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Counter-Strike: Source Performance Explored

Posted by Zonk on from the tango-down dept.

sand writes "While ATI has hooked up with Valve for Half-Life 2, a recent Firingsquad article gives the performance edge to NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 in Counter-Strike: Source. Six high-end cards are tested against CS:Source in four different maps under a wide variety of graphics settings with GeForce 6800 GT finishing ahead of X800 XT PE in some benchmarks."

9 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting Results by whataboutMike · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interesting results. The 6800 Ultra and GT take top in almost all the tests. I was expecting the X800 to preform a little better on Source.

    1. Re:Interesting Results by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 2, Interesting

      People seem to reckon there's some evil conspiracy between ATI and Valve - while ATI has definitely helped Valve in various ways, it really doesn't sound like Valve has deliberately crippled performance of the Source engine if an Nvidia card is present.

      Guess what brand of video cards the map designers for Half-Life 2 used?

      I think it was just the bells-and-whistles DX9 stuff which was the major problem, and Nvidia's latest cards seem to have that sorted. I know what brand of card I'm getting next - the one with decent Linux drivers as well!

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  2. My heart goes out... by Sevn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To those that will kick themselves for spending 100 bucks more for the x800 over the 6800gt specifically for Valve products. Perhaps if you hurry, you can sell it on ebay for enough to get a 6800GT. On the bright side, I'm glad I waited. Kinda makes my next graphics card purchase decision very easy.

    --
    For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
  3. Better to measure performance of binaries. by Chelloveck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who cares about the performance of the Counter Strike source? It's the binaries that count, man!

    --
    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
  4. Re:Flashbang! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The new flashbang effect is hard to see in screenshots - When you get flashed, the screen goes white, then slowly fades out into an afterimage of what you were looking at when you got flashed. That slowly fades out until you can see what you're actually looking at.

    Hard to describe, but it works really well in-game.

  5. Fails to answer my question by Prien715 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Even the lowest end card they tested was playable in most every resolution. What I want to know is whether I need a new GFX card for HL:Source at all.

    What's the lowest level card you can play with and still get a decent gameplay experience for those of us without $300 to spend on a card that'll be obsolete in 2 years?

    --
    -- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
    1. Re:Fails to answer my question by TellarHK · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have no idea, everyone I know sold some blood or major organs in order to pick up at least a Radeon 9800 for this beast. We've been waiting forever for HL2, after all.

      But seriously, everything I've read and heard leads me to believe that something as low as a GeForce 4 MX will be -playable- so long as your CPU isn't a total dog. And as far as CPU's go, I have a little personal anecdote on this matter myself.

      My Athlon 2400+ XP burned out last night (One of the Thoroughbred-B cores) and so I was forced to slap in my old Athlon 1Ghz (Thunderbird) CPU in its place for the duration until FedEx brings me the new one I ordered today. After getting that chip in place, I loaded up the Video Stress Test from CS: Source and managed to get an almost-respectable 36 fps with the 1Ghz CPU, 1 gig of RAM, and a Radeon 9800. This was only 15 fps lower than the score I got with the 2400+. A significant hit for sure, but still playable. The video card was definitely doing the lion's share of the work, so I can't give all the credit to the processor, but I'm quite pleased to have taken a lower hit in performance than I expected. Valve's official minspec is 1.2Ghz and a DX7 card, so the range is going to be pretty broad.

      For an absolute-minspec machine, I'd suggest a 1.2Ghz processor, a GeForce 4 MX 440 with 64M, 256M of RAM and enough hard drive to handle the install. That'd be playable in 800x600 I think.

      --
      My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
    2. Re:Fails to answer my question by netfool · · Score: 3, Informative
      This was taken from http://www.planethalflife.com/half-life2/ in the Mini FAQ, I don't know how up to date it is or where they got the info, so take it w/ a grain of salt:

      "While the new engine has all sorts of fancy features, it's still designed to scale and work on lower-end machines.
      Apparently a 700mhz processor and a video card capable of running DX6 is enough, although a 2ghz with a GeForce4 is recommended. Rumors about NVidia or ATI exclusivity are unfounded."

      If that's true, that would be great. I don't need all the eye candy, just decent FPS and some good gameplay & I'll be happy 8^)
      I hope DOD:Source is released sometime this year.

      --
      Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
  6. Rant of an NVIDIA fanboy by spuzzzzzzz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nvidia seems to have thoroughly recovered from their 5xxx series. With doom3 and HL2 performing better on a 6800 than X800 there isn't much reason to buy an ATI card right now. Especially with the GNU/Linux driver issue.

    I'll have a good laugh at the HL2 fanboy that mocked me for getting a 6800GT, saying that HL2 is going to be so much better than doom3 that we should all run out and get ATI cards.

    --

    Don't you hate meta-sigs?