Day of Defeat: Source Performance
Valve's recent HDR updates to their Source engine have brough HDR lighting into the mix. While Half-Life 2 waits for HDR-enabled in-game content, the fresh Day of Defeat: Source release is ready for HDR out of the box. Source allows HDR to work with multisample antialiasing too, without special hardware support so owners of all DX9-class hardware get the goods.It's also worth nothing that the updates to the engine render existing demo recordings impossible to play, at least within Half-Life 2. That precluded the switch to Day of Defeat: Source as our Source engine game title to present performance from.
We're CPU limited with no IQ options enabled on both boards.
Same again with 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic texture filtering enabled, both products plenty fast enough.
Throw HDR into the mix and the GeForce 7800 GTX takes a lead at 1280x1024, only for it to all but disappear at 1600x1200, the Radeon X1800 XT clawing back the deficit. 1280x1024 at those levels of IQ is the best playable settings for both products.
The Source engine with current content and no HDR is a pushover for fast hardware these days. Turn on HDR with AA and AF to high levels though, and you can supply the fastest gaming platform on the planet with a stern test.
