Half-Life 2 specs revealed

Valve boss Gabe Newell has revealed the hardware requirements for Half-Life 2, ahead of the game's expected late summer release.

Taking time out to post on HL2Fallout's forums last week, Newell said that the minimum spec would be a 1.2GHz powered PC with 256MB RAM, Win 98/ME/2000/XP and a DirectX 7 compatible graphics card.

But for those who want to see the game running in all its glory, be prepared to spec up to around a 2.4 GHz machine, with 512MB RAM, Windows 2000/XP and a DirectX 9 capable graphics card.

This will come as a relief to many PC gamers used to games requiring specs well out of reach, although in this case the graphics card will be the key component to consider when getting your machine back in shape. Our machine hasn't seen a great deal of gaming action so far this year, but we're happy to report it's fighting fit and ready for a slew of hi spec FPSs to finally make use of its expensive innards.

Reflecting for a moment on the minimum specs, it makes you wonder what kind of compromises the Xbox version of Half-Life 2 will have to endure, given that the big black box houses a quarter of the RAM (shared between the system and the graphics at that), and a 50 per cent less powerful processor....