Half-Life 2
Just one game title for this article, for two reasons. Time with the board was short, ATI sampling very few in Europe. Secondly, X800 XT PE performance in a range of games titles has already been covered at HEXUS in numerous articles, and since X850 XT PE is so close to the X800 XT PE in terms of basic specification due to the clock speeds, it made sense that if I was to go ahead and use limited time with the card to explore non-theoretical performance, I should pick my title carefully.Half-Life 2
I spent eight straight hours playing Half-Life 2 the night before writing this. To put that into context, I rarely get to spend eight hours in a six month period, actually playing games selflessly and for my own enjoyment, not just for our next article or some other benchmark purpose. So for a game to keep me rapt that long before my mind wanders and tells me I should be working some more, it has to be something special.
When we're CPU limited, the 6800 Ultra has the edge. However, in the finest game of the hour, X850 XT PE is some 30% or more faster at the upper setting, a setting that's entirely comfortable in terms of framerate and performance on the hardware. X850 XT PE monsters Half-Life 2, plain and simple.
