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HL2 Video Stress Test

The HL2 Video Stress Test is not a very good indication of ingame HL2 performance but as a synthetic shader heavy benchmark it serves well to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of the various cards.

With straight Trilinear filtering, the 6600GT stays slightly ahead of the 9800XT at all resolutions. It widens the gap ever so slightly at 1600x1200.

Despite the 9800XT's greater video memory bandwidth, the 6600GT creates a wider gap compared to straight trilinear filtering. I think this speaks volumes about the architectural improvements in the memory subsystem between the NV3x and NV4x family.

With AA, the story changes a bit. The 9800XT is able to take advantage of its greater bandwidth and pull away especially at the higher resolutions

With AA and AF, the results are split. The 6600GT takes 1024 while 1280 is more or less a dead heat. 1600 has the 9800XT pull ahead significantly.