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Half-Life 2: Episode Two is a first-person shooter video game, the second episode in a series of sequels to the 2004 Half-Life 2. It was developed by Valve Corporation in tandem with Episode One, the first game in the series, and released in 2007 via Valve's Steam content distribution platform. The episode was released both separately and as a part of a bundled package, The Orange Box.
Episode Two gameplay consists of expansive environments, travel and reduced linear play, continuing Valve's policy of orienting each episode around a particular theme or set of technologies. Following the closing events of Episode One, it sees Gordon Freeman and the series' other major characters moving away from City 17 to the surrounding countryside.
The Source engine has a built in FPS tool, accessible in the advanced section of the keyboard panel. When the developer console is enabled you can access a command line structure in game, by pressing the § key on the Macintosh keyboard. By keying in ‘cl_showfps 1', ‘cl_showfps 0' the FPS readout can be enabled and disabled.
We opted for very high settings with 8 times anti aliasing and 16 times anisotropic filtering at 2560×1600 resolution.
The Source engine isn't that taxing for modern graphics cards and this game runs a treat on both HD5870 and HD7950. The Sapphire HD7950 MAC Edition has a clear frame rate advantage, around 35% faster according to our tests. It has been a long time since I played Half Life 2, and it still looks great.
Wow, thats a heck of a nice card. Mac gamers will be wetting themselves!
I have mine pre-ordered. fab review, thanks !
Well its extremely expensive, but its just as well Apple didnt get them on their store, or they would probably charge £1000 for the card and fitting!
Nice to see Sapphire looking outside the usual channels. Mac gamers will have been dying to get something like this for a long time.
Wow, £400 for a HD7950. Shame we cant buy the cooler would look awesome in my NZXT side panel modded case !
About time Apple had a decent up to date video card, but its kind of ironic its coming just before the new range, so in a few months it will already be out of date.
Perhaps Sapphire will be doing this on a more regular basis for Apple users? I dont know why people are saying its expensive, of course its going to be expensive, the production run will be limited and they wont sell millions. I reckon it might sell ok however, a lot of mac gamers with towers.
i love the styling.
Shame they didnt sell it overclocked at 1000mhz 🙂
Awesome review, many thanks for this. i definitely will buy one for my westmere mac pro.