bitrazor.com - Gaming Central

I've done a bit of research lately to prepare for the upcoming releases of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. This page has some links to the best stuff I've found for system and game performance.

Half-Life 2

Screenshots
Better Crosshairs for Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 Performance Tips
Article: older video cards (FX5900, Radeon 9600) and use of DX8 vs. DX9

The article does help explain why some seemingly lower-end hardware appears to work better than expected -- smart move on Valve's part.

Half-Life 2 keyboard commands not listed in the documentation: F5 = print screen, F6 = quicksave, F9 = quickload. The screen shots go into C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\<steamlogin>\half-life 2\hl2\screenshots.

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch

In Steam, go to Play Games, then right-click Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and choose Install... As in the first version, faster hardware seems to play better. Most of my performance tips from the first version still apply. A few other tips relevant to the new version:

Right-mouse with the shotgun fires two shells at once
Hold down right-mouse with the gravity gun to catch what someone throws at you
The ..357's nasty :)

If you're looking to build a good gaming machine for a reasonable price, see my 2006 PC Build.

System Performance

A decent system optimization guide for gamers (including basic and advanced tips for Windows XP tweaking)
TweakGuides also has an article on tweaking your ATI card
Hard|OCP's review of Doom 3 with official benchmark numbers of NVidia and ATi cards
GameSpot's Doom 3 Hardware Upgrade Guide

Doom 3 Performance

Doom 3 Tweak Guide
GREAT tip for ATI card owners: check out this fantastic Doom 3 tweak. It boosted my frame rate by 28%. If you can no longer find the download mentioned in the article, I have a copy of it here (rar) or here (zip).
The September ATI Catalyst drivers (4.9) and later supposedly have some Doom 3-specific performance improvements as well

FarCry Information

FarCry was released in early 2004, and is a fun game that's not too hard on your hardware. The scenery is great, and there are a lot of novel things in the game (like the hang glider, for example).

Good walkthrough that's come in handy occasionally
Save game tip: the game's default behavior is only to save the game at certain checkpoints, which can be very frustrating. Load the 1.1 patch, then use the ~ key to bring down the console. Enter the following to save the game (be sure to include the backslash at the front): \save_game
- Note that your current checkpoint save is replaced, so be sure to do it when you're safe, and not in the middle of a firefight.

Old Half-Life Information

I have some additional information for you die-hard Half-Life 1 players.