Half Life 2

I want to purchase Half Life 2 but I am a little concerned that my system might not deliver good performance. It is an AMD xp1700 cpu with 384mb ram and a nvidia Geforce video card. Although my system meets the minimum requirements I don't want the graphics to be choppy or slow. Does anyone know if it will play OK on my aged system?

 

This is just my opinion but I don't think I'd want to waste 50.00 to find out. I first ran HL2 on a 2.88 P-4 and though it wasn't choppy it was slow loading and slow between scenes, I guess thats what you call them them, where it loads new sequences as your playing. I've now got it on my 3.2 P-4 512 memory 128 ATI card and it still makes you wait to get it loaded and there is still a long pause between scenes. You also have to have an internet connection, I've got cable and from what I can guess a modem would not work very good.
So over all, even though the game itself is good, I'd have never bought it if I had known about "stream" and everything else. There was that not more then you ever wanted to know

 

Yes steam is a pain in the ass. Yes you can use a dial up modem to get it started. No you don't have to have an active internet connection for steam to work.

 

You sound like you know a lot more then I, wait a minute that's not saying much.
Do you have to have steam to play HalfLife? If you have the time tell me what steam is and why do I need it?

 

Steam is Valve's stystem for distributing software, patches, and news updates. It also allows you to keep a buddy list, favorite servers list, and keep track of several games in one nifty package. In order to play Counterstrike 1.6+, DOD 1.0+, HL2, HL:Source, CS:Source etc etc you need Steam. You can still play the original Half Life without it if you have your original CD, and CS 1.5 should still work no problem.

BUT as far as HL2, you only need an internet connection to activate/unlock the game - after that, you do not need to be connected in order to play.

It can be a hassle sometimes (the friends network, for instance, is down constantly), but I think overall it's a good idea.

Also, directly ordering through steam, gives Valve, the developer, $30 per game (well HL2 in this case).. instead of ~$10 when you purchase at a retail store ( all that other money goes to Vivendi, the publisher.)

Alontheriver, depending on which Geforce card that is exactly, I would guess you'll be able to play the game just fine, but you're gonna have to turn the resolution and details way down.

 

Yep thead gots everything about exactly right. Except I still prefer having the cds rather then spending hours downloading the game.

 

You can make backup CDs as soon as you finish downloading it.

 

Yes but if he only has dial up then its still the original download that kills you!

 

It will depend on your video card.

I run a 800 Duron, Radeon 9600 and 1 GB of SDRAM. It runs. It also has a longer loading time and get choppy in heavy firefight. Howveer, overall it plays good. My bottleneck is my CPU and my FSB (only 133 mhz). If u have a good video card, your comp should be able to handle HL2 better than mind.

 

I have P4 2.8E with 512mb of ddr400 and an MSI Ti4200 128mb card. Think my card will handle it ok?