halo needing a powerful PC

[Magnum PI]

hi..

you have seen that halo was released the 9/30 on PC. i read some of the review, and they somewhat imply that you need a P IV 2.4 GHz and to play it reasonnably fast at 800x600.

excerpt from the IGN review:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/451/451902p1.html

The one I've used the most is a 2.4GHz machine with a GeForce 4. At that level, I was able to play with all the details up at 800x600 fairly smoothly.

from the gamespy review

http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/september03/halopc/index.shtml

But the biggest problem with the graphics -- and the entire game, for that matter -- is that you'll need a pretty powerful PC to run Halo at a steady clip. My main machine is a P2.54 GHz P4 with a GeForce 4 and 1GB of RAM, and I've been running new releases like TRON 2.0, Jedi Academy and Call of Duty at 1024x768 without so much as a stutter -- and that's with all the eye candy cranked up. But even at 800x600 with some of the details turned down, Halo still feels sluggish -- disappointing for a game that looked fantastic and ran fairly well on the Xbox two years ago.

i seek the knowledge of my knowledgeable fellows (sic).

how do you explain that a game that ran smoothly on the xbox (PIII 733 MHz, GF 3.5, 64 MB RAM ...) need such a powerful PC to run correctly ? especially when you know that most PC ports on xbox do not run especially faster on xbox than on PC...

could it be that game was unoptimized for PC ? (sorry, i'm still the paranoid guy you know...)

also if you see a review with a radeon 9600 pro..

 

[chaphack]

I blame gearbox. totally ruined my online expectations. STILL mouse + keyboard is .... interesting....maybe H2 should come to the PC...maybe..

 

[PiNkY]

The game is heavy on pixel shaders and these are very resolution dependent (required computation power on behalf of the graphics card scales linary with resolution). So your reviewer was probably mostly limited on his gf4 as 800*600 has 1,5625 times the pixels as the xboxs 640*480 output resolution. So you'll need a hefty powerfull gfx card to play on say 1600*1200 (from the reviews i read a 9800pro plays nicely at 1280*1024). Hope that helps

 

[London Geezer]

jesus.... >£2000 worth of PC to play a game that came out 2 years ago..... well, HL2 is coming out, so i guess the purchase would be justified... actually, no it wouldnt be, not for one game....

 

[LisaJoy]

thats running it at full fidelity, you can cut off the gloss and have it run on almost any system. Pretty sloppy port though.

 

[function]

I don't see what's too suprising.

It's widely accpeted that you get better performance out of a fixed platform than the PC, and there are also operations available on the XGPU not available on the GF4.

Bearing that in mind, when the game has a variable frame rate on the Xbox, at 640 x 480, it shouldn't be a suprise that it doesn't automatically run a lot faster on a GF4 based PC. And possibly Radeon (though I've not seen any perofrmance figures for it).

 

[Grall]

Function,

While it is easier to exploit a fixed platform, you have to remember PCs of today far *FAR* outstrip the XB in every regard and the game is still teh suck as far as performance goes.

That xgpu has a few other functions GF4 lacks, well, are they even USED in Halo? If yes, how often? Not very, I'd wager. Besides, there isn't a single thing xgpu can do that a Radeon 9500 or above can do as well and game si teh suck on such platforms too.

Very disappointing. Maybe Bungie should have stuck to the mac?


*G*

 

[Magnum PI]

gearbox software ported halo to the PC.

 

[Magnum PI]

I don't see what's too suprising.

It's widely accpeted that you get better performance out of a fixed platform than the PC, and there are also operations available on the XGPU not available on the GF4.

i think that grall answered to that.

but i would add that the other games that exist on PC and also on xbox are not so much slower on the PC, even often faster..
halo seems to be the exception !

and halo, as being one of the first xbox games, was probably not that much optimised for the xbox..

 

[clem64]

But even at 800x600 with some of the details turned down, Halo still feels sluggish --

Well, it felt slugish on Xbox too.

The 25-30fps framerate of the Xbox version is ok for a console game. But for the PC that would be an unbearable framerate. I'm willing to bet that with the specs they've listed it runs faster on the PC then on the Xbox.

 

[London Geezer]

But even at 800x600 with some of the details turned down, Halo still feels sluggish --

Well, it felt slugish on Xbox too.

The 25-30fps framerate of the Xbox version is ok for a console game. But for the PC that would be an unbearable framerate. I'm willing to bet that with the specs they've listed it runs faster on the PC then on the Xbox.

well, that would be true, provided u have a beefy PC...

 

[Qroach]

They upgraded the graphics for the PC version, it's not 100% identicle to the original xbox game.

