[Half-Life 2 EP 2] Probable Issue with Intel HD

[MrHowlett]

Does this game have any problem with integrated Intel HD graphics? I can play Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Left 4 Dead 2, CS:GO and Team Fortress 2 without any screen freezing or crashing, but when I open HL2 Ep 2 the game freezes on the menu screen and I can still hear the sounds normally. I can only open the game normally using the "-dxlevel 81" command, but the graphics are a bit downgraded. Sometimes I can force "-dxlevel 95" or "-autoconfig" without freezing the game in menu screen and game seems to run smoothly up to 30FPS in high settings without AA and up to 60 in very low settings, so why there's a problem between Intel HD Graphics and HL2 EP 2? Is there any chance that Valve can fix this via update?

[tschumann]

I've had problems with an Intel graphics card in the past and the solution was to not use an Intel graphics card (the engine just doesn't work well with them).
If you're running Left 4 Dead 2, Counter-Strike Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 then you should be okay but each of the games are running on different engine versions so it's probably something that got changed in newer branches.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @MrHowlett, please copy your system information from Steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) and put it in a gist, then include a link to the gist in this issue report.

[MrHowlett]

@kisak-valve

https://gist.github.com/MrHowlett/2c1391a61172d958d0b54fa6800051b6

[floppyD]

I was going to replay this game on my this PC (after beating HL2 and EP1 without a hitch) and got the same issue. The game crashes and the driver crashes with it, the only way I found to play is by forcing DirectX 8.1

My GPU seems to be the same as OP.

Video Card:
    Driver:  Intel(R) HD Graphics
    DirectX Driver Name:  igdumdim32.dll
    Driver Version:  10.18.14.4889
    DirectX Driver Version:  10.18.14.4889
    Driver Date: 12 14 2017
    OpenGL Version: 4.3
    Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
    Monitor Refresh Rate: 75 Hz
    DirectX Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics
    VendorID:  0x8086
    DeviceID:  0x402
    Revision:  0x6