video cards and HL2

[Maddick]

I'm wondering if using my dx8.1 radeon 8500 to run HL2 will be difficult considering the graphics of the game. Will going from a dx8.1 video card to say a dx9 video card like the radeon 9700 have large performace benifits. Also, how much will processor speeds effect the games performace?

 

[jhero]

Noone can answer that question until Valve has finished testing and released the final requirements. However, based on the requirements that everyone is talking about, the Radeon 8500 should be fine. Just do not expect to have full visuals turned on and looking at its best.

Going from a DX 8 card to a DX 9 will make a big difference based on an email sent to me from Gabe. 1. FPS will obviously be higher and 2. He said that everything will look better on a DX 9 card. i.e. a DX 6 card will render a scene quite differently from a DX 9 card (DX 6 will look ugly).

The processor speed will effect the games performance by a lot. But again, only Valve knows.

 

[Apos]

Just a note: this is the wrong forum for questions like this: try the tech/hardware forum.

But your card will be mid-range actually, not the bottom of the heap at all. A DX9, however, will be quite a jump up in quality, because of all the shader effects.

We don't know much yet about the scalability of processor speeds, but since the game can play on as low as a 700mHz I would guess that a 1gHz or better and a good graphics card should be a good solid start. We don't know what higher speeds open up (since most of the better features we know of are graphics features), but obviously they are likely to be better.