Created by: Valve
Article by: Wilson AKA KrippledGamer
(Visit www.hlfallout.net for more HL2 information)
V 1.1 Revision
Dated: 10.20.04
It seems that these days everyone has 200GBs Hard Drives, 1GB of RAM, and a 3.2GHz Processor, but you don't need all these fancy hardware to enjoy the Source Engine.
MotherBoard / CPU-
I would suggest a motherboard that has AGP 8x (atleast) or a (new) PCI-Express 16x Slot, that has a CPU Slot thats is compatible for your CPU of course, but for the speed, I would suggest a AMD Athlon 64 Processor, although they are fast, their clock rates aren't as fast as the Intel's products. If you were asking me i'd invest on a Athlon 64-Bit 3000+ or higher Processor, I recommend Athlon Processor for extense gaming like Doom 3. An Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz is required to atleast run HL2 without much lag or stuttering, the mathematical calcualtions and polycount regulation relys on your CPU and thus the higher the better but now if money comes into issue, than I suggest a Intel Pentium 2.4 atleast or stick with your old CPU for now.
RAM-
Now the memory is the most important factor in gaming applications, even though people will say otherwise. Now, these days memory prices are dropping to an affordable pirce, so the more the merrier. Atleast 512MB is recommended but if you have that extra dime, get 1GB of RAM. DDR PC2700 is good enough but PC3200 is better. And also try to get Dual Channel, thats only if your motherboard supports Dual Channel DIMMS!
Hard Drive-
Well, if your planning to store a lot of pictures, videos, music, and games (!) than you'll probably need a good Drive atleast a drive that can store up to 80GB at 7200rpm. If you own a 5400rpm drive, than it's time to upgrade it to 7200rpm. Having anything higher than a 80GB is always better. 10,000 rpm drives will need cooling, so will 15,000 rpm drives. Now the interface is also important, the old Parellel ATA 100 interface is old and transfer files between cables slower than the newer Serial ATA 150 ones do. Also try to get drives with RAID 0 support. RAID 0 technology has a way or mirroring the image making it seem like theres double the space.
Video Card-
Now, this is the most important component in your computer of you wanna run heavy gaming applications or just wanna browse some websites with, choosing the right one is always key. A good, stable card is a must, now the most stabliest card out there is very hard to find but I will narrow it for you.
Now, nVIDIA and ATI has had bitter rivalry for 7 years and haven't stopped competing with each other since then.
For the mainstream market, ATI really wins around this area, with the Radeon 9550 release this fall, it beats all the AGP rivals. but go for the 9600XT for about $189 won't hurt. Now for the mid-to-high end area, nVidia exceeds in this area, the Geforce FX 5800 is the perfect combination of performance and value, but what nvidia Geforce FX's biggest problem is that their unbelieveably large cards, but like they say, bigger is better right? Well not always, in some cases, the Geforce FX 5900 cannot fit and would seriously prevent a smooth flow of cooling, they would have to actually tear some slots in their cases before the card can go into the case, but the ATI's doesnt suffer from largeness, luckily it's compact for it's performace, but right now if you want a card with a good rating and lasting values get nVIDIA's Geforce FX 5800 or 5900 Ultra cards from either eVGA or PNY. Now for the Enthusiast fans out there who needs the newest cards every 6 months, the winner is still uncertain, every month new information is arosing about a new card being released. But right now we are leaning towards nvidia more because for their CineFX 3.0 feature and PixelShader 3.0, which most future games' engine will be based on this feature. But look for the ATI Radeon X850, which features 16 pipelines and takes up 2 slots but is relatively smaller than the 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition.
Normally if your upgrading one part you are going to shop around and then find something better and upgrade hat and finally you find that your creating a new system. Which is fine if you have the money to supply these new components. But overall the requirements are
Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz / AMD Athlon XP 2200+
Atleast 512MB RAM
And a card that supports atleast DirectX 8.0 (but directX 9.0 is recommended for optimal play)
Half Life 2 will be released on Steam with Bronze, Silver, and Gold choices, or retail, or Collector's Edition on DVD. More information on Steam's website at www.steampowered.com
