HalfLife2 RTX Demo Is out!

[phanbuey]

I had an MX440 in an emachines sempron rig when I first tried to run HL2.

it did not go well. Even worse than this demo, if u can imagine.

 

[wolf]

My brother had an FX 5200. Oh. My. God! That card was really something else.

Edit: Now that I think about it, something seems to be haunting the FX name. Also the 5000 series model number.

Queue the X-Files theme music

I had a woeful FX5600XT in the day, which is actually worse than several FX5200 models/variants, such was the utter mess of the FX series and naming. From there I did 9600XT, 9800Pro then 6800 Ultra.

 

[AusWolf]

I had an MX440 in an emachines dem prob rig when I first tried to run HL2.

it did not go well. Even worse than this demo, if u can imagine.

If I remember right, MX cards were extremely gimped weaklings. Ti was the way to go.

 

[phanbuey]

If I remember right, MX cards were extremely gimped weaklings. Ti was the way to go.

It ran for the first 30 seconds really choppy during the jet ski opening and then would crash when I imagine it ran out of vram….

I had to scrounge up all my ramen money to buy the ati card, and oh my what a difference.

 

[A Computer Guy]

You just highlighted the key point: There's more than one way to skin a cat. RayTracing is flexible and can be done in many varying ways. The general concept tracing light rays is the same, but the way it's done is very customizable for the specific needs of the use-case scenario.

However, until a better way to replicate lighting comes about, mimicking nature with raytracing is now the standard and isn't going anywhere.


I'm betting real money you could get above 60 consistently if you tweak some more.

Ha, I found the menu, ALT+X in the game to get to User Graphics Settings. The afterburner stats overlay was blocking my view of the help text at the top of the screen for the keyboard shortcut so I missed it. But now I've managed to royally screw up my game. I was in the dev mode and clicked restore defaults and now the game is in a partially rendered mess. I might have to wipe it and reinstall to fix it.

( edit ) I was able to fix it with the steam verify integrity of game files function for the game. Afterward I jacked the rendering to Ultra and was able to play around 30fps with 78% vram usage on my 5950x + 4060LP (8G vram) + 64GB RAM. Is 60 fps better than 30 fps yes... but it seems doable at 30fps.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

It ran for the first 30 seconds really choppy during the jet ski opening and then would crash when I imagine it ran out of vram….

I had to scrounge up all my ramen money to buy the ati card, and oh my what a difference.

I don't remember what I had it was mainly meant for Diablo 2 which needed a potato but it sucked ass at running Half-life 2. I prefered consoles till about 2008-2010 and even though I still own them it's been pc first since then.

Fraps baby lol I always think about it when I think about Half-life 2 and crysis.


I only updated my pc every 4-5 years from 1998-2008 but it was always the whole pc I didn't even know building them was a thing till 2005-2006 but X360/PS3 looked more appealing to me at their launches anyway.

It wasn't till I had my POS Dell XPS in 2008 with seemingly decent specs that I started gearing up for a pc build that ended up being around the launch of the GTX 580.




Interesting showdown 2021 vs 2025 in a pro Nvidia game ofc... 3080ti vs 9700XT

 

[wolf]

I might have to wipe it and reinstall to fix it.

Maybe try verifying game files? or even deleting a couple you think could be config related then verifying again before a complete reinstall.

 

[JustBenching]

What the hell are you peeps talking about? Nvidia hasnt increased RT performance? This is a purely RT workload, explain it please...It's only the 5070 and the 5080 that are kinda meh compared to last gen, 5070ti and 5090 are a decent jump.



EDIT. Posted a new one from the latest review to include 5xxx and 9070

Spoiler

 

[AusWolf]

What the hell are you peeps talking about? Nvidia hasnt increased RT performance? This is a purely RT workload, explain it please...It's only the 5070 and the 5080 that are kinda meh compared to last gen, 5070ti and 5090 are a decent jump.
View attachment 390684


EDIT. Posted a new one from the latest review to include 5xxx and 9070

Spoiler

There is no such thing as a purely RT workload.

 

[JustBenching]

There is no such thing as a purely RT workload.

Today, we’re releasing a new 3DMark feature test that measures pure ray-tracing performance. You can use the 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test to compare the performance of the dedicated ray-tracing hardware in the latest graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA.

The 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test is designed to make ray-tracing the limiting factor. Instead of relying on traditional rendering, the whole scene is ray-traced and drawn in one pass.

The result of the test depends entirely on ray-tracing performance.

