Half Life 2

Here we'll use Half Life 2 to test the DirectX9 rendering performance of the graphics boards in this title. We are using our own internal benchmark from a level that has a lot of shader usage in order to maximise the utilisation of the graphics board, rather than the CPU.

Half Life 2 (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
7800 GTX 113.5 112.7 112.2 109.8 86.8
6800 Ultra 106.3 105.9 98.4 85.5 57.3
7800 GTX SLI 107.1 106.6 105.9 105.8 104.8
6800 Ultra SLI 100.8 100.3 99.7 99.6 89.1
7800 GTX % Faster than 6800 Ultra 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Single 6.8% 6.4% 14.1% 28.3% 51.3%
SLI 6.2% 6.3% 6.2% 6.2% 17.6%
% SLI Increase 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
7800 GTX -5.7% -5.3% -5.6% -3.6% 20.8%
6800 Ultra -5.2% -5.3% 1.4% 16.4% 55.5%

Our Half Life 2 test is beginning to show some CPU limitations at high resolutions on the 7800 GTX, but this still allows for a 53% performance increase over the 6800 Ultra which is more graphics bound. Because the SLI setups are more CPU limited the gains aren't as high as in other cases, especially not for the 7800 GTX SLI - note, again, a single 7800 GTX is very close to the performance of 6800 Ultra in SLI mode.

Half Life 2, 4x FSAA & 8x AF (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
7800 GTX 112.5 112.3 105.8 90.1 61.0
6800 Ultra 106.2 101.4 78.0 62.1 41.2
7800 GTX SLI 107.8 106.8 106.3 105.6 96.1
6800 Ultra SLI 100.7 100.0 99.3 93.5 70.8
7800 GTX % Faster than 6800 Ultra 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Single 5.9% 10.7% 35.6% 45.1% 48.0%
SLI 7.1% 6.7% 7.1% 13.0% 35.9%
% SLI Increase 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
7800 GTX -4.2% -4.9% 0.5% 17.3% 57.6%
6800 Ultra -5.3% -1.3% 27.3% 50.6% 71.6%

With 4x FSAA and 8x AF enabled this Half Life 2 test becomes a little more graphics limited, and whilst the differences between the 7800 and 6800 in single board mores stay at similar levels to normal rendering, there are greater gains to be had with SLI. Note that again a single 7800 GTX is only rendering 10 FPS, on average, behind the 6800 Ultra's in SLI.

Half Life 2, 8xS FSAA & 16x AF (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
7800 GTX 110.8 103.4 73.5 53.4 33.1
6800 Ultra 99.4 77.8 50.6 35.9 18.8
7800 GTX SLI 106.2 105.4 102.5 89.5 60.5
6800 Ultra SLI 99.7 98.2 83.5 62.9 41.4
7800 GTX % Faster than 6800 Ultra 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Single 11.4% 32.9% 45.3% 48.7% 76.2%
SLI 6.6% 7.4% 22.7% 42.4% 46.4%
% SLI Increase 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
7800 GTX -4.1% 2.0% 39.4% 67.7% 82.8%
6800 Ultra 0.2% 26.2% 65.0% 75.2% 120.0%

With 8xS FSAA and 16x AF enabled we can see the performance gap between the 7800 GTX and 6800 Ultra open up even further than in the other cases on this test - this could be due to the fact that 8xS requires twice as many samples to go through the fragment shaders, which the extra shader power of the 7800 GTX can handle more effectively.