hardware performance by Valve.

Over the last 24 hours, there has been quite a bit of controversy over comments made by Gabe Newell of Valve at ATIs Shader Day.

During the entire development of Half Life 2, NVIDIA has had close technical contact with Valve regarding the game. However, Valve has not made us aware of the issues Gabe discussed.

We're confused as to why Valve chose to use Release. 45 (Rel. 45) - because up to two weeks prior to the Shader Day we had been working closely with Valve to ensure that Release 50 (Rel. 50) provides the best experience possible on NVIDIA hardware.

- nVidia Detonator 51.75 Driver Performance

Two websites, AMDMB and Guru of 3D, both tested out the performance of nVidia's Detonator 51.75 driver which will be released at the end of the month which is still sitting in my inbox right now.

Will these drivers help nVidia in the DX9 department which would in turn allow them to make up ground against ATI under Half Life 2? Nobody can say just yet, but according to one 3DMark 03 test at AMDMB, DX9 performance increases by 25%, which is a good sign for nVidia users. We'll see.

The 3DMark03 scores show the 51.75 Detonator drivers having a slightly faster score in the DX9 related tests. If you see the Pixel Shader 2.0 test, the score goes up about 25% and the Vertex Shader score is about 12% faster.

- Articles and Reviews from around the Web

- Thermalright SLK-947U @ Club Overclocker
- Gainward Ultra 760XP Review @ Ninjalane
- XPCases XSuper-Alien Case Review @ VH
- Asetek WaterChill Kit w/Chipset Block @ ipKonfig
- ABIT IC7 MAX3 @ Sudhian Media
- ASUS A7V600 @ X-Bit Labs