By James Yu and Sarju Shah
Design by Collin Oguro

Out of all the PC game genres, the first-person shooter, the multiplayer FPS in particular, places the most emphasis on frame rate performance. Twenty-five frames per second might be considered playable for a real-time strategy game or even a single-player FPS game, but that same frame rate will be a huge liability in a multiplayer FPS game like Counter-Strike. Frame rates always seem to matter more when you introduce multiplayer into the equation. When's the last time you spent $300 just to beat the computer?

It's arguable that Counter-Strike: Source may be more relevant to PC upgraders than Doom 3. There's no question that Doom 3 is a technological triumph, but it's also, primarily, a single-player game. The multiplayer mods will come in time, but id Software chose to concentrate on the single-player experience. Counter-Strike, on the other hand, is a franchise first built for the multiplayer experience. In fact, Counter-Strike: Source, the upgraded version of Counter-Strike built on the Half-Life 2 engine, will be the only multiplayer game type included with Half-Life 2.

Valve released the Counter-Strike: Source beta to cybercafes and to Counter-Strike: Condition Zero owners this past week, and we've put together a set of benchmark numbers that will give potential upgraders an idea of how the game will perform on the latest Radeon X800 and GeForce 6800 graphics cards as well as popular cards from previous video card generations, including the Radeon 9800 Pro and the GeForce4 MX440.

In crowbar we trust.

Valve introduced a new built-in Video Stress Test benchmark in the latest beta release. The benchmark runs a flyby through a water-filled cavern map filled with novel elements designed to tax the video card. Notable features include a rotating stained-glass likeness of Gordon Freeman, complete with crowbar, as well as a translucent character model made out of water surrounded by fire effects. You can see the Stress Test run in our Gameplay Footage 10 movie on our Counter-Strike: Source media page.

We included results from the Video Stress Test in our report, but we also used an additional timedemo benchmark test using a demo we recorded during a real Counter-Strike: Source gameplay session, since we wanted to see what "real life" performance numbers look like. However, we must note that since Dust is currently the only map available, our demo doesn't include any water effects that are present on other maps, such as Aztec.

We divided our benchmark pages by card type--first the older graphics cards, followed by the current-generation cards. We must also note that the game will adjust its graphics level depending on the capabilities of the video card. For example, when running on the GeForce4 Ti4600 and MX440, the game falls back to an older DirectX path, disabling advanced effects only available through the DX9 path. The fallback results in faster frame rates but fewer special effects.

Three panels on the GeForce4 Ti4600.

The GeForce4 MX440 can't handle the same panel effects.

Test System:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU, MSI K8T Neo Motherboard, 1GB (512MB x 2) Samsung PC3200 Memory, 250GB Maxtor Maxline III SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional.

Graphics Cards (previous generations): GeForce4 MX440 64MB, GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB, Radeon 9600XT 128MB, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB.

Graphics Cards (current generation): GeForce 6800 128MB, Radeon X800 Pro 256MB, GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, Radeon X800 XT PE 256MB, GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB.

Graphics Drivers: Nvidia ForceWare 61.77, ATI Catalyst 4.8.

Game Settings:
Model Detail: High.
Texture Detail: High.
Water Detail: Reflect World.
Shadow Detail: High.
Vsync: Disabled.