Half Life 2 Specific Issues

Here's the deal so far...

Just picked up AAO (1gb ram - 160 gb hdd)

Loaded it up with Steam including HL1 and HL2.

HL1 runs great, but HL2 (specifically DeathMatch) is unplayable (3-5FPS)
To start with HL2M crashed upon launch, but I found other threads on this site regarding the advanced startup options that fixed that.
The post is here http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=110&p=37739&hilit=half+life+2#p37739
The options in that post are

The applaunch 220 just means launch the game, but the other two codes, I can't find what they mean.

I'm wondering if those codes, while keeping the game from crashing at launch, are also keeping it from running at any decent speed.

I'm not looking for quality here, I'm just looking to be able to run the game and shoot a toilet at my friends with the gravity gun. Any suggestions or links would be much appreciated!

DeMo

 

Self update

My buddy was over tonight and we noticed some interesting things...
HL2 says that my hardware DirectX level is 7 (when the GMA control panel says its 9).

I tried running HL2 with the -directx 70 option. Basically it comes down to draw distance...if I'm in a hallway looking 20 ft down the hall, the game runs ok. Once you get outside, its a different story...the frame rate drops to 2-10.

Oh well...the good news is we played Quake III Arena all night, and I forgot what a stupid thrill that game is!

 

The GMA950 core has about as much processing power and bandwidth as a low-end DX7 desktop graphics card. Technically speaking, GMA950 was built for the DX7 platform, not the DX9 platform. That is why HL2/Steam detects the GMA950 as DX7 compatible and not DX9.

You could always try running HL2M and such with 3D Analyze tool. It allows you to emulate Hardware Transform and Lighting on chipsets that do not have Hardware T&L. It'll offload the processing of T&L to the CPU (aka Software T&L), but might give you more playable framerates in the more open areas.

Just remember to select the HL2.exe and not the Steam.exe.

 

Yuh, when outside, look at the floor!