Half Life 2's real world CPU usage back in the day
Posted by East-Resist6940@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 21 comments
I've tried running HL2 on two era correct systems, a 3200+ Barton and a 3.4GHz Northwood, both paired with a Radeon X800 GTO. They both seem to be playable of course, but hitch on certain parts, leading me to think it's most likely the CPU holding the game back. I've heard before that HL2 benefitted heavily from the Athlon 64 series. Should I aim for that platform instead if I'm looking for smoother frame times? I am thinking about swapping to one of my Socket 939 boards while I have my loop drained and taken apart just to give the X800 a bit more of a chance. I know this borders on 20 years old, but I think it technically counts.
I also know that most people weren't getting a solid 60 frames per second back in the day, but tech was evolving fast especially past 2005 when Netburst started to die and AMD retired the Athlon XP. I feel maybe a CPU one or two years newer than those would possibly give this game a far better chance at running smooth.
Key-Employee3584@reddit
IIRC, I ran it on a Core 2 1800 fairly well.
2raysdiver@reddit
I played it on an Athlon 64 3000+ and it ran fine. I'm not quite sure which GPU, I think it was the ATI Radeon X800 AGP.
GGigabiteM@reddit
I bought HL2 on launch day, it was a bug ridden mess for a long time until Valve patched it several times. Hitching and system crashes were common, especially in the canals with the airboat. I played through it in 17 hours and had system crashes several times. Most of the crashes were physics related, some prop would get very unhappy and black hole, then crash.
I had an Athlon XP 3000+ with a Radeon 9600 when I bought the game and definitely didn't get anywhere near 60 fps. My buddy had a Pentium 4 something with an Nvidia FX card and he fared much worse because of the FX's terrible DX9 support. He got better performance when HT was turned off, because HL2 then was only a single threaded game. Threading didn't get added until the Ep1 engine and rendering with Ep2.
I eventually upgraded to an Athlon 64 3700+ with an x800 GTO and the game ran a whole lot better. It ran best when I got a Geforce 6800GT for a free upgrade not too long after.
Netburst didn't die until 2007 when Core 2 was released, Pentium 4 and Pentium D systems were around for a long time.
East-Resist6940@reddit (OP)
I was somehow rendering videos with a pirated copy of Vegas Pro and a socket 478 CPU back in 2010. I mostly meant when they started to phase them out for newer architectures, but that was poorly wording on my part. Thank you for the really helpful info!
GGigabiteM@reddit
Core 2 came out of left field. Up until it was released, Intel was still quadrupling down on the Netburst architecture with the "Tejas" core. They had it taped out and engineering samples going when it was abandoned due to extreme power consumption and terrible performance. A few people have been able to get their hands on engineering samples, but nobody has been able to get them working due to lack of microcode in the BIOS.
Had a small design team in Israel not been quietly working on extending the Pentium M architecture to create the Core and Core 2 arch, Intel would have been sunk.
It was a good thing that Intel did release Core 2 when it did, because AMD's ego was getting inflated and they started to release mediocre parts for inflated prices. Core 2 immediately put them in last place and they spent the next decade floundering and almost going bankrupt like Intel did.
LXC37@reddit
I find that period of time fascinating. While AMD was very successful this success was largely built on Intel's misfortunes - netburst, itanium...
K7 was great, then K8 included whole bunch of awesome innovations - 64bit extensions, IMC, etc. But actual raw performance increase between K7 and K8 was not all that great. Especially considering state of software - everything was still 32bit, no real use for dual cores, etc.
Faster memory did improve things, but realistically all the way from AthlonXP/barton to AM2 Athlon64 X2/brisbane practical performance improvements were not all that great.
As nice as first AMD dual cores were compared to intel's netburst based ones... if they were compared/had to compete with something more reasonable they would have been perceived completely differently, as core2 showed a bit later...
SubPrimeCardgage@reddit
I had a 9800XT which was faster than your 9600, but it still had frame dips. I upgraded to an x800 pro and new CPU which helped a lot, but still had frame dips. I didn't get the ability to crank settings with impunity until I upgraded to a 9800GT and a Core 2 Quad several years later.
HL2 was remarkably good at running on comparatively slow hardware, but it could be a real pig if you gave it the right hardware.
1Steelghost1@reddit
60 frames a second 20 years ago!?
That number wasn't even on the radar back then!!
GapOk8380@reddit
I think people either forget this, or weren't playing back then and do t realize how we were paupers for performance back then.
You played on what you had and had a good experience no matter what.
East-Resist6940@reddit (OP)
For me it's not as much about the framerate as it is the stuttering that locks up the game for a split second.
Stooovie@reddit
And the mid-level loadings!
THE_MLG_DOCTOR12@reddit
I’ve got the launch build (2153) running on my (almost) era appropriate late Windows 98 pc with a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 and a Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400. It uses 100% of the cpu according to Idyle Task Manager 98 on the intro map to Water Hazard. It sits between 30 and 40 fps just sitting here on the lowest settings.
GGigabiteM@reddit
3D games have always allocated the largest CPU time slice to themselves for performance. There are some badly programmed 2D games though that do the same because they don't have a proper way to idle. Sim Tower and Sim City 2000 are examples.
BCProgramming@reddit
I played through HL2 on a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4, I remember it running well, but I don't actually remember too many specifics about performance. I think most performance things were the result of a lot of physics happening. I do remember that the system had 1GB of RAM and I was using an BFGTech NVidia 5500FX.
The main thing I remember is t hat Throwing an explosive barrel into a bunch of other barrels for example would stutter at the point of contact for example.
giantsparklerobot@reddit
One thing to try is disabling the updated video post-processing. Add the
-nofboargument to the launch options of the shortcut. This used to be helpful with weird video stuttering issues.IIRC there's not much if any visual quality difference but it would (should) help with the stutter.
Rexter2k@reddit
Launch version is pretty hard, a couple of patches later helped a lot in cpu heavy areas.
grateparm@reddit
I just played through a Half Life 2 on a 1.4Ghz Tualatin, 512mb of SDR and an fx5900 xt. While it ran on the dx8 renderer, it ran surprisingly well. While I don't have hard data for hl2's performance, Doom 3 was averaging 45fps on that build.
omega552003@reddit
On launch day, I was running a Pentium 4 2.53Ghz with a Radeon 9600XT and 1GB of DDR 333 ram. It was a stutter fest and crashed a couple times. The recommended hardware specs were more of a minimum specs.
It took a couple years for HL2 to run smoothly.
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
I did a video about running HL2 on mininum specs - it was a lot harder than we tend to think.
Enxer@reddit
I discovered a YTer that games on the worst system he can find from ewaste. HL and HL2 really fail hard because he has to use non steam versions due to running 32 bit.
majestic_ubertrout@reddit
This is Water Hazard on min specs - A P4 1.5 and a Quadro 380 XGL (essentially a GeForce 4 MX 440 8X) running of a spinning hard drive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ1RToTryxI
This is how many people played it back in the day. There were better cards out there but most people were running a DX 7/8 card still. Heck, a lot of people still didn't have a DX7 3D card.