The source engine just impressed the hell out of me...

[CaptNKILL]

Ok, this is a dumb and pointless thread, but I had to post this and I didnt want to post randomly in an unrelated thread.

Im temporarily using my very very old geforce 2 mx200 pci 32mb (64bit SDR memory... yeah, no DDR) until my 7950 GX2 arrives from eVGA, and I thought I'd be limited to either really really old games or web browsing.

So last night I played some of The Dig and some Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet (both point and click adventure games from the early\mid 90s).

Today I decided to load up Steam for a good laugh and attempt to load HL2.

To my surprise it detected that I was using a very old driver (57.xx something... the default driver windows found for this card) but gave me the option to play anyways.

It loaded up. While it was loading I saw the colors get all nasty, like 16bit color mode. I started to giggle, expecting a complete slideshow once I got to the main menu.

Again, to my surprise it loaded and was running SMOOTHLY. It didnt look bad either. I checked the video settings and it had changed everything to low, with model detail set to medium and the resolution set to 800x600.

I loaded up Ravenholm and it worked fine! I played the game for like a half hour. It was running fine and it looked pretty good considering the graphics card.

We're talking about the crappiest low end card from 2000 running one of the top tier games from 2004 at very playable framerates without even being set to the lowest detail settings.

I'm just completely impressed. I always liked this engine, despite its irritating bugs, but this just tops it. I never would have expected a recent game to scale so well with an ancient piece of crap graphics card.

Im impressed with this card too. Its held its own any time I've thrown it in my PC while awaiting a new video card :p

[SH64]

I have to agree .. Source is very scalable , looks artistically superb & performs very good.
in a kinda similar situation , my Quad SLI system is playing HL2 @1600x1200,32xAA with SS Transparancy AA just nicely .. which again shows how scalable is this engine.

i think Source is like Panadol .. its tough on the graphics , easy on the performance :p

[nutcrackr]

I got the same impression when my 9700pro died, I was running a geforce 2 mx 400 and it ran it pretty ok at low settings and low resolution, some cs:s maps lagged out a bit but it was decent. UT2k4 ran pretty well too. Doom 3 on the other hand ran at 2fps with everything on low or off.

[nV`andrew]

hmm on my friends unichrome graphics card (integrated) it cant run source, it gives u the warning about being able to play and then when he plays CS:S it lags sooo bad, he can play 1.6 though. im installed a 5200fx 256mb PCI (i think its 256 but probably 128) tomorrow, and just incase...it will work right? other than that hes got a sempron 3400 and 512mb of ram. i know it will run it, but im freaked out that for soime odd reason it wont work. heh. anyways, the upgrade from some integrated poo to even a 5200fx should be pretty decent. the processor is good, obviously from an old series, but still decent and he has a good amonut of ram to jsut be palyin source games right? and should i use the drivers its coming with (evga) or sicne they're old which ones should i install.

thank you

[supra]

not too surprised about that. source engine is more cpu hungry than graphics. i remember i was using a 5700 when I first got hl2 and was running athlon xp 2600+ and then i switched to a 3000+ and noticed a instant 20fps increase.

[ClosetFanBoy]

my gaming rig fried a few weeks back (im actually quite happy with that, gives me an excuse to do an all out upgrade :D ) but in the meantime i really wanted to play episode 1, and as of now im puttering around on a p3 1ghz 256mbr fossil, with a 5900xt in it, it gets away with playing all the q3 based games fairly well (fairly is the key word) so i figured screw it, im anxious im gonna try it, and it actually played decent, some gnarly skipping in certain parts, usually with certain sounds, explosions, maybe 512mb ram would help, but still, it was nice.

[CaptNKILL]

hmm on my friends unichrome graphics card (integrated) it cant run source, it gives u the warning about being able to play and then when he plays CS:S it lags sooo bad, he can play 1.6 though. im installed a 5200fx 256mb PCI (i think its 256 but probably 128) tomorrow, and just incase...it will work right? other than that hes got a sempron 3400 and 512mb of ram. i know it will run it, but im freaked out that for soime odd reason it wont work. heh. anyways, the upgrade from some integrated poo to even a 5200fx should be pretty decent. the processor is good, obviously from an old series, but still decent and he has a good amonut of ram to jsut be palyin source games right? and should i use the drivers its coming with (evga) or sicne they're old which ones should i install.

thank you
Yeah a 5200 should work fine. Make sure to check your graphics settings though, the 5200 might try to use more features than it can handle. With my mx200 it couldnt enable any pixel shader effects... with an fx card it can.

Test it to make sure its running good. Dont try high resolutions either :p

[nV`andrew]

Yeah a 5200 should work fine. Make sure to check your graphics settings though, the 5200 might try to use more features than it can handle. With my mx200 it couldnt enable any pixel shader effects... with an fx card it can.

Test it to make sure its running good. Dont try high resolutions either :p


yeah i defnitely had that in mind. I'll probably set it to 800x600. This makes me more happy though cuz i dont want to screw him over! :D

[wrathofgod]

4) "1337" Gaming PC : Athlon64 X2 4800+ , DFI nF4 SLI-DR Expert Venus , Thermaltake 750W , 2x7950GX2 (Quad SLI) , 2GB OCZ Titanium DDR400

Off topic...got any benches of that badboy?