Half Life 2 Episode 2
AMD has an advantage in Half Life 2. With this 3D engine, Radeon graphics chips run slightly better, though the Nvidia cards scale well with the CPU speed of the overclocked quad-core chip. Given its age and the rapid development of graphics technology, this game is now limited by available processing horsepower. Almost all tested graphics cards perform better with a faster CPU.
An exception is the Radeon HD 4850, which cannot take advantage of overclocking the CPU above 1920x1200 with anti-aliasing (AA) turned on. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is also approaching its limit. At the same resolution, it can only gain another 3 fps. SLI and CrossFire actually reduce the frame rate. Single-chip cards almost always perform better with this 3D engine, allowing you to get the most out of the game.
Driver Comparison: Catalyst 8.9 Versus Catalyst 8.10 w/ Radeon HD 4870 X2
You can see a slight increase in frame rate, but most of it lies within the measurement tolerance.
| Half Life 2 Episode 2 in fps | 12800xAA | 16800xAA | 19200xAA | 12804xAA | 16804xAA | 19204xAA | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HD 4870 X2 8.10 QX@3.67 | 130.3 | 123.5 | 119.9 | 128.6 | 123.4 | 122.4 | 748.1 |
| HD 4870 X2 8.9 QX@3.67 | 129.9 | 119.7 | 118.1 | 126.5 | 119.7 | 117.7 | 731.6 |
| Performance difference in percent | 0.3 | 3.2 | 1.5 | 1.7 | 3.1 | 4.0 | 2.3 |