Source Engine: Counterstrike Beta Hits The Street
by Derek Wilson on August 26, 2004 5:22 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
ATI is the performance leader when we're talking about Source Engine performance at the high end. Unfortunately, we didn't have an X800 XT to compare with our 6800 Ultra, nor did we have our 6800 nonultra that we predict would have fallen between the 9800 XT and X800 Pro (closer to the latter) in our tests. Apparently, some of our graphics cards decided to go on vacation this week to visit a penguin. When it comes to upper midrange, NVIDIA's 6800 GT seems to have a leg up on the X800 Pro in most tests (though this may have changed if we could have gotten our Pro to run 20x15). This is just further proof that (so far) the GT offers some of the best value in NVIDIA's lineup.Overall, the framerates we saw in these tests were higher than we expected. Doom III will bring just about anything to its knees at the highest settings, and 2048x1536 wasn't even an option on the list. We still expect to see very high framerates when gameplay elements (more CPU usage) are introduced into the mix. This follows the traditional view (that id Software broke from with Doom III) that higher resolutions and higher framerates are always the better option. Certainly, these aspects have their place, but id has proven they aren't the be all end all of graphics engine design. This fundamental difference in viewpoint helps explain our initial impressions of each game. Source can look incredibly crisp running at a steady framerate at 20x15, and Doom III can look incredibly frightening at 10x7 with its intense shadows, atmosphere and lighting effects, and well executed low contrast edges between overlapping objects.
We will absolutely still have to wait for Halflife 2 before we can make any further judgment calls about relative goodness of the engine. Obviously the outcome of our tests revealed that even when source is pushing its hardest against a graphics cards, modern hardware doesn't have any major trouble rendering scenes.
From our brief look at CPU scaling, we can see that none of our tests were really CPU bound. This helps us know we were pushing our graphics hardware as hard as possible. We can also expect Valve to use as much of the CPU headroom they can for other things in the actual game. This is why we haven't taken as in depth a look at CPU scaling yet.
We hope our coverage of Valve's latest beta release has been informative, and if there is anything further anyone would like to explore, please feel free to drop us a comment and let us know.
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DerekWilson - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
#18 If there are any typos, please point them out any typos and they will be corrected. We have already fixed the problem our first commenter pointed out.#19 We have Extreme cards from a couple different manufactures. We also have Platinum cards from a couple different manufactures. We wouldn't still be testing these cards if all we had were NV and ATI reference samples.
Drayvn - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Umm, i dont know why, but there are no official Ultra Extremes only overclocked ones, nVidia has stated that they told the Add on manufacturers they can indeed overclock their cards, but they cannot call it the Ultra Extreme, so i dont know why u have that card in there as there are none, if u would have called it an Ultra OC then that would have been fine, because it seems there will never be an Ultra Extreme.esun - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Regardless of the quality of the article and benchmarks and whatnot, it seems like there are a lot of typos in this article (just takes away from its credibility and professionalism IMO).DerekWilson - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
#15Sorry, the video stress test does not run with any sound. It actually does (as much as possible) what it says -- it focuses on video performance.
Jalf - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Shame about the X800 pro. Would be interesting to be able to compare it to the GT at high-res. Would be interesting to see how much the GT benefits from having all 16 pipelines at the high-res scenario... (Or how much it loses)In either case, I disagree with #5.
It doesn't show clearly that NVidia isn't performance leader.
On the other hand it shows that NVidia isn't clearly the performance leader. :P
Performance-wise, I'd call it a tie for now. They're both damn fast as far as I'm concerned. ATI are working on improving their Doom 3 performance, and I have a hunch NVidia are going to put some more effort into their HL2 performance now.
Anyway, to those wanting to see a mid-range card, you've got the 4400. You should be able to extrapolate from that.
ir0nw0lf - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Was the sound turned on or off during these tests? There is no mention that I could find of that, perhaps I missed it being mentioned?thelanx - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Granted these are real game benchmarks, but we can extrapolate and estimate like the article said. HL2 will probably be more cpu intesive and less graphically intensive. These benchmarks will cheer up many people I think. Those with high end cards will be happy that whatever they chose to buy, it will run HL2 great, and mid-range card owners will be happy that their cards should run HL2 very well. The real game will probably be less graphically demanding but more cpu intenstive, so my 9700pro with my 2.5GHz A64 will probably run the game better than the graphics stress test, especially at 10x7, my lcd's native resolution.Zephyr106 - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
I agree completely with #2. Benchmark it on some of the midrange cards. And a $400 6800GT isn't midrange. Specifically because Valve has said they hope the game will be scalable for slower hardware, and alot of those 9600 Pro/XT owners have HL2 vouchers, and I'm sure not all have upgraded.Avalon - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Can't exactly call ATI the performance winner here. the X800 XT PE is often only a few frames better than the 6800 UE, and the GT is often a few frames better than the X800 pro. Seems almost more closer to a tie than one side actually performing better. Regardless, by using a little observation, it seems like my 9700 pro will be able to run the game just fine at 10x7, and I might even have room for a bit of eye candy :)PsharkJF - Thursday, August 26, 2004 - link
Why would you even need to run HL2 at 20x15? lol.10x7 or 12x10 is fine for me, and it looks like my old GF4Ti4200 can run it well enough.