Will this machine run HL2?

[chiggachu]

Here's my (soon to be current) setup:

Athlon XP 2600+ 266FSB
512MB Mushkin PC2100 basic ddr
Radeon 9600 Pro
Shuttle AN35N Nforce2 ultra board (new addition)
80GB Maxtor 7200rpm 8MB buffer

My main concern is the ram (amount and speed). I am limited by my CPU speed, because if I upgrade my ram to something faster, my CPU still only runs at 266MHz FSB. Can this Tbred run at 166MHz FSB with a lower multiplier? I'm willing to spend around $50 just to upgrade ram, but other than that, I'm broke.

 

[JBDan]

Absolutely! Just cannot max out image quality settings.

 

[Mik3y]

it'll run perfectly fine. i've run half-life 2 on worse conditions (1800+, 512mb ddr266, and radeon 7500) and i can still play it as smooth as silk at 1024x768 at the rest at high quality...well, since it's direct x 7 only. since my card's only dx7, it wont run anywhere near as nice as dx9, but hey, it's very playable, unlike doom 3.

 

[sandorski]

More ram would be good, but your current system will run HL2 very nicely. My Nephew is running HL2 on a: XP 1700+, 512mb PC2100, Radeon 8500LE(200,250) and other than very long loadtimes(40+ seconds) due to the low ram amount, the game runs near perfectly(nearly as well as my XP2800+, 1gb PC3200, Radeon 9800Pro).

 

[chiggachu]

thanks guys...i'll stop worrying now. Is doom3 out of the question?

 

[Appledrop]

to be honest 512mb will most likely cause stuttering... other than that should be good

 

[imported_Computer MAn]

It will run fine Doom3 on the other hand your proably looking at 800x600 low to medium quality

 

[uOpt]

512 MB RAM was causing stuttering for me in Doom3 when a high-polygon whacko suddenly hit on me, when I was having the game on a slow storage space. With 1024 MB that went away. Obviously Doom3 needs just a little more than 512 MB but swaps rarely enough that you won't notice it with a fast drive.

I don't have direct data for Half-Life2, but I tend to assume they need a little less RAM. HL2 has been very carefully designed to run on smaller computers well enough, just with less detail. Since RAM doesn't have much to do with detail I would assume they just had to keep RAM usage generally down.

 

[Abix]

Originally posted by: Azzy64
to be honest 512mb will most likely cause stuttering... other than that should be good

Please. I run Half-Life 2 on my P4 2.4B, P4T533, 512MB of RDRAM, and my GeForce4 Ti4200 and on medium settings, 2xQ AA and no AF never going under 30 FPS unless it was a very intense firefight. Most of the time however, it stayed 60+. Please note that that was in DX 8.0 mode and not 9.0.

The only problem I might see the poster having is playing the game online. I *can* run it online on a 20 man server in DX 8.0 mode, but when I do, my FPS drops to 10ish in intense firefights(which is often online), and that to me is unplayable. However, when I scale it back to DX 7.0, my FPS never goes sub-30 no matter the action thats going out. Additionally, DX 7.0 gives me a limited wallhack because non-player/non-world objects in the distance get faded and anyone hiding behind said object is visible because players in the distance are not faded out.

Anothing thing to note is that my brother is playing Half Life 2 on his Celeron 600mzh with a GeForce2 and 512MB of PC100. He gets a playable framerate of 25-70FPS in single player and hasnt attempted to play online as of yet.

Half Life 2 scales to older hardware better than any game Ive seen yet. The only "requirements" that Half Life 2 seems to really stick to is A.an internet connection and B.a computer with a form of windows on it.

 

[Malak]

HL2 is very acceptable to older and weaker systems, it simple scales the graphic quality down. You can play it on a geforce 2 with 256mb of RAM. It'll look like half-life 1, but it'll run fine. The higher end systems benefit by higher quality graphics with better performance.

Rig #1 in my sig plays it fine on dx9 mode with high settings. FPS isn't awesome, but it's ok. The 4.12 catalyst driver increased performance quite a bit so I would suggest getting that, it helps. I do high detail for textures and stuff, but low shadow quality, low reflections, and no AA/AF. I run at 1280x1024 resolution. I don't notice shadows or reflections much when I game, so I usually turn these down for better performance. Stress test at 1024x768 with 4.11 drivers gave me 57 fps average. After upgrading to 4.12 drivers it was 68 fps average. I increased the resolution to 1280x1024 and it went to 63 fps, which is still faster than originally and higher quality graphics. Our systems are similar so I would expect similar results.

 

[Dan0368]

Wow, you guys are getting great performance. Here's my system....

XP 2400+
768mb DDR Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro
SB Audigy

And I get stuttering quite a bit! I'm running high quality at 1024x768. I think it's a sound related problem, and Valve has somewhat admitted to that, but it's pretty bad at some areas. Is this typical? Actually seems to me like Doom 3 ran better.

*I do have all updated sound card drivers and ati beta drivers suggested by valve or steam or whoever*

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: Dan0368
Wow, you guys are getting great performance. Here's my system....

XP 2400+
768mb DDR Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro
SB Audigy

And I get stuttering quite a bit! I'm running high quality at 1024x768. I think it's a sound related problem, and Valve has somewhat admitted to that, but it's pretty bad at some areas. Is this typical? Actually seems to me like Doom 3 ran better.

*I do have all updated sound card drivers and ati beta drivers suggested by valve or steam or whoever*

There is a patch by Value fixing stuttering.

 

[Dan0368]

Those patches are downloaded automatically which means I already have it.

 

[Brian48]

I'm running HL2 on the following and I can get back by at 800x600 with MED settings just fine. The game plays amazingly well and I've certainly lost no enjoyment from it. Still looks great.

Box #4:
Windows 2000 Professional sp4
Generic 300w PSU
Shuttle AN35N Ultra
Sempron 2200+
Thermalright AX-7 w/80mm Thermaltake Whisper Fan
512mb Mushkin PC3200 (1x512mb single-channel mode)
ATI Radeon 8500 128mb
Creative SBLive Value (CT4830) w/Hoontech DB III Digital
Altec Lansing ACS56 4.1
Seagate 7200rpm ATA100 80g
Toshiba DVD-ROM M1502
BenQ 4816p 48x16x48x
USB devices:
Microsoft Intellimouse Optical
Epson 480SXU printer
Sony 19" 420GS

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Dan0368
Those patches are downloaded automatically which means I already have it.

Try running with lower sound quality. I have onboard sound and even at high quality never had issues, but I have onboard sound because every game support forums I've ever seen has had problems like this with sound cards. My sound sounds fine and never has issues

 

[txxxx]

I have the mobility 9700 pro in my laptop clocked upto 560/255 , which is about Radeon 9600XT speeds. Its fine at 1280x800 , High quality models, medium textures, 4x ansi filtering, no AA and rest high.

 

[CraigRT]

Yes it's fine!

ran HL2 decent on a Radeon 7000 at work.

 

[Dennis Travis]

I have an AMD XP 2400+ with 1Gig RAM and Radeon 9600 NON Pro and HL2 is just fine and very smooth. Doom III on the other hand is fine but only at 800x600. At 1024x768 it is a bit jerky. So with Doom III keep it at 800 and you will be fine. Your card is a bit faster than mine and so is your CPU so it might be a bit better but I would get more RAM for some of these new Ram hungry games like others have already pointed out.