Half-Life 2 is a popular franchise and we benchmark the video cards using Episode Two with the aid of HOC Half-Life 2 Episode Two benchmarking utility using the “HOC Demo 1” provided by this program. We ran the game in three 16:10 widescreen resolutions, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, and 2560×1600, under two scenarios. First with quality set to maximum, bilinear filtering and anti-aliasing set to x0. This configuration we are calling “low” on the charts and tables below. Then we maxed out image quality settings, enabling x16 anisotropic filtering and 16xQCS anti-aliasing. This configuration we are calling “high” on our charts and tables. We updated the game up to the June 9th 2008 patch. The results below are the average number of frames per second (FPS) achieved by each card.
A+ El Diablo Advance from Tagan is a full-tower case with a big 330-mm side fan, two 180-mm fans on the top and one 250-mm fan on the front, plus a thermometer. Let’s see if this is really a good case.
We tested the Lynx, an entry level lightweight tower CPU cooler from Prolimatech, that comes with three U-shaped heatpipes and a 120 mm fan. Check it out!
Cooler Master Sileo 500 is a mid-tower case with aluminum front panel and lots of noise-reduction pads that can optionally come with a 500 W power supply already installed.
