Half-Life 2 performance with GeForceFX 5900XT?
 

I've been reading lots about the recent performance wonder from nVIDIA called GeForceFX 5900XT, and I am very impressed. I am seriously considering replacing my Ti4200 with this card, as it seems to be a far better choice (for the time being) than an ATi Radeon 9600XT.

In spite of this, I am hesitant to jump out and mindlessly purchase such a card - my main motivation being Half-Life 2. Firstly, prices can go down even more and ATi might do something to compensate (lowering prices or new card launch), and secondly: because NV30/NV35 cards performed ridiculously poorly in the HL2 benchmarks seen earlier in 2003.

What's your take on this?

I have a 5900 XT, but no halflife. So can't test it. But performs very well on all other comon games (COD, NFS:U as example)

HL2 is far from finished so it's impossible to get an idea of the performance :/

you can count on new cards being released, from both ATi and nVidia, before HL2 comes.
I don't know about price (somehow I don't really care about retail prices) but the 5900XT is derived from the top nVidia line, while the 9600XTis an improvement of the mid-line ATi card.
A better comparison would be 9800Se or 9800 compared to the 5900XT.

last, a line to remember:
Nvidia: XT stands for Xtra traag (extra slow in dutch)

ATi: SE stands for slow edition, and XT for their faster line (anyone got a good line for that)

Xtreme Tech ;)