Would Black Mesa play any differently on an ATI Radeon HD graphics card? I know the Source Engine is coded specifically for NVIDIA. I’m guessing that the HD part would activate high definition resolution (HDR). I’m asking this because I have a coworker of mine that is going to build me a gaming desktop with Windows 7 on it.
Guess again. HDR stands for “high dynamic range” not “high definition resolution”
The “HD” doesn’t activate anything, except its compatibility with High-Def monitors. My parents have a GeForce 9800 GT in their computer, and it’s not HD. It can run the Orange Box games at Very High with Full HDR at around 50-60 fps.
Source is not coded specifically for either company, and runs well on most of their currently produced GPU’s, however, source does utilize the havok physics engine which is currently being put into ATI cards. That said, with most of today’s average gaming equipment the performance difference would be extremely small and you probably wouldn’t even notice a difference. They did have a small partner ship with NVIDIA when they made the Portal first slice demo, but that partner ship ended. If the source engine were specifically coded for NVIDIA you would the NVIDIA logo appear during the game startup sequence.
The Orange Box games work perfectly well for me (on Vista) at 1440x900 with models/textures set to Very High and motion blur on (everything else off/low). Then again, I have an ATi Radeon X1600 in this shiny two-year-old 17" iMac of mine. (L4D requires everything at the lowest for me to get 60 fps. Your age is showing, computer…)
Yep, Black Mesa’s going to go perfectly well for me.
Also, this is a boring first post.
fix’d
nice one
well… if u i can run hl2 ep 2 i will have no problem running black mesa
I see what you did there and I don’t like it.
Anyway, I never really play L4D, it’s only my brother (who currently has swine flu) that plays it. I’m on my fourth complete playthrough of the entire Half-Life series (including Portal, not including Gearbox games) out of complete boredom.
:fffuuu:
Great, I feel like I’m getting it too…
Oh well, more Half-Life for me! 
Not necessarily. There’s been talk of the requirements being at least slightly higher than that of Episode Two because of all of the detail.
Its gonna be black mesa slide show for u bro.
My only question for the BMS team. Why did they have to make the requirements similar to HL2 EP 2? Still I can probably run it of course. I played HL2 EP 2 and it ran well. Not perfect but well.
Because they used Ep 2’s engine? I think that’s the only reason. How would they be able to make the requirements less than another game that uses the same engine?
Actually, ATI sponsored the Source Engine’s development around Lost Coast/Episode 1 time, so older ATI cards will run better than NVIDIA cards of the same generation.
The thing with the Source engine is, it’s very CPU-based, so there is very little difference, if any, between an Nvidia card and an ATI card in games that use it.
Because Episode Two’s graphics are sexy and they wanted Black Mesa’s graphics to be sexy too, so it uses the latest version of the Source Engine from the Orange Box games.
Nicely put.
OT:
CTID, what GPU do you have? Just curious.
HL2EP2 runs smoothly on my old Dell Inspiron 9400, 1,8Ghz Dual Core, 3GB ddr2, Geforce GO 7900GSX 256mb (GTX bios) in 1440*900 resolution. so i guess i’m set for BMS more or less (=
My parents’ computer that I have Episode Two installed on has an EVGA GeForce 9800 GT.
I sincerely doubt it’s actually 60 fps, but it doesn’t stutter at all. I don’t think it ever has.