Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Direct X)


Lost Coast is the free technology demo that Valve created to show off their HDR rendering technique.  Because this method of doing HDR (high dynamnic range) lighting uses integer math instead of floating point, both ATI and NVIDIA cards can do both HDR and AA at the same time. 

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 78

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 79

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 80

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 81

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 82

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 83

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 84

BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 Review: Dual GPU Video Card - Graphics Cards 85

On HL2: Lost Coast (and thus we can assume in all of Valve’s current HDR titles) the BFG 7950 GX2 simply screams past the competition as the resolution and detail levels increase.  At 1600×1200 with AA and AF enabled, the GX2 beats the X1900 XTX in average frame rate by 45% and beats the 7900 GTX by 27%.  At 20×15 that leads grows to 54% and 39% respectively; these numbers are really impressive considering the 7900 GT SLI configuration falls way behind at 20×15, no doubt due to the smaller 256MB frame buffer per GPU.

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