 

[function]

Magnum PI and Grall

In the original post by Magnum PI both of the hardware setups detailed had GF4 cards in then. I was referring to these, and saying that people shouldn't be suprised when a GF4 PC doesn't outstrip the Xbox. Some GF4s clock a fair amount higher than the XGPU, but probably the most common - the GF4ti - is only about 16mhz or so faster I think (but with more memory bandwidth).

To quote myself [to show I was talking about GF4]:

It's widely accpeted that you get better performance out of a fixed platform than the PC, and there are also operations available on the XGPU not available on the GF4.

Maybe I should have made it extra clear that I was talking about comparions with the GF4.

Todays graphics cards obviously significantly outform something that's 2 years old. And I think it's quite probable that even for Xbox launch titles there was less OS and driver-type (hardware access) bulk getting in the way of efficient operation of the GPU than there is in PCs.

 

[Teasy]

I played Halo recently and it ran fine at 800x600x32 on my 1.4ghz Athlon, Radeon 8500 and 512mb DDR system ram.

On a slightly different note I was highly disapointed with the game. The graphics were nice, but the gameplay was seriously lacking. I played it for about an hour and then frankly I couldn't be bothered to continue.

 

[Qroach]

but the gameplay was seriously lacking

As far as first person shooters goes, I don't see how that could be true... but it "is" just your opinion.

For first person shooters where gameplay is lacking, I think of titles like time splitters 2. Bleh, I can remember when people in here were claiming it to be a halo killer. I played it for an hour and then traded it in. The gameplay was just too boring. All imho of course...

 

[function]

Oops, I forgot to ask ...

but i would add that the other games that exist on PC and also on xbox are not so much slower on the PC, even often faster..
halo seems to be the exception !

I haven't seen any benchmarks for PC Halo, but for it to be performing much slower on the PC I have to wonder how slow it's running! I know the frame rate on Xbox Halo was capped at 30fps (25fps for PAL 50) and so could at times have been running much higher, but with the dips to 20 or 15 fps that sometimes took place, that would have to mean PC Halo absolutely crawls along to be worse. And at a resolution of 640 x 480 too.

When's it out in Europe? I'd like to see how it runs on my machine.

 

[chaphack]

gearbox sucks. period.

those with halo pc can run this halo.exe -timedemo in the command prompt. my gf4ti got average 30fps at 640 with shadows and specular off.

looks worse than the xbox and the fps flucuates more too. :?

halo xbox is the way to go, even though i like the mouse + kb of the PC version.

 

[zurich]

Halo PC is ass.

On my friends Athlon XP + Radeon 9500 the game was unplayable at 1024x768, choppy at 800x600, and 'usually smooth' at 640x480. Hell, I'd wager to say that the Xbox version had a better frame rate most of the time.

Not only does the game run like crap, but alot of the 'new dx9' effects suck too.. like the flashlight on the DX9 codepath is sheit compared to the Xbox one. Heh its like you're moving a big white cone around the room. And the blur when you look through the pistol or sniper rifle was waaay too over done and just causes bad lag. About the only thing that looked better effects-wise was the character BM, and even that was slight.

Anyhow, it was quite the bad scene.

 

[Dave Glue]

Halo PC is ass.
Not only does the game run like crap, but alot of the 'new dx9' effects suck too.. like the flashlight on the DX9 codepath is sheit compared to the Xbox one.

Ironically, on my Geforce 4200, the flashlight looks identical to the Xbox. Move it to pixel shader 2.0, and it's suddenly far more simplistic. What the...?

That being said, on my XP1800/GF4 4200 system, at 800*600 overall, it's definitely smoother than the Xbox version - but not as much as I would have hoped. If you're comparing it with the Xbox version, bear in mind that with a fixed turning speed, the low FPS isn't nearly as apparent as when you're flipping your mouse 90 degrees in a fraction of a second.

But the boost to say, a Radeon 9800 isn't that much either - far less than what you would expect considering the bandwidth/pixel shader performance difference. What I'm seeing with regards to benchmarks is that Geforce4 TI cards do decently (far from great), all FX cards under the 5900 are basically unplayable, and 9800 Pro's are good at 1024*768 but not much above. It's frustrating as the pixel shader effects on textures are far more noticeable in high res - the game looks significantly better at 1280*1024 as compared to 800*600.

(Then again, I can't remember the last PC game I played at 800*600 on my rig, so that probably holds true for all titles.)

Net code is horribly broken apparently - severe lag even on a 100mbit switched LAN. Animations are not interpolated as well, they're stuck at 30fps regardless if your world view is updating at 80fps, which can look odd - heck, increasing animation fluidity is one of the biggest reasons for a high frame rate - you're not getting one with PC Halo anyway, so no biggie.

I was extremely wary of Gearbox doing the port, I'll give them a couple of months to get some patches out but so far it looks like my fears have been justified.

 

[chaphack]

yes the online lag is terrible. :?
i hope they at least patch the online parts.