ASUS EN9800GTX+ 512MB Dark Knight

The original Half-Life 2 might have first seen the light of day close to four years ago, but it’s still arguably one of the greatest-looking games ever seen on the PC. Follow-up versions, including Episode One and Episode Two, do well to put the Source Engine upgrades to full use. While playing, it’s hard to believe that the game is based on a four+ year old engine, but it still looks great and runs well on almost any GPU purchased over the past few years.

Like Call of Duty 4, Half-Life 2: Episode Two runs well on modest hardware, but a recent mid-range graphics card is recommended if you wish to play at higher than 1680×1050 or would like to top out the available options, including anti-aliasing and very high texture settings.

This game benefits from both the CPU and GPU, and the skies the limit. In order to fully top out the available settings and run the highest resolution possible, you need a very fast GPU or GPUs along with a fast processor. Though the in-game options go much higher, we run our tests with 4xAA and 8xAF to allow the game to remain playable on the smaller mid-range cards.

Our 9800 GTX+ continues to perform well throughout all the tests, with even our 2560×1600 setting being completely playable. Half-Life 2 isn’t that demanding, but it still manages to look superb on a high-end resolution.

Generally speaking, Half-Life 2 should have around 60FPS to be completely fluid, but I found with this card, there wasn’t any noticable lag or tearing using 4xAA, and it looked noticably better than if AA was removed. Anyone will be able to enjoy 2560×1600 performance on this card with AA enabled.