Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Publisher: Valve

As one part of our game of the year 2007, Half-Life 2: Episode Two set a new high in narrative and gameplay for the series. Using Valve's widely used, albeit not overly hardware intensive, Source engine that also features as a part of legendary games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Portal, we were keen to feature its performance here too.

The Source engine is the most scalable engine we test. While it still supports only DirectX 9.0, it features effects like dynamic lighting with HDR effects, motion blur, advanced Havok Physics and high model details.

Episode Two took Half-Life out into large open environments for the first time and we test with Gordon running through a large open level that combines forest and houses with explosions and physics.

All in game detail settings are set to their highest levels, with HDR enabled and, for anti-aliasing, MSAA was used and controlled from inside the game.


For Half-Life 2: Episode Two and the Source engine, the Phenom II again scores a win by largely exceeding the CPUs it's priced against - the 940 is faster than the Q9450, Q9550 and even Q9650, and is only half an fps away from the QX9770 with DDR3 too. It's still an fps or two away from the Core i7 920, but even the Phenom II X4 920 is not that far behind and still faster than the Intel E8500 and Q9550 CPUs. Generally, the going is very good for AMD and while not the absolute fastest CPUs, the table is nicely mixed up with green bars, rather than all sluggishly toiling at the bottom.