I was determined to only play it once Orange Box arrived for 360, because then I'd get Portal too, but I recently had an opportunity to acquire it for PC, without having to use Steam (EVER) so I did.

I know HL2 should run just about flawlessly on my computer with the settings maxed out. The Demo did. And last time I checked, demos were good indicators of how well the final product would perform. ANYWAY.

I'm getting load times (when it tosses "Loading..." up on the screen) of a little over a minute and a half. Which is quite annoying. It also likes to stutter like crazy seemingly at random, but it's always over within a few seconds.

I'm pretty well convinced that the stuttering and such is caused by my puny 512mb of RAM, since while it's running it's sucking down all of it. But I wouldn't think that'd cause huge load times.

Any easy way to try and resolve at least the load times? And no, buying components, unless someone wants to send it to me free, isn't an option. I don't play games on PC anymore, and I haven't got a real use for more RAM, even though it'd be nice.

I messed with it a little on XBox when I borrowed a friends copy but avoided it on a hunch even when I saw it for $10. Just get the 360 version when it comes out and be happy to play it on a superior machine.

Uh, I think 99% of your problems were fixed in Steam updates.

Yeah... take off the tinfoil hat and use steam.

Last time I heard, he only has a 56k modem, hence why he doesn't want to use steam.

saddly that's normal. especialy for 512ram.
Some of the later updates helped the stuttering alot, if you're not useing steam you probably don't have those.
But HL2 has long load times, saddly it's just a fact.

I played it countless times with a desktop with only 512MB of RAM and with an ATI X300 card. Load times weren't as bad as what you are getting. HL2 is known to go easy on many different machines.

I agree with the Steam comments. Valve solves problems and ships the fixes through the network.

yea, get at least another 512 stick in there
it'll really help

It's not a 'tinfoil hat' issue of paranoia. I just despise Steam.

I'll go back and re-read my documentation. I think there was something in there about getting updates, but I don't remember.

Use Steam, get a gig of RAM, and no your computer cannot handle HL2 with maxed settings (mine can't and it's quite a bit better than yours), at least not flawlessly. Unless you count 30fps in heavy firefights flawless.

I don't like the source engine, and the only good things to come of it are the mods :\

valve sucks

i love john carmack

Source is impressively scalable. I was able to run it on my geforce 2 without significant problems.

"Without significant problems" isn't flawlessly. All settings maxed + 8xaa 16xaf I had 20-50fps through the game. Scalability is all well and good if you're not running it maxed.

Good job warez boy.

It probably performs like *** because you're missing about a years worth of updates.

Like antony said. Take off the tinfoil hat, PAY FOR THE GAME, and download it on steam.

It's only like 30 bucks too, and the updates really do help. Hell, even the first few helped my performance a lot.

:saddowns: my illegal warez doesn't work right because I refuse to use steam
I think I'm going to complain about it on massassi because its clearly a warez support site :downs: