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Originally Posted by pest
I see an expensive video card in my near future. The old ti4200 isnt going to cut it for HL2, Doom III or even halo.
$269 and up for a 9800pro 128
$356 and up for the fx5900 128
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Time to start saving so it can be installed by then.
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So long as you have a 64mb gfx card or higher you won't need to upgrade it to play HL2 (I'm not speaking for D3, that is being designed for the next gen gfx cards anyway, so that's a given).
The biggest factor will be the cpu you have. It always is. You can have a shit-hot Gfx card, memory and whatever, but if you don't have a sweet cpu then they'll count for nothing.
First upgrade for any HL2 users should be to get Athlon XP+ or P4 technology Mboards and Cpu.
I made the mistake of upgrading my voodoo3 16mb first when I got MoH:AA - It did nothing (maybe 5-10 FPS boost, that's all). It was when I upgraded my Duron 700Mhz to my Athlon xp2000+ that MoH started to fly and I'll bet it still would have shifted pixels faster even if I still had the Voodoo3.
That's my advice: If you have a geforce3 or 4, don't upgrade that until you upgrade your mboard and cpu - Valve are not creating this game by the end of this year to only have it sold to the small minority of PC users who can afford top-end gfx cards.
It is being designed to work on Gforce3-4 and equivalent architecture. In that sense, having gfx cards that are more powerful will not make a difference (Like geforce4 didn't make a difference to MOH over geforce3, because Geforce4 wasn't in existence when MoH was being developed).
For those who already have XP2000+ or better architecture then sure, go ahead and upgrade your gfx card, but I honestly don't think it will be necessary for HL2.
Edit: I stress the word "necessary" - Having a nice new gfx is always nice, if you can afford it and I'm sure with a nice cpu it will benefit HL2 in the long-run - I just don't think it's going to be needed.