HL2 Episode 1 – Dual Card

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (DirectX 9)


The Half-Life 2 series is just too popular to stop and Valve’s move to episodic gaming with HL2: Episode 1 has so far paid off.  Based largely around the technology demo of HL2: Lost Coast, Episode 1 brings new shaders and HDR to gamer’s taking the role of Gordon Freeman.

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 139 

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 140

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 141

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 142

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 143

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 144

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 145

Diamond Multimedia Viper HD 2900 XT 1GB GDDR4 Review - Graphics Cards 146

The CrossFire drivers for Vista don’t seem to be very friendly with HL2: Episode 1 at all, as we couldn’t get either configuration to work at 2560×1600 and only Diamond’s 1GB model worked at 2048×1536 with a pretty impressive 65% performance gain. Interestingly at the 1600×1200 resolution the 1GB model CrossFire setup is much faster than the 512MB version.

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