 

[AusWolf]

Today, we’re releasing a new 3DMark feature test that measures pure ray-tracing performance. You can use the 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test to compare the performance of the dedicated ray-tracing hardware in the latest graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA.

How does it render objects then?

Edit: Also, why is the 9070 XT behind the 7900 XTX when it's ahead by miles in every single RT game in Wizz's tests? Something's not right there.

 

[JustBenching]

How does it render objects then?

Edit: Also, why is the 9070 XT behind the 7900 XTX when it's ahead by miles in every single game in Wizz's tests? Something's not right there.

W1z hasn't tested PT games I think. Computer base has, the 9070xt isn't far off the 7900xtx, actually it loses in some of those (eg. Indiana Jones).

 

[AusWolf]

W1z hasn't tested PT games I think. Computer base has, the 9070xt isn't far off the 7900xtx, actually it loses in some of those (eg. Indiana Jones).

Interesting. And how does the 5080 perform against the 4080 Super in Indiana Jones?

Edit: Never mind, I found a review. Actually, the 5080 and 4080 Super still show the same nonexistent difference in Indiana Jones that they do anywhere else. But, there's a similar 10% difference in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 that you showed in the 3DMark benchmark, even though KCD2 doesn't use any RT. The plot thickens.

Edit 2: This makes me think that KCD2 and the 3DMark PT benchmark can utilise the new FP/INT core allocation and parallel computing in Blackwell better, and it's not an RT improvement. It can't be RT because KCD2 doesn't have RT. Meanwhile, the 9070 XT is behind because AMD is still not very good with PT, and the 7900 XTX is only helped by having more cores (and VRAM).

 

[JustBenching]

Interesting. And how does the 5080 perform against the 4080 Super in Indiana Jones?

Edit: Never mind, I found a review. Actually, the 5080 and 4080 Super still show the same nonexistent difference in Indiana Jones that they do anywhere else. But, there's a similar 10% difference in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 that you showed in the 3DMark benchmark, even though KCD2 doesn't use any RT. The plot thickens.

The plot was to counter your point that Nvidia hasn't improved rt from Turing to today. That is just nowhere near true. The 5090 is 6 times faster than the 2080ti

 

[AusWolf]

The plot was to counter your point that Nvidia hasn't improved rt from Turing to today. That is just nowhere near true. The 5090 is 6 times faster than the 2080ti

Because it has a lot more cores running at a much higher frequency.

Look at my second edit for my post above.

 

[JustBenching]

Because it has a lot more cores running at a much higher frequency.

Yes...? And that's a bad thing because..? I'm sure I'm missing something, isn't that how gpus work? Even for raster? More faster cores etcetera?

 

[AusWolf]

Yes...? And that's a bad thing because..? I'm sure I'm missing something, isn't that how gpus work? Even for raster? More faster cores etcetera?

Never said it's a bad thing. Just that it's not an improvement of the RT cores per se.

 

[Vayra86]

So rather unsurprisingly, its the same talking points as people used for / against Portal RTX. Who woulda thunk?

Well I don't know, one could'a thunk that in the past seven years we made some actual progress, but people are still trying to get to grips with what is supposed to be a simpler workflow where you can just plonk your lighting in the scenes. Anything in motion is still a blurry mess despite four major version updates of DLSS and anywhere it is used without extra special Nvidia TLC.

And people clearly don't like that a whole lot. They're still awaiting the promises made to be fulfilled. It is quite similar to what I've been seeing and saying about it.

What you see here is people identifying stagnation, versus other people saying its really happening 'but not quite there'.
The gist is: its not there yet, seven years in.
Forever in beta.

Frighteningly similar to crypto, too, where some gear suppliers get filthy rich and everyone else is led to believe they'll get rich someday later. And just like in crypto you have the adamant believers that need to downplay all counter arguments to their world vision to stay sane - they call others frustrated to hide their own all-in stance on some promise out of some marketing blurb about how a company has been working on this for decades and its the next best thing - they are invested, not just with money, but pride and ego.

I'll leave to each individual to decide for themselves where they sit on that spectrum, but that spectrum is real, and is visible every time around these subjects.

You just highlighted the key point: There's more than one way to skin a cat. RayTracing is flexible and can be done in many varying ways. The general concept tracing light rays is the same, but the way it's done is very customizable for the specific needs of the use-case scenario.

However, until a better way to replicate lighting comes about, mimicking nature with raytracing is now the standard and isn't going anywhere.

Very true. That's why I also think remekra's post was valuable. Those are tangible arguments to identify progress. But they're all attempts and none of them are really at a point where everyone says 'This is it!' And we've been looking at this for quite a while now.

