Introduction

All screenshots in this article are taken from our custom demos on a 6800U with 4xAA/16xAF

Trouble on the cobble rocks

In my crosshairs, but already dead

Despite its advanced age, Counter-Strike is still the most predominantly played shooter online. In fact, it isn’t even a close race. Based on Gamespy’s stats as of 11PM CDT at 10.11.2004, you can tally up the next nine shooters and they still won’t equal the number of players currently playing Counter-Strike! In fact, many articles have been written asking if Counter-Strike has actually hurt gaming: with so many people still playing Counter-Strike, some gamers haven’t felt the need to move on to another game, say for instance Call of Duty multiplayer, or upgrade their existing hardware. With the debut of Counter-Strike: Source, that’s all about to change.

Going for the headshot

Valve added extra detail in this aztec screenshot

Water in aztec looks good

The premise is simple, take Gooseman’s brilliant creation in Counter-Strike and port it over to Valve’s newer Source engine, which will be used in Half-Life 2. This includes all the old maps from Counter-Strike, including classics such as de-dust and de-aztec as well the game’s weapons and accessories (excluding the riot shield, which was introduced with CS 1.6). Unfortunately, you don’t get to select your player model, for instance all counter-terrorists use the default Navy SEAL player model, but Valve has added extra touches to all of the maps, including props that will go flying if hit by a stray bullet or caught in the concussion of a fragmentation grenade. The end result is a highly polished reproduction of the original, only with much better visuals.

Gun battle with smoke in our custom demo

We attacked via water, note the water splashes

You can just see the rain in this shot

With this in mind, we’ve rounded up the latest high-end video cards from ATI and NVIDIA, including the RADEON X800 XT, which was recently transformed from being a PCI Express-only product, into a PCI-Express/AGP card, just like the GeForce 6800 GT and RADEON X800 PRO. The RADEON X800 XT AGP features a 16-pixel pipeline architecture, just like the flagship RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition, only it’s clocked at 500MHz core/500MHz memory. X800 XT AGP cards have been shipping since mid-September, and are manufactured by both ATI and their board partners, with boards retailing for an MSRP of $450.

Gun fight in italy

Level just started in cs_italy

To evaluate the performance of these cards in Counter-Strike, we made custom demos of online play in the maps Dust, Italy, Cobble, and Aztec. Cobble and Aztec feature larger outdoor environments, while Dust and Italy are tighter maps with intensive gameplay. Let’s get to the results!

You can see the new flashbang effect here

Gun battle continues, smoke and flashbangs were involved as well

Snuck up on masan in this shot