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HalfLife2 RTX Demo Is out!

Are you interested in HalfLife 2 with Ray Tracing?

  • Yes! Bring it on!

    Votes: 44 42.3%
  • Yes, worth a try.

    Votes: 26 25.0%
  • No, I like the original look more.

    Votes: 20 19.2%
  • Something else, comment below.

    Votes: 14 13.5%

  • Total voters
    104
I'd be disappointed if my RTX branded graphics card struggled to run RTX branded games, personally. NVIDIA has a reputation as the plug-and-play option; that's not very plug-and-play of them.
Where is the cutoff? Will you be saying this in 2030? If a 2018 $300 GPU struggles to run RTX branded games?

It's a rather simplistic view of things that if your card has RTX in the name then all RTX games should run perfectly for an indefinite amount of time into the future, if it's even true that Turing and Ampere cards have so much trouble in HL2 RTX.

GTX 680 has trouble running modern games too, is that a disappointing product because of that? Does it mean NVIDIA isn't very plug-and-play?

People who bought RTX Turing on release almost eight years ago have many more features than what was advertised at the time. RTX Video, broadcast, transformer DLSS etc. Hardly disappointing.
 
Hate to admit but still haven't played any HL titles practically at all, I entered the world of PC gaming too late for the "real" era of HL1 so I wasn't interested of the others either. I do have them on Steam though and I've played some Black Mesa but haven't finished it yet.

Radeon cards work. They've been tested and do well.
Though if the performance is similar to Portal RTX, Radeons are in trouble. Wonder how 9070 XT performs though since RDNA4 has much better RT performance.

Where is the cutoff? Will you be saying this in 2030? If a 2018 $300 GPU struggles to run RTX branded games?

It's a rather simplistic view of things that if your card has RTX in the name then all RTX games should run perfectly for an indefinite amount of time into the future, if it's even true that Turing and Ampere cards have so much trouble in HL2 RTX.

People who bought RTX Turing on release almost eight years ago have many more features than what was advertised at the time. RTX Video, broadcast, etc. Hardly disappointing.
I think his point is that RT has still too much of a performance penalty.
 
I think his point is that RT has still too much of a performance penalty.
Maybe on the first generation Intel card he's tested, which is not exactly surprising.
 
if it's even true that Turing and Ampere cards have so much trouble in HL2 RTX.
I don't think so. So far people with 2070's and 3060's seem to be running fine, just with settings turned down. That's not really trouble, it's more of a trade-off.

Though if the performance is similar to Portal RTX
I can't speak to that, but...
Wonder how 9070 XT performs though since RDNA4 has much better RT performance.
...if my friend can run it on his 7800XT at 1440p...

Maybe on the first generation Intel card he's tested, which is not exactly surprising.
True, but the ARC cards aren't really supported(yet). So it's kind of a moot point.

I think people are worrying about nothing. Yeah one needs a fairly modern card, but it only really needs to be a 2070/7600XT or better and turn some settings down.
 
I don't think so. So far people with 2070's and 3060's seem to be running fine, just with settings turned down. That's not really trouble, it's more of a trade-off.
Exactly.

Owners of older GPUs turning settings down as the years go by, hardly a groundbreaking phenomenon.
 
Hate to admit but still haven't played any HL titles practically at all, I entered the world of PC gaming too late for the "real" era of HL1 so I wasn't interested of the others either. I do have them on Steam though and I've played some Black Mesa but haven't finished it yet.
I'll one up you and admit I've never played any Call of Duty title.
 
All the need to do is just come out with HL3 like been rumored for like 20 years now... and bring it on!!
 
Go turn off all your lights. How’s that “visual experience“ now?

Light is what we see, nothing else. Game textures are literally fake substitutions for light.
Not what I said. Don't distort my point, please.