 

[AusWolf]

To speak on topic a little bit, let's do some testing on the 9070 XT.

Ravenholm level, 3440 x 1440, low quality render, TAA-U Performance setting: 30-50 FPS depending on how heavy the scene is. It's not unplayable, and I'd even risk saying it's enjoyable, if not for the horrible TAA making it look like a bowl of mashed potato.

 

[JustBenching]

Well I don't know, one could'a thunk that in the past seven years we made some actual progress, but people are still trying to get to grips with what is supposed to be a simpler workflow where you can just plonk your lighting in the scenes. Anything in motion is still a blurry mess despite four major version updates of DLSS and anywhere it is used without extra special Nvidia TLC.

And people clearly don't like that a whole lot. They're still awaiting the promises made to be fulfilled. It is quite similar to what I've been seeing and saying about it.

What you see here is people identifying stagnation, versus other people saying its really happening 'but not quite there'.
The gist is: its not there yet, seven years in.
Forever in beta.

Frighteningly similar to crypto, too, where some gear suppliers get filthy rich and everyone else is led to believe they'll get rich someday later. And just like in crypto you have the adamant believers that need to downplay all counter arguments to their world vision to stay sane - they call others frustrated to hide their own all-in stance on some promise out of some marketing blurb about how a company has been working on this for decades and its the next best thing - they are invested, not just with money, but pride and ego.

I'll leave to each individual to decide for themselves where they sit on that spectrum, but that spectrum is real, and is visible every time around these subjects.

If people expect to get higher and higher framerate each gen while RT / PT gets heavier and heavier their expectations are just off. PT on cyberpunk looks much better than RT does, but I need a 4090 to run it as well as my 3090 did run the RT version. This is all totally reasonable.

 

[Vayra86]

If people expect to get higher and higher framerate each gen while RT / PT gets heavier and heavier their expectations are just off. PT on cyberpunk looks much better than RT does, but I need a 4090 to run it as well as my 3090 did run the RT version. This is all totally reasonable.

People just expect playable frames, really. You're in real deep wrt this, but most people just install and play, flick on a function or setting and see what's going on. Then they conclude they get an unplayable mess and move back to raster. Or they try MFG and settle with it, or don't.

Then they come back a few years later and they try it again, and still draw the same conclusions. It doesn't matter whether its technically reasonable - that is also what I mean to say when I say RT doesn't live in isolation. I'm not saying you're wrong here though. Obviously a heavier workload runs slower, that's the whole core of the issue even, the workload is too heavy for the GPUs its designed to run on.

 

[JustBenching]

People just expect playable frames, really. You're in real deep wrt this, but most people just install and play, flick on a function or setting and see what's going on. Then they conclude they get an unplayable mess and move back to raster. Or they try MFG and settle with it, or don't.

Then they come back a few years later and they try it again, and still draw the same conclusions. It doesn't matter whether its technically reasonable - that is also what I mean to say when I say RT doesn't live in isolation. I'm not saying you're wrong here though. Obviously a heavier workload runs slower, that's the whole core of the issue even, the workload is too heavy for the GPUs its designed to run on.

But wasn't that always the case, pre RT as well? You launched a game, tried ultra settings, if your gpu was too slow you just turned the settings down

 

[AusWolf]

People just expect playable frames, really. You're in real deep wrt this, but most people just install and play, flick on a function or setting and see what's going on. Then they conclude they get an unplayable mess and move back to raster. Or they try MFG and settle with it, or don't.

Then they come back a few years later and they try it again, and still draw the same conclusions. It doesn't matter whether its technically reasonable - that is also what I mean to say when I say RT doesn't live in isolation. I'm not saying you're wrong here though. Obviously a heavier workload runs slower, that's the whole core of the issue even, the workload is too heavy for the GPUs its designed to run on.

It's a little bit like...
1. Let's improve our image quality while crushing performance (RT).
2. Let's improve our now horrible performance while crushing image quality (upscaling).
Genius!

But wasn't that always the case, pre RT as well? You launched a game, tried ultra settings, if your gpu was too slow you just turned the settings down

I see your point, but the only problem is that a midrange GPU is still too slow to play with RT even in the first RT games.

 

[stahlhart]

No problem for the 4090/13700K build at 4K; out of the box settings here.

 

[tpa-pr]

View attachment 390672

This just made me realise i'm lacking a bit of knowledge: why the high RAM requirements? I was under the impression ray-tracing was heavy on VRAM and CPU usage only?