Hey guys, I'm thinking about the Orange Box (It comes with Half-life 2, episode one, episode two, portal, and Team Fortress 2) for my computer. My PC is a bit dated, but Half-Life 2 is a pretty old game and hopefully the newer expansions aren't more technically demanding.
I have an older AMD Athlon 3000+ single-core processor (2.16Ghz),
A Radeon 9550,
and one gig of ram.

I'm sure a lot of people here would have Half-Life 2 and Episode One, does anyone have any idea of how well it would run performance-wise or visually?

Thanks

Well, processor-wise HL2 at least should be fine- I haven't played any of the others (I only got HL2 just the other week, and haven't even had time to play that much- I still haven't got Windows working yet. I know it works on a computer with a 1.9Ghz AMD processor (It's supposed to be 2.6, but every time I tell it to run at that speed it just has an 'overclocking failure' and resets it to 1.9), although I'm not sure about the graphics card. According to the box, it needs a 1.2Ghz processor and 256mb RAM. It doesn't say anything about the graphics card, except that it needs to support directx 7, so you're probably fine.

When did TF2 come out? I thought I would have heard about it, but apparently not. I used to be on a clan for TFC and it broke up while waiting for TF2.

Anyways, to your computer- The processor should be fine, and the RAM, but I dont know a lot abuot ATI cards. I'm an NVIDIA fan. I have a 2.4GHz and 1Gb RAM with a NVIDIA GeForce 6800+ and I never had any problems running it on high resolution and full graphics.

Alright, thanks everyone. From what I've read my graphics card will be fine (it runs up to DX9) but a little slow maybe. I can play in a lower resolution I guess. TF2 is releasing with the Orange Box on October 9th but you can also get it from steam (for some ridiculous price like 20-30$ or something.) I never played Half-life 1, but I've heard the story is pretty easy to follow anyway and I think I know most of what happened in HL1, so I'm pretty excited.
Have any of you guys played the Lost Coast level or whatever they made for Half-life 2? I think it has HDR lighting or something, which my graphics card definitely won't be able to take advantage of.

I never played the original Half Life, but I know it was a good game. Many people believe that HL2 was too short (I am one of those people) but dont let that defer you from playing it. It is still worth playing. I have played the Lost Coast as well as Episode 1 and both of them are worth playing as well. Yeah, the Lost Coast is only one chapter, so it could take you less than 1/2 hour to get through, but it is quite creative and well done. Episode 1 is a lot longer than the LC, though not as long as the game, and is still worth playing.

Even if you aren't able to take advantage of the awesome graphics, the game is still worth playing in it's entirity.

While this will definitely run on my PC, I won't be getting it 'til Yule. It was either pre-order TOB or buy BioShock. And now, alas, I'm skint.