When you want to do that come over to the Win11 discussion thread and I'll walk you through a customized/debloated version, perfectly legit of course. It's really easy too.
No W11 for me - too much hassle. But thanks anyway. :)

I've got copies of some pretty lean and configured W10 on my two HTPCs, I'll go with cloning one of them for a start. Although they're Intel + Nvidia systems, but so what... DDU exists. :D
 
Is it a good idea to occasionally rework older games so that they will run better on modern hardware and OS? Yeah, sure. I can think of a handful of games that would benefit from it. I cannot say Half Life 2 was very high on the list for me. Seems vastly over-hyped......I mean, it's still the same game. Even with RT and whatever fancy modern visual effects you want to throw at it, it is still not going to be anything new. I felt the same way about the quake rt remakes, and I am a huge Quake and all things id fan.

i really don't get the fervor, but whatever. Not hurting anyone......beats playing any of the new games (all the new games i am hoping for seem to get stuck in pre-release limbo and die).
 
lol, mid 30's here (4k) w/ 79000xtx

1742349960448.png
 
I voted "something else" because I don't care about this game I played long ago. Now my son on the other hand will play it for sure. My boy mainly plays old valve games. He's a strange one. All his buddies play COD and he's like, nah I'm gonna get me some Gary's Mod or Half Life or Portal. :)
 
Not sure if it was mentioned but it's only a 35GB download that takes up 83GB once it's installed.
 
Not sure if it was mentioned but it's only a 35GB download that takes up 83GB once it's installed.
Back in the day that would sound huge lol.
 
Back in the day that would sound huge lol.

I remember when I got my first 40GB HDD and thought it was huge lol like 20 years ago.... I don't even remember what it cost.


Not sure what all the fuss is about works great on my RX580

Screenshot (45).png

Screenshot (46).png

All joking aside framegen kinda sucks in this and it ignores my power limit that I used CP2077 path racing to set which is interesting.
 
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All joking aside framegen kinda sucks in this and it ignores my power limit that I used CP2077 path racing to set which is interesting.
Both of those are interesting to me, ignoring a power limit set is pretty wild, maybe reboot and double check settings to confirm?

And I said it in a previous comment but I find FG x2 to be actually smoother feeling than without in this game, the frame time graph is suuuper smooth without but it doesn't feel smooth with mouse movement. Chuck on 2x FG and it feels glorious and buttery. 40 series and 50 series differences maybe? I wouldn't have thought.
 
Both of those are interesting to me, ignoring a power limit set is pretty wild, maybe reboot and double check settings to confirm?

And I said it in a previous comment but I find FG x2 to be actually smoother feeling than without in this game, the frame time graph is suuuper smooth without but it doesn't feel smooth with mouse movement. Chuck on 2x FG and it feels glorious and buttery. 40 series and 50 series differences maybe? I wouldn't have thought.

it looks smooth but the artifacts are super obvious wouldn't be as noticeable on a TV from about 6-8 feet but 2 feet away on an ultrawide I can see them all.

Our latency tolerance must be vastly different on a mouse and keyboard even with DLSS set to performance the hit is too high for me I have to use a controller.
 
Running 1080p, getting about 45fps with 5950x + 4060LP

1742354035373.png

1742354113473.png

I forgot about those things on the ceilings

1742354732652.png
 
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it looks smooth but the artifacts are super obvious wouldn't be as noticeable on a TV from about 6-8 feet but 2 feet away on an ultrawide I can see them all.

Our latency tolerance must be vastly different on a mouse and keyboard even with DLSS set to performance the hit is too high for me I have to use a controller.
I sit about 2 feet away from a 42" OLED TV used as a monitor and I didn't notice anything, at least nothing that attracted my gaze and broke immersion, what I noticed was how much smoother and nicer it actually felt to play - also on a mouse and keyboard. I think FG off just felt like bad frame pacing more than a responsiveness thing, where FG on was perfectly smooth butter, but It's also odd to me and maybe something is up with my FG OFF frame pacing that isn't showing in the frame time graph? because yeah I mean I'm not exactly new to keyboard and mouse shooters and how they feel, and I am very sensitive to latency and artefacts. More playtime and investigation needed on my part.
 
I sit about 2 feet away from a 42" OLED TV used as a monitor and I didn't notice anything, at least nothing that attracted my gaze and broke immersion, what I noticed was how much smoother and nicer it actually felt to play - also on a mouse and keyboard. I think FG off just felt like bad frame pacing more than a responsiveness thing, where FG on was perfectly smooth butter, but It's also odd to me and maybe something is up with my FG OFF frame pacing that isn't showing in the frame time graph? because yeah I mean I'm not exactly new to keyboard and mouse shooters and how they feel, and I am very sensitive to latency and artefacts. More playtime and investigation needed on my part.

Might have to do with how bad the 5080 performs in this game at 4k it's like 44% slower than the 5090 at natively rendered frames or alternatively the 5090 is 80% faster....

Hopefully @W1zzard has time to benchmark it so we can all LOL at how many cards can actually run it at 4k.
 
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