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I've been following this new slowdown problem on my Half-Life 2 Stuttering Page. I am experiencing this issue as well and have received many reports of others with this problem.

I have posted an analysis of this issue with some performance graphs illustrating the problem and have forwarded it all to Valve.

I've been following this new slowdown problem on my Half-Life 2 Stuttering Page. I am experiencing this issue as well and have received many reports of others with this problem.

I have posted an analysis of this issue with some performance graphs illustrating the problem and have forwarded it all to Valve.

Reminds me of their original press release that said that there were a "small number of users" encountering the stutter bug in HL2. Yeah, real small numbers.

While I agree on Half-Life 2 being a masterpiece, there are some problems almost all reviews fail to mention - all seem to be positive to the point of being uncritical, as if it's a crime to say anything negative about the game.

Firstly, while everyone talks about the graphics, no one mentions how the engine is not really the best one there is currently. Both Doom 3 and Far Cry seem to me more impressive from a purely technological standpoint - but since Source is so well used in HL2, with beautiful textures, a nice water shader and brilliant visual design, this can be forgiven.

Secondly, HL2 is still very much on a rail shooter - the beautiful backdrop of City 17 is there for a minor part of the game and most of it is strictly ornamental; virtually no exploration is possible. Again, this is not a major problem since it is an integral part of the game's design - I just wish it were mentioned in the reviews.

Thirdly (and this is my biggest gripe) - enemy A.I. is not up to the level. Enemies often face the wrong way, sometimes take decidedly stupid paths and this, for me, often ruins suspention of disbelief - not so much with animalesque alien thingies such as headcrabs, but one would expect more from human soldiers.

And last (but not least irritating) - you often get stuck on pieces of debris and climbing the ladders can be frustrating.

Also, there is the well-documented stuttering bug - which brings me to another thing. Why could it be that, after half a decade of waiting, everyone wants to play the game right away? Isn't it more prudent to wait a few weeks for the patch to come out and have a better experience?

Here's an update from Valve on that issue, looks like it should be fixed today or tomorrow:

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

See VE3D and here.

from This site - Vampire: The Masquerade, which is based on Half-Life 2's Source engine is also reported to have the same stuttering issues.

looks like engine problem.

# It occurs on both Intel and AMD CPUs of all speeds.
# It occurs on systems with 2+ GB of RAM although it appears to be worse for users with 512MB of RAM or less.
# It occurs on both ATI and NVIDIA video cards, including video cards with 256MB RAM.
# It occurs with multiple sound cards and chipsets, including the Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, Audigy 2, NVIDIA SoundStorm, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek, etc.
# It occurs after disabling sound in-game, disabling the sound card in device manager, and even after removing the sound card entirely.
# It occurs regardless of in-game screen resolution.
# It occurs for both CD/DVD installations and installations downloaded via Steam.
# It occurs on all supported versions of Windows including Windows XP Service Pack 2.
# It occurs on all supported versions of ATI CATALYST and NVIDIA ForceWare drivers, including the CATALYST 4.12 and ForceWare 67.02 beta drivers that contain optimizations for Source engine games.

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/