@omega_supreme,

[quote][No tweaks have been done to the game (yet) It uses its own dx6 path so its not necesarry. Dont be deceived by the screenshots, HL2 is playable on voodoo but it doesnt look so good always. Water is really ugly and tearing occurs very often. Some textures are missing and framerates drop below acceptable sometimes. When I came home back from university and tried it on a geforce it was a lot more fun to play/quote]

Thats very strange as I have approx. 2 hours game play on my 5500 system and I'm not sure what you mean by the water looks ugly (looks allright to me for a voodoo 5 playing in a DirectX 6 mode) and tearing occurs often (I have not noticed any whatsoever). I have only noticed 1 location in the game where a texture was not right (a white square/rectangle in the middle of some water.

I have had 2 instances so far were the fps do seem to drop substantially (middle teens) compared to the rest of the game, funny thing is that these spots/area's dont really seem to be to graphically demanding and if I changed my view slightly by turning right or left a bit the fps would shoot right back up to 30 - 40  ???

Another strange thing is that I cannot change any game settings except the resolution or else it crashes to the desktop, the game has chosen medium texture and character details so I cant try anything lower to see if it has any impact at these mentioned slow area's.

Have you noticed that the flashlight does not work correctly ?

Using the Counter-Strike video stress test I'm getting the following at a resolution of 1024 X 768 :

4X AA =    14.43 fps
2X AA =    27.33 fps
Fastest = 31.48 fps
single =   27.07 fps

*The stress test is really the only situation where I have noticed missing texture's (4 rotating panels and a soldier are completly white).

I'm actually quite impressed with how well the game is playing and looking at 1024 X 768 with 2X AA, except for the couple mentioned locations were the framerate does drop off, although you can run/move through these area's in about 3 seconds flat to get back to good framerate's 

Correction:  Shaders, not shadows, are set at high in my advanced options.  And models are at medium.  Sure wish I could change that.  Just need to find where those advanced video menu values are actually stored.

@omega_supreme,

I mentioned previously that I also have the game running (1280 X 1024, 2X AA) on my athlon 64 3400/Radeon 9800 Pro 256 mb system, so I know exactly how the game/water looks with the games settingings at highest 

As I'm assuming the game is setting itself up to be played on a DirectX 6 compatible/level graphics card (thats what it reports its finding), I consider it to be quite acceptable.

And your correct, I am now in a location in the game ( after driving the hydro-plane) with quite consistently low fps (12 -20), its strange to me as previous sections of the game seemed to be more graphicaly demanding and got much higher results  ???

Gnerma from OCF posted a link to this guide, which may help squeeze out some extra performance from our cards:

http://www.tweakguides.com/HL2_1.html

BTW, the latest steam update now prompts you with a message that tells us our video cards are unsupported, and that we need to download the latest drivers from the manufacturer! lol

FarCry will run. If someone is willing to spend alot of time on removing that videocard detection you should be able to run it with mesafx in OGL mode 

I have not found how to do that, or how to change the advanced settings without going through the menu.  I am looking though voodoo, and I will post up if I come across anything